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118-584: The Game Boy is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo , launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-game handhelds, Nintendo developed the Game Boy to be more like a portable console , with interchangeable cartridges. The concept proved highly successful and

236-404: A Game Boy Printer . The Game Boy continued to experience strong sales well into the 1990s, as popular games continued to increase interest in the handheld. This commercial success was something of a double-edged sword for Nintendo; the device was seen as aged, but the company was unwilling to abandon it. Instead, the company embarked on a series of improvements to the Game Boy in an effort to keep

354-432: A bullet train , saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Starting in 1980, Nintendo began to release a series of electronic games designed by Yokoi called the Game & Watch games. Taking advantage of the technology used in the credit-card-sized calculators that had appeared on

472-587: A matrix or other pattern of electrodes, such as the seven-segment display used in low-information content applications like watches or calculators . Only one of the electrodes has to be patterned in this way, the other can remain continuous ( common electrode). If more complex data or graphics information have to be displayed, a matrix arrangement of electrodes is used. Because of this, voltage-controlled addressing of matrix displays , such as in LCD-screens for computer monitors or flat television screens ,

590-413: A touchscreen was the Game.com released by Tiger Electronics in 1997. The Nintendo DS , released in 2004, introduced touchscreen controls and wireless online gaming to a wider audience, becoming the best-selling handheld console with over 150 million units sold worldwide. This table describes handheld games consoles by generation, with over 1 million sales. No handheld achieved this prior to

708-590: A twisted nematic (TN) display, but after seeing a prototype Game Boy, Yamauchi rejected the TN technology as too hard to see. Sharp then suggested super-twisted nematic (STN) technology, which had better viewing angles and contrast but was more expensive. To reduce cost, the team reduced the screen size, however, it was too late in the development process to shrink the console's overall size. Within R&;D1, Yokoi had long promoted " lateral thinking with withered technology",

826-488: A 10:9 aspect ratio . The SoC also contains a 256 B "bootstrap" ROM which is used to start up the device, 127 B of High RAM that can be accessed faster (similar to a CPU cache ), and the Audio Processing Unit , a programmable sound generator with four channels: a pulse wave generation channel with frequency and volume variation, a second pulse wave generation channel with only volume variation,

944-478: A March 14, 1994, press conference in San Francisco, Nintendo vice president of marketing Peter Main answered queries about when Nintendo was coming out with a color handheld system by stating that sales of the Game Boy were strong enough that it had decided to hold off on developing a successor handheld for the near future. In 1995, Nintendo of America announced that 46% of Game Boy players were female, which

1062-628: A Memory Bank Controller (MBC) inside the cartridge. This chip sits between the processor and the ROM chips. The CPU can only access 32 KB at a time, but the MBC can switch between several banks of 32 KB ROM. Using this technology, Nintendo created Game Boy games that used up to 1  megabyte of ROM. Game Paks could also provide additional functionality to the Game Boy system. Some cartridges included up to 128 KB of RAM to increase performance, which could also be battery-backed to save progress when

1180-561: A USB cable from a PC. The GP32 was redesigned in 2003. A front-lit screen was added and the new version was called GP32 FLU (Front Light Unit). In summer 2004, another redesign, the GP32 BLU, was made, and added a backlit screen. This version of the handheld was planned for release outside South Korea; in Europe, and it was released for example in Spain (VirginPlay was the distributor). While not

1298-602: A backlit screen was released in some regions around the same time. Along with the GameCube , the GBA also introduced the concept of "connectivity": using a handheld system as a console controller. A handful of games use this feature, most notably Animal Crossing , Pac-Man Vs. , Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles , The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures , The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker , Metroid Prime , and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle . As of December 31, 2007,

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1416-598: A calculator, using LED (light-emitting diode) technology." The result was the 1976 release of Auto Race . Followed by Football later in 1977, the two games were so successful that according to Katz, "these simple electronic handheld games turned into a '$ 400 million category.'" Mattel would later win the honor of being recognized by the industry for innovation in handheld game device displays. Soon, other manufacturers including Coleco , Parker Brothers , Milton Bradley , Entex , and Bandai began following up with their own tabletop and handheld electronic games. In 1979

1534-590: A commercial success on a level with mainstream handhelds (only 30,000 units were sold), it ended up being used mainly as a platform for user-made applications and emulators of other systems, being popular with developers and more technically adept users. Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003. It was designed as a combination MP3 player, cellphone, PDA, radio, and gaming device. The system received much criticism alleging defects in its physical design and layout, including its vertically oriented screen and requirement of removing

1652-549: A cost-cutting move rather than hard plastic cases that Japanese and European releases were shipped in may have also hurt US sales. The WonderSwan Color is a handheld game console designed by Bandai . It was released on December 9, 2000, in Japan, Although the WonderSwan Color was slightly larger and heavier (7 mm and 2 g) compared to the original WonderSwan, the color version featured 512  KB of RAM and

1770-471: A dearth of compelling games, and Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign, and despite a redesign in 1991, the Lynx became a commercial failure . Despite this, companies like Telegames helped to keep the system alive long past its commercial relevance, and when new owner Hasbro released the rights to develop for the public domain, independent developers like Songbird have managed to release new commercial games for

1888-405: A design philosophy which eschewed cutting-edge technology in favor of using mature technologies, which tended to be more affordable and reliable, in innovative ways. As a result of this philosophy, to keep costs low and extend battery life, the Game Boy was designed without a backlight and used a simple grayscale screen, despite potential concerns about visibility and the lack of color. The approach

2006-417: A display technology without vacuum tubes. Aware of the long line of research involving nematic liquid crystals, he started experimenting with the compound p-azoxyanisole which has a melting point of 115 °C (239 °F). Williams set up his experiments on a heated microscope stage, placing samples between transparent tin-oxide electrodes on glass plates held at 125 °C (257 °F). He discovered that

2124-655: A flight simulator, included a "head-to-head" dogfight mode that can only be accessed via TurboLink. However, very few TG-16 games offered co-op play modes especially designed with the TurboExpress in mind. The Bitcorp Gamate is one of the first handheld game systems created in response to the Nintendo Game Boy. It was released in Asia in 1990 and distributed worldwide by 1991. Like the Sega Game Gear, it

2242-563: A handheld platform convinced Nintendo president Minoru Arakawa to port and bundle it with the Game Boy. As a result, Tetris was bundled with the Game Boy in every region except Japan on its release. The Game Boy launched in the Japanese market in April 1989, followed by North America in July, and Europe in September of the following year, backed by a $ 10 million marketing effort. Sales of

2360-465: A key design element developed by Yokoi and his team at R&D1 for its Game & Watch predecessor: the directional control pad, often referred to as the " D-pad ." Yokoi had recognized that traditional joysticks might hinder the portability of handheld devices. As a result, he designed the D-pad – a flat controller that extends just slightly beyond the device's casing. A similar layout had been used on

2478-463: A laptop computer), as well as a frontlit color display and rechargeable battery. Despite the smaller form factor, the screen remained the same size as that of the original. In 2005, the Game Boy Micro was released. This revision sacrifices screen size and backwards compatibility with previous Game Boys for a dramatic reduction in total size and a brighter backlit screen. A new SP model with

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2596-419: A larger color LCD screen. In addition, the WonderSwan Color is compatible with the original WonderSwan library of games. Prior to WonderSwan's release, Nintendo had virtually a monopoly in the Japanese video game handheld market. After the release of the WonderSwan Color, Bandai took approximately 8% of the market share in Japan partly due to its low price of 6800 yen (approximately US$ 65). Another reason for

2714-490: A lot of power, they were not battery-friendly like the non-backlit original Game Boy whose monochrome graphics allowed longer battery life. By this point, rechargeable battery technology had not yet matured and so the more advanced game consoles of the time such as the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx did not have nearly as much success as the Game Boy. Even though third-party rechargeable batteries were available for

2832-444: A major feature of the Game Boy line, since it allowed each new launch to begin with a significantly larger library than any of its competitors. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell 118.69 million units worldwide. The console is capable of displaying up to 56 different colors simultaneously on screen from its palette of 32,768, and can add basic four-color shading to games that had been developed for

2950-701: A major leap in innovation, particularly in the second half with the release of the DS and PSP . In 2001, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance (GBA or AGB), which added two shoulder buttons, a larger screen, and more computing power than the Game Boy Color. The design was revised two years later when the Game Boy Advance SP (GBA SP), a more compact version, was released. The SP features a " clamshell " design (folding open and closed, like

3068-600: A million units were sold in the US. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell over 118 million units worldwide. In 1987, Epyx created the Handy Game; a device that would become the Atari Lynx in 1989. It is the first color handheld console ever made, as well as the first with a backlit screen. It also features networking support with up to 17 other players, and advanced hardware that allows

3186-490: A much higher resolution, and can display 64 sprites at once, 16 per scanline, in 512 colors. Although the hardware can only handle 481 simultaneous colors. It has 8 kilobytes of RAM . The Turbo runs the HuC6820 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16  MHz . The optional "TurboVision" TV tuner includes RCA audio/video input, allowing users to use TurboExpress as a video monitor. The "TurboLink" allowed two-player play. Falcon ,

3304-483: A portable version of the successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Their differing visions for the project led to frequent clashes, heated meetings and high tensions, with Okada ultimately convincing Yokoi of his vision. The team was encouraged to pursue the project by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi . However within Nintendo, many were skeptical that such a device would be feasible. Some employees even gave

3422-468: A power LED, different case colors (red, green, yellow, black, gold metal, clear, and blue) and dropped the price to US$ 54.95 (equivalent to $ 104 in 2023). By mid-1998, just months before the Game Boy Color went on sale, prices had fallen to US$ 49.95 (equivalent to $ 93 in 2023). The Game Boy Light was a Japan-only revision released on April 14, 1998. Like the Game Boy Pocket, the system

3540-581: A shortcoming of the launch of the NES. R&D1 also developed Super Mario Land , a portable adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. game, intending it to be the flagship title for the Game Boy. However, Henk Rogers brought the Soviet Union-made game, Tetris , to the attention of Nintendo of America . Despite its simple graphics and lack of a well-known brand, Tetris' s suitability for

3658-534: A touch screen and stylus. However, Tiger hoped it would also challenge Nintendo's Game Boy and gain a following among younger gamers too. Unlike other handheld game consoles, the first game.com consoles included two slots for game cartridges, which would not happen again until the Tapwave Zodiac, the DS and DS Lite, and could be connected to a 14.4 kbit/s modem. Later models had only a single cartridge slot. The Game Boy Color (also referred to as GBC or CGB)

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3776-474: A transparent state and a highly scattering opaque one with the application of electric current. The scattering was primarily forward, into the crystal, as opposed to backscattering towards the light source. By placing a reflector on the far side of the crystal, the incident light could be turned on or off electrically, creating what Heilmeier dubbed dynamic scattering . In 1965 Joseph Castellano and Joel Goldmacher, organic chemists, sought crystals that remained in

3894-499: A variety of video displays such as LED , VFD , or LCD . In 1978, handheld electronic games were described by Popular Electronics magazine as "nonvideo electronic games" and "non-TV games" as distinct from devices that required use of a television screen. Handheld electronic games, in turn, find their origins in the synthesis of previous handheld and tabletop electro-mechanical devices such as Waco 's Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe (1972) Cragstan's Periscope-Firing Range (1951), and

4012-518: A very strong electrical field applied across the stack would cause striped patterns to form. These were later termed "Williams domains". The required field was about 1,000 volts per centimeter, far too high for a practical device. Realizing that development would be lengthy, he turned the research over to physicist George Heilmeier and moved on to other work. In 1964, RCA's George H. Heilmeier along with Louis Zanoni and chemist Lucian Barton discovered that certain liquid crystals could be switched between

4130-487: A wave channel than can reproduce any waveform recorded in RAM, and a white noise channel with volume variation. The motherboard also contains a 8 KB "working RAM " chip. The Game Boy features a D-pad (directional pad), four buttons labeled 'A', 'B', 'SELECT', 'START', and a sliding power switch with a cartridge lock to prevent removal. The volume and contrast are adjusted by dials on either side. The original Game Boy

4248-589: Is Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy and was released on October 21, 1998, in Japan and in November of the same year in the United States. It features a color screen, and is slightly bigger than the Game Boy Pocket . The processor is twice as fast as a Game Boy's and has twice as much memory. It also had an infrared communications port for wireless linking which did not appear in later versions of

4366-401: Is a redesigned version of the original Game Boy having the same features. It was released in 1996. Notably, this variation is smaller and lighter. It comes in seven different colors; red, yellow, green, black, clear, silver, blue, and pink. It has space for two AAA batteries , which provide approximately 10 hours of game play. The screen was changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than

4484-620: Is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the console, screen, speakers, and controls in one unit, allowing players to carry them and play them at any time or place. In 1976, Mattel introduced the first handheld electronic game with the release of Auto Race . Later, several companies—including Coleco and Milton Bradley —made their own single-game, lightweight table-top or handheld electronic game devices. The first commercial successful handheld console

4602-516: Is more complex than with segmented electrodes. For a matrix of limited resolution or for a slow-changing display on even a large matrix panel, a passive grid of electrodes is sufficient to implement passive matrix-addressing , provided that there are independent electronic drivers for each row and column. A high-resolution matrix LCD with required fast response (e.g. for animated graphics and/or video) necessitates integration of additional non-linear electronic elements into each picture element ( pixel ) of

4720-556: The GP2X , use standard alkaline batteries . Because the mAh rating of alkaline batteries has increased since the 1990s, the power needed for handhelds like the GP2X may be supplied by relatively few batteries. Nintendo released the Game Boy on April 21, 1989 (September 1990 for the UK). The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch system, as well as

4838-435: The Game & Watch handhelds and video games including Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong . However, early in the process, deep disagreements arose between Gunpei Yokoi , the R&D1 division director, and Satoru Okada , the assistant director. Yokoi's original vision was for a simpler device, akin to an advanced Game & Watch, while Okada strongly advocated for a more powerful device with interchangeable cartridges, like

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4956-543: The Game Boy Color (1998), have been sold worldwide, making it the fourth- best-selling console ever. The Game Boy received several redesigns during its lifespan, including the smaller Game Boy Pocket (1996) and the Game Boy Light (1998). Sales of Game Boy variants continued until 2003. The Game Boy was designed by the team at Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1), which had previously developed

5074-550: The LCD technology, which was a critical component. The team considered buying displays from the Citizen Watch Company which was already using LCD screens to build portable TVs. However, talks continued with Sharp, with Yokoi and Okada showing the company a Game Boy mockup. After seeing the device and wanting to keep Nintendo as a client, Sharp offered competitive pricing and secured the contract. Sharp originally proposed

5192-735: The Master System , which gave Sega the ability to quickly create Game Gear games from its large library of games for the Master System. While never reaching the level of success enjoyed by Nintendo, the Game Gear proved to be a fairly durable competitor, lasting longer than any other Game Boy rivals. While the Game Gear is most frequently seen in black or navy blue, it was also released in a variety of additional colors: red, light blue, yellow, clear, and violet. All of these variations were released in small quantities and frequently only in

5310-579: The Nintendo Entertainment System games Metroid and Kid Icarus . The Game Boy came under scrutiny by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi , saying that the monochrome screen was too small, and the processing power was inadequate. The design team had felt that low initial cost and battery economy were more important concerns, and when compared to the Microvision, the Game Boy was a huge leap forward. Yokoi recognized that

5428-525: The Picture Processing Unit , essentially a basic GPU , that renders visuals using an 8 KB bank of Video RAM located on the motherboard. The display itself is a 2.5-inch (diagonal) reflective super-twisted nematic (STN) monochrome liquid-crystal display (LCD), measuring 47 millimeters (1.9 in) wide by 43 millimeters (1.7 in) high. The screen can render four shades with a resolution of 160 pixels wide by 144 pixels high in

5546-571: The Zilog Z80 . The SM83 has the seven 8-bit registers of the 8080 (lacking the alternate registers of the Z80), but uses the Z80's programming syntax and extra bit manipulation instructions, it also adds new instructions to optimize the processor for certain operations related to the way the hardware was arranged. The Sharp SM83 operates at a clock rate of 4.194304 MHz. The DMG-CPU also incorporates

5664-478: The capacitance of the corresponding LC cell, which happens only when the applied voltage changes. Current isn't needed to sustain the electric field, because no current (ideally) flows through the liquid crystal layer. Thus, LCDs require very little power . However, the electric field's direction may need to be periodically reversed during the ON state by using an alternating voltage for " AC operation", because keeping

5782-578: The "normally white" mode, i.e., a mode in which light is transmitted when no electrical field is applied to the liquid crystal: In the OFF state, i.e., when no electrical field is applied, the nematic liquid crystal molecules form a twisted configuration (aka helical structure or helix) between the two glass plates, G in the figure, which are separated by several spacers and coated with transparent electrodes, E 1 and E 2 . The electrodes themselves are coated with alignment layers (not shown) that precisely twist

5900-414: The "pea soup" monochromatic display of the original Game Boy. Although, like its predecessor, the Game Boy Pocket has no backlight to allow play in a darkened area, it did notably improve visibility and pixel response-time (mostly eliminating ghosting ). The first model of the Game Boy Pocket did not have an LED to show battery levels, but the feature was added due to public demand. The Game Boy Pocket

6018-434: The 2.0 panned the system due to its black-and-white display and motion blur , while his three co-reviewers praised its long battery life and strong games library, as well as the sleek, conveniently-sized design of the new Game Boy Pocket model. The Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Color were commercially successful, selling a combined 118.69 million units worldwide: 32.47 million in Japan, 44.06 million in

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6136-573: The Americas, and 42.16 million in all other regions. At the time of its discontinuation in 2003, the combined sales of the Game Boy made it the best-selling game console of all time . In later years, its sales were surpassed by the Nintendo DS , PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Switch , making it the fourth-best-selling console of all time, as of 2024. XGP Handheld game console A handheld game console , or simply handheld console ,

6254-517: The Asian market, possibly as late as 1994. The total number of games released for the system remains unknown. Gamate games were designed for stereo sound, but the console is only equipped with a mono speaker. The Game Gear is the third color handheld console, after the Lynx and the TurboExpress; produced by Sega. Released in Japan in 1990 and in North America and Europe in 1991, it is based on

6372-399: The Asian market. Following Sega's success with the Game Gear, they began development on a successor during the early 1990s, which was intended to feature a touchscreen interface, many years before the Nintendo DS . However, such a technology was very expensive at the time, and the handheld itself was estimated to have cost around $ 289 were it to be released. Sega eventually chose to shelve

6490-629: The Central Research Laboratories of Hoffmann-LaRoche in Switzerland , where he teamed up with Martin Schadt , a solid-state physicist. Schadt built a sample with electrodes and a twisted version of a liquid-crystal material called PEBAB (p-ethoxybenzylidene-p'-aminobenzonitrile), which Helfrich had reported in prior studies at RCA, as part of their guest-host experiments. When voltage is applied, PEBAB aligns itself along

6608-541: The GBA, GBA SP, and the Game Boy Micro combined have sold 80.72 million units worldwide. The original GP32 was released in 2001 by the South Korean company Game Park a few months after the launch of the Game Boy Advance. It featured a 32-bit CPU, 133 MHz processor, MP3 and Divx player, and e-book reader. SmartMedia cards were used for storage, and could hold up to 128mb of anything downloaded through

6726-693: The Game Boy and its successor variants (including the Game Boy Color ) continued until March 2003. The Game Boy uses a custom system on a chip (SoC), to house most of the components, named the DMG-CPU by Nintendo and the LR35902 by its manufacturer, the Sharp Corporation . Within the DMG-CPU, the main processor is a Sharp SM83 , a hybrid between two other 8-bit processors: the Intel 8080 and

6844-503: The Game Boy became a cultural icon of the 1990s and early 2000s. The Game Boy was designed by the Nintendo Research & Development 1 team, led by Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada . The device features a dot-matrix display , a directional pad , four game buttons, a single speaker, and uses Game Pak cartridges. The two-toned gray design with black, blue, and dark magenta accents sported softly rounded corners, except for

6962-412: The Game Boy needed a killer app —at least one game that would define the console, and persuade customers to buy it. In June 1988, Minoru Arakawa , then-CEO of Nintendo of America saw a demonstration of the game Tetris at a trade show. Nintendo purchased the rights for the game, and packaged it with the Game Boy system as a launch title . It was almost an immediate hit. By the end of the year more than

7080-514: The Game Boy, excluding cancelled and unlicensed games. Additionally, more than 300 games developed for the Game Boy Color were forward compatible with the monochrome Game Boy models. Games are stored on cartridges called the Game Boy Game Pak , using read-only memory (ROM) chips. Initially, due to the limitations of the 8-bit architecture of the device, ROM size was limited to 32 KB. However, Nintendo overcame this limitation with

7198-424: The Game Boy, such as the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Color was a response to pressure from game developers for a new system, as they felt that the Game Boy, even in its latest incarnation, the Game Boy Pocket, was insufficient. The resulting product was backward compatible, a first for a handheld console system, and leveraged the large library of games and great installed base of the predecessor system. This became

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7316-526: The LCD-based Microvision , designed by Smith Engineering and distributed by Milton-Bradley, became the first handheld game console and the first to use interchangeable game cartridges. The Microvision game Cosmic Hunter (1981) also introduced the concept of a directional pad on handheld gaming devices, and is operated by using the thumb to manipulate the on-screen character in any of four directions. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi , traveling on

7434-461: The NES, making it easier for owners to transition to the handheld. Yamauchi estimated that the console would achieve sales exceeding 25 million units in its initial three years, a claim that was regarded as bold at the time. Nintendo's philosophy centered on the belief that the appeal of a gaming system was primarily determined by the quality of its games. With this in mind, Okada pushed to make development tools available for third-party developers ,

7552-539: The Neo Geo Pocket Color was dropped from both the US and European markets, purportedly due to commercial failure. The system seemed well on its way to being a success in the U.S. It was more successful than any Game Boy competitor since Sega 's Game Gear , but was hurt by several factors, such as SNK's infamous lack of communication with third-party developers, and anticipation of the Game Boy Advance. The decision to ship U.S. games in cardboard boxes in

7670-415: The ON state, i.e., when a sufficient electrical field is applied between the two electrodes, the crystal molecules align in the direction of that field. Without the helical configuration of the liquid crystal to reorient the light's polarization angle, polarized light from polarizer P 2 is instead blocked by polarizer P 1 , so the pixel, I, appears opaque. Current is only needed to charge and discharge

7788-401: The United States within weeks. More than 118.69 million units of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined have been sold worldwide, with 32.47 million units in Japan, 44.06 million in the Americas, and 42.16 million in other regions. By Japanese fiscal year 1997, before Game Boy Color's release in late 1998, 64.42 million units of the Game Boy had been sold worldwide. At

7906-530: The WonderSwan's success in Japan was the fact that Bandai managed to get a deal with Square to port over the original Famicom Final Fantasy games with improved graphics and controls. However, with the popularity of the Game Boy Advance and the reconciliation between Square and Nintendo, the WonderSwan Color and its successor, the SwanCrystal quickly lost its competitive advantage . The 2000s saw

8024-442: The action of an applied electric field. This is achieved with little power consumption and at low operating voltages. The underlying phenomenon of alignment of liquid crystal molecules in applied field is called Fréedericksz transition and was discovered by Russian physicist Vsevolod Frederiks in 1927. To display information with a twisted nematic liquid crystal, transparent electrodes are structured by photolithography to form

8142-793: The battery to change game cartridges. The most well known of these was " sidetalking ", or the act of placing the phone speaker and receiver on an edge of the device instead of one of the flat sides, causing the user to appear as if they are speaking into a taco . The N-Gage QD was later released to address the design flaws of the original. However, certain features available in the original N-Gage, including MP3 playback, FM radio reception, and USB connectivity were removed. Twisted nematic field effect Many monochrome alphanumerical displays without picture information still use TN LCDs. TN displays benefit from fast response times and less smearing than other LC display technology, but suffer from poor color reproduction and limited viewing angles, especially in

8260-446: The battery-hungry alternatives to the Game Boy, these batteries employed a nickel-cadmium process and had to be completely discharged before being recharged to ensure maximum efficiency; lead-acid batteries could be used with automobile circuit limiters (cigarette lighter plug devices); but the batteries had mediocre portability. The later NiMH batteries, which do not share this requirement for maximum efficiency, were not released until

8378-430: The bottom right, which was curved. At launch, it was sold either as a standalone unit or bundled with games like Super Mario Land and Tetris . Despite mixed reviews criticizing its monochrome graphics and larger size compared to competitors like the Sega Game Gear , Atari Lynx , and NEC TurboExpress , the Game Boy rapidly outsold them all. An estimated 118.69 million units of the Game Boy and its successor,

8496-447: The cell will be mostly transparent but just barely visible. As the voltage is increased, more crystals will realign until the cell reaches its maximum opacity. Already in 1972, mixtures were developed with a threshold voltage of only 0.9 V rms and which reached 90% of maximum opacity at 1.4 V rms. In 1962, Richard Williams, a physical chemist working at RCA Laboratories, started seeking new physical phenomena that might yield

8614-413: The console relevant. The first revision to the Game Boy came on March 20, 1995, when Nintendo released several special edition Game Boy models with colored cases, advertising them in the "Play It Loud!" campaign, known in Japan as Game Boy Bros. Play It Loud! units were manufactured in red, yellow, green, blue black, white, and clear (transparent). The Play It Loud's screens also have a darker border than

8732-401: The crystals by pulling a piece of paper across them, causing the crystals to become polarized. He later noticed when he sandwiched the crystal between two aligned polarizers, he could twist them in relation to each other, but the light continued to be transmitted. This was not expected. Normally if two polarizers are aligned at right angles, light will not flow through them. Mauguin concluded that

8850-479: The device's small size, and said that the screen's visibility and pixel response-time had been improved, mostly eliminating ghosting . However, other reviewers were dismissive of the device, with the Los Angeles Times saying Nintendo was "repacking the same old black-and-white stuff and selling it as new." The first version came only in silver and did not have a power LED. A revision in early 1997 added

8968-423: The display (e.g., thin-film diodes, TFDs, or thin-film transistors , TFTs) in order to allow active matrix-addressing of individual picture elements without crosstalk (unintended activation of non-addressed pixels). The following illustrations show the OFF and ON states of a single pixel (which could instead be a segment of a character) of a twisted nematic light modulator liquid crystal display operating in

9086-492: The electric field in only one direction for too long during the ON state (or having a DC component as small as 50 mV in the AC voltage) may cause electrochemical reactions which reduce the cell's life. The amount of opacity can be controlled by varying the voltage. Below a threshold voltage, which depends on the liquid crystal's mixture, no visual change occurs. At voltages near the threshold, only some crystals will realign, so

9204-401: The emerging optoelectronic -display-driven calculator market of the early 1970s. This synthesis happened in 1976, when "Mattel began work on a line of calculator-sized sports games that became the world's first handheld electronic games. The project began when Michael Katz, Mattel's new product category marketing director, told the engineers in the electronics group to design a game the size of

9322-497: The feasibility of the new effect for displays, Schadt fabricated a 4-digit display panel in 1972. Fergason published a similar patent in the US on either 9 February 1971 or 22 April 1971. This was two months after the Swiss patent was filed and set the stage for a three-year legal confrontation that was settled out of court. In the end, all the parties received a share of what would become many millions of dollars in royalties. PEBAB

9440-538: The field, breaking the twisting structure and the redirection of the polarization, making the cell turn opaque. At this time Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) was also working with the devices as part of a prior joint medical research agreement with Hoffmann-LaRoche. BBC demonstrated their work to a physicist from the US who was associated with James Fergason , an expert in liquid crystals at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories. Fergason

9558-511: The final product's model number: "DMG-01." Originally, a Ricoh -manufactured CPU, similar to the one used in the NES, was considered for compatibility. However, due to resource constraints amid the ongoing development of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , the Game Boy team chose a less powerful CPU from the Sharp Corporation . Sharp initially showed reluctance to engage in the project, particularly for

9676-664: The fluid state at room temperature. Within six months they had found a number of candidates, and with further development, RCA was able to announce the first liquid crystal displays in 1968. Although successful, the dynamic scattering display required constant current flow through the device, as well as relatively high voltages. This made them unattractive for low-power situations, where many of these sorts of displays were being used. Not being self-lit, LCDs also required external lighting if they were going to be used in low-light situations, which made existing display technologies even more unattractive in overall power terms. A further limitation

9794-462: The fourth generation of game consoles. This list does not include dedicated consoles , such as LCD games and the Tamagotchi . The origins of handheld game consoles are found in handheld and tabletop electronic game devices of the 1970s and early 1980s. These electronic devices are capable of playing only a single game, they fit in the palm of the hand or on a tabletop, and they may make use of

9912-468: The green hues of the original Game Boy. The Pocket also has a smaller Game Link Cable port, which requires an adapter to link with the original Game Boy. This smaller port design would be used on all subsequent Game Boy models. Internally, the Game Boy Pocket had a new SoC, the Nintendo CPU ;MGB, an improved version of the DMG-CPU. A major change was that the device's 8 KB of Video RAM

10030-506: The handheld was off, real-time clock chips could keep track of time even when the device was off and Rumble Pak cartridges added vibration feedback to enhance gameplay. The top-selling franchise for the Game Boy were Pokémon Red , Blue , and Yellow , the first installments of the Pokémon video game series , which sold more than 46 million copies. The best-selling single game was Tetris , with more than 35 million copies shipped, it

10148-546: The idea and instead release the Genesis Nomad , a handheld version of the Genesis , as the successor. The Watara Supervision was released in 1992 in an attempt to compete with the Nintendo Game Boy. The first model was designed very much like a Game Boy, but it is grey in color and has a slightly larger screen. The second model was made with a hinge across the center and can be bent slightly to provide greater comfort for

10266-477: The late 1990s, years after the Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and original Game Boy had been discontinued. During the time when technologically superior handhelds had strict technical limitations, batteries had a very low mAh rating since batteries with heavy power density were not yet available. Modern game systems such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable have rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries with proprietary shapes. Other seventh-generation consoles, such as

10384-514: The light was being re-polarized by the twisting of the crystal itself. Wolfgang Helfrich , a physicist who joined RCA in 1967, became interested in Mauguin's twisted structure and thought it might be used to create an electronic display. However RCA showed little interest because they felt that any effect that used two polarizers would also have a large amount of light absorption, requiring it to be brightly lit. In 1970, Helfrich left RCA and joined

10502-413: The liquid crystal by 90° when no external field is present. Incoming light is first polarized by the first polarizer , P 2 . The helical configuration of the liquid crystal rotates the light's polarization by 90°, so the light will be properly polarized to pass through the second polarizer, P 1 , set at 90° to the first. Because the light passes through the cell, the pixel, I, appears transparent. In

10620-490: The market, Yokoi designed the series of LCD-based games to include a digital time display in the corner of the screen. For later, more complicated Game & Watch games, Yokoi invented a cross shaped directional pad or "D-pad" for control of on-screen characters. Yokoi also included his directional pad on the NES controllers, and the cross-shaped thumb controller soon became standard on game console controllers and ubiquitous across

10738-439: The normal Game Boy. A major revision to the Game Boy came in 1996 with the introduction of the Game Boy Pocket, a slimmed-down unit that required just two smaller AAA batteries , albeit at the expense of providing just 10 hours of gameplay. The other major change was that the screen was changed to a film compensated super-twisted nematic (FSTN) LCD. This film compensation layer produced a true black-and-white display, rather than

10856-596: The original Game Boy. It can also give the sprites and backgrounds separate colors, for a total of more than four colors. The Neo Geo Pocket Color (or NGPC) was released in 1999 in Japan, and later that year in the United States and Europe. It is a 16-bit color handheld game console designed by SNK , the maker of the Neo Geo home console and arcade machine. It came after SNK's original Neo Geo Pocket monochrome handheld, which debuted in 1998 in Japan. In 2000 following SNK's purchase by Japanese Pachinko manufacturer Aruze,

10974-444: The other, for an early 3D effect . In 1983, Takara Tomy 's Tomytronic 3D simulates 3D by having two LCD panels that were lit by external light through a window on top of the device, making it the first dedicated home video 3D hardware. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the beginnings of the modern-day handheld game console industry, after the demise of the Microvision. As backlit LCD game consoles with color graphics consume

11092-465: The other, the dye was either visible or hidden, resulting in two colored states called the guest-host effect . Work on this approach stopped when the dynamic scattering effect had been demonstrated successfully. Another potential approach was the twisted-nematic approach, which had first been noticed by French physicist Charles-Victor Mauguin in 1911. Mauguin was experimenting with a variety of semi-solid liquid crystals when he noted that he could align

11210-506: The project the derogatory nickname " Dame Game" ( dame (だめ) meaning "hopeless" in Japanese). The codename for this nascent project was "Dot Matrix Game" (DMG), reflecting its intended display technology , a stark contrast to the Game & Watch series, which had segmented LCDs pre-printed with an overlay, limiting each model to only play one game . The initials DMG came to be featured on

11328-605: The system every year until 2004's Winter Games . The TurboExpress is a portable version of the TurboGrafx, released in 1990 for $ 249.99. Its Japanese equivalent is the PC Engine GT . It is the most advanced handheld of its time and can play all the TurboGrafx-16 's games (which are on a small, credit-card sized media called HuCards ). It has a 66 mm (2.6 in.) screen, the same as the original Game Boy, but in

11446-532: The team that the feature would be too difficult to use and thus a waste of resources, Okada pushed forward and developed the Game Link Cable technology himself. This effort led to the creation of the "battle" and "trade" gameplay features in the Pokémon series , first released in 1996. A prototype Game Boy was unveiled in 1987 and later exhibited at multiple industry trade shows. The device incorporated

11564-447: The user. While the system did enjoy a modest degree of success, it never impacted the sales of Nintendo or Sega. The Supervision was redesigned a final time as "The Magnum". Released in limited quantities it was roughly equivalent to the Game Boy Pocket . It was available in three colors: yellow, green and grey. Watara designed many of the games themselves, but did receive some third party support, most notably from Sachen . A TV adapter

11682-416: The vertical direction. Colors will shift, potentially to the point of completely inverting, when viewed at an angle that is not perpendicular to the display. Viewing the display from above whitens colors, and viewing the display from below dims colors. The twisted nematic effect is based on the precisely controlled realignment of liquid crystal molecules between different ordered molecular configurations under

11800-607: The video game industry since. When Yokoi began designing Nintendo's first handheld game console, he came up with a device that married the elements of his Game & Watch devices and the Famicom console, including both items' D-pad controller. The result was the Nintendo Game Boy. In 1982, the Bandai LCD Solarpower was the first solar-powered gaming device. Some of its games, such as the horror -themed game Terror House , features two LCD panels , one stacked on

11918-419: The zooming and scaling of sprites. The Lynx can also be turned upside down to accommodate left-handed players. However, all these features came at a very high price point, which drove consumers to seek cheaper alternatives. The Lynx is also very unwieldy, consumes batteries very quickly, and lacked the third-party support enjoyed by its competitors. Due to its high price, short battery life, production shortages,

12036-547: Was Merlin from 1978, which sold more than 5 million units. The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges is the Milton Bradley Microvision in 1979. Nintendo is credited with popularizing the handheld console concept with the release of the Game Boy in 1989 and continues to dominate the handheld console market. The first internet -enabled handheld console and the first with

12154-568: Was a pack-in game included with the purchase of many original Game Boy devices. When the Game Boy was released in Japan in April 1989 alongside four launch titles : Alleyway (a Breakout clone ), Baseball (a port of the NES game), Super Mario Land (an adaptation of the Mario franchise for the handheld format) and Yakuman (a Mahjong game). When the console was introduced in North America, two more launch titles were added: Tetris and Tennis (another NES game port), while Yakuman

12272-549: Was available in both PAL and NTSC formats that could transfer the Supervision's black-and-white palette to 4 colors, similar in some regards to the Super Game Boy from Nintendo. The Hartung Game Master is an obscure handheld released at an unknown point in the early 1990s. Its graphics fidelity was much lower than most of its contemporaries, displaying just 64x64 pixels. It was available in black, white, and purple, and

12390-623: Was frequently rebranded by its distributors, such as Delplay, Videojet and Systema. The exact number of games released is not known, but is likely around 20. The system most frequently turns up in Europe and Australia. By this time, the lack of significant development in Nintendo 's product line began allowing more advanced systems such as the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the WonderSwan Color to be developed. The Nomad

12508-535: Was higher than the percentage of female players for both the Nintendo Entertainment System (29%) and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (14%). In 2009, the Game Boy was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame , 20 years after its introduction. The console received mixed reviews from critics. In a 1997 year-end review, a team of four Electronic Gaming Monthly editors gave the Game Boy scores of 7.5, 7.0, 8.0, and 2.0. The reviewer who contributed

12626-551: Was horizontal in orientation and like the Game Boy, required 4 AA batteries. Unlike many later Game Boy clones, its internal components were professionally assembled (no "glop-top" chips). Unfortunately the system's fatal flaw is its screen. Even by the standards of the day, its screen is rather difficult to use, suffering from similar ghosting problems that were common complaints with the first generation Game Boys. Likely because of this fact sales were quite poor, and Bitcorp closed by 1992. However, new games continued to be published for

12744-505: Was moved from the motherboard to the SoC for faster access. The Game Boy Pocket was released in Japan on July 20, 1996, and in North America on September 2, 1996, for US$ 69.99 (equivalent to $ 136 in 2023). The Game Boy Pocket revitalized hardware sales and its release was ultimately well-timed as it coincided with the release of the first Pokémon game, which catapulted the Game Boy into uncharted realms of commercial triumph. Reviewers praised

12862-499: Was never released outside of Japan. Though it was less technically advanced than the Sega Game Gear , Atari Lynx , NEC TurboExpress and other competitors, notably by not supporting color, the Game Boy's lower price along with longer battery life made it a success. In its first two weeks in Japan, from its release on April 21, 1989, the entire stock of 300,000 units was sold; a few months later on July 31, 1989, 40,000 units were sold on its first release day. It sold one million units in

12980-484: Was not a new software platform and played the same software as the original Game Boy model. The Game.com (pronounced in TV commercials as "game com", not "game dot com", and not capitalized in marketing material) is a handheld game console released by Tiger Electronics in September 1997. It featured many new ideas for handheld consoles and was aimed at an older target audience, sporting PDA-style features and functions such as

13098-449: Was powered internally by four AA batteries . For extended use, an optional AC adapter or rechargeable battery pack can be connected via a coaxial power connector on the left side. The Game Boy has a single monaural speaker and a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack . The right side offers a Game Link Cable port for connecting to another Game Boy for two-player games or, notably in Pokémon , sharing files. This port can also be used with

13216-434: Was priced at ¥6,800 (equivalent to ¥6,892 in 2019). The Game Boy Light is slightly bigger than the Game Boy Pocket and features an electroluminescent backlight allowing it to be played in low-light conditions. It uses two AA batteries, which give it approximately 12 gameplay hours with the backlight on and 20 with it off. It was available in two standard colors: gold and silver. More than 1,000 games were released for

13334-565: Was released in October 1995 in North America only. The release was six years into the market span of the Genesis, with an existing library of more than 500 Genesis games. According to former Sega of America research and development head Joe Miller, the Nomad was not intended to be the Game Gear's replacement; he believed that there was little planning from Sega of Japan for the new handheld. Sega

13452-437: Was subject to breakdown when exposed to water or alkalines, and required special manufacturing to avoid contamination. In 1972 a team led by George W. Gray developed a new type of cyanobiphenyls that could be mixed with PEBAB to produce less reactive materials. These additives also made the resulting liquid less viscous, thereby providing faster response times, while at the same time making them more transparent, which produced

13570-601: Was supporting five different consoles: Saturn , Genesis, Game Gear , Pico , and the Master System , as well as the Sega CD and 32X add-ons. In Japan, the Mega Drive had never been successful and the Saturn was more successful than Sony's PlayStation , so Sega Enterprises CEO Hayao Nakayama decided to focus on the Saturn. By 1999, the Nomad was being sold at less than a third of its original price. The Game Boy Pocket

13688-437: Was the requirement for a mirror, which limited the viewing angles. The RCA team was aware of these limitations, and continued development of a variety of technologies. One of these potential effects had been discovered by Heilmeier in 1964. He was able to get organic dyes to attach themselves to the liquid crystals, and they would stay in position when pulled into alignment by an external field. When switched from one alignment to

13806-433: Was ultimately vindicated as rival units with full-color, backlit screens were panned for their dismal battery life, making the Game Boy more appealing to consumers. In the early 1980s, Okada had worked on an electronic game from Nintendo called Computer Mah-jong Yakuman that allowed cable communication between two devices, he thought it would be possible to implement a similar feature in the Game Boy. Despite concerns within

13924-624: Was working on the TN-effect for displays, having formed ILIXCO to commercialize developments of the research being carried out in conjunction with Sardari Arora and Alfred Saupe at Kent State University's Liquid Crystal Institute. When news of the demonstration reached Hoffmann-LaRoche, Helfrich and Schadt immediately pushed for a patent, which was filed on 4 December 1970. Their formal results were published in Applied Physics Letters on 15 February 1971. In order to demonstrate

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