well it’s the holiday season again a time of the year when we should be thinking about giving but for us video gamers it’s all about getting as in getting new video games I got Final Fantasy for Advance this year but on this episode I wanted to take you back to the early 90s where a certain somebody got one of the greatest systems of all time the Nintendo Gameboy growing up my brother had the Sega Game Gear while I had the Gameboy it didn’t really matter because we both played each other systems but even though the Game Gear had that bright screen and all those cool Sonic games I still preferred the Gameboy the battery life was amazing all the accessories were great and the games were fun what more could you ask for while the NES did bring Nintendo to the forefront of the industry their most successful system of all time is still the game boy selling over 118 million units so on this episode of the gaming historian we’re going to take a look at one of my favorite Christmas gifts of all time the Nintendo Game Boy I guess you could say the game boy’s life began with the game and watch a series of handheld games created by gunpei Yokoi you Khoi thought of the game and watch when he saw a businessman on a train playing with an LCD calculator each game and watch came with a single game and a digital clock on a small LCD screen thus the name Game & Watch from 1980 to 1991 Nintendo made a total of 60 different game and watch games these little handhelds became very popular and suddenly the handheld video game market became a viable business in the gaming industry gunpei Yokoi decided to take the idea of Game & Watch a step further and in 1989 his team at Nintendo came out with the Gameboy it combined the portability of the Game & Watch with the graphics and interchangeable cartridges of the NES now let’s take a closer look now as you can see this is my original Gameboy same one I got for Christmas all those years ago and it still has Pokemon stickers on it because bogum on was awesome and these one of the best games on the Gameboy but I think we’ll save that for another episode the system was simple to turn on you just move the switch on the top the back of the system was where you put the cartridges and the for double-a batteries on the left side was the contrast slider which was for the screen and a power connector if you had the Gameboy battery pack you can plug it in and play without the need of batteries which is sweet on the right side was the volume slider and the link cable connector where you could link up with a friend and play games like Tetris on the bottom of the system was a headphone jack a very underrated feature if you ask me I can’t believe it wasn’t on the Gameboy Advance SP as you can see on the front the control layout is exactly the same as the NES controller which was great because you didn’t have to get used to a new control layout or anything so now we come to the biggest gripe of a Nintendo Game Boy which is the LCD screen it’s pretty small and the color scheme is black and green while the gamers wondered why Nintendo didn’t go with a color screen like the Game Gear for starters using a color screen would make the system cost more money and tend to wanted the Gameboy to be affordable second it would require more batteries not only that but it would train them much quicker a good example is the Game Gear it cost 50 dollars more than the Game Boy required 6 double-a batteries and only had about 5 hours of battery life Gameboy costs 100 dollars required for double-a batteries and had about a 10 to 14 hour battery life you know this thing kind of reminds me of the Wii the Wii is sold as a system that the whole family can enjoy well back in the early 90s the Gameboy was kind of marketed the same way appealing to businessmen and fathers and one big reason for this was the interesting game that was sold with the Game Boy in 1988 Minoru Arakawa who ran Nintendo of America saw a game at an arcade expo called Tetris he became obsessed with the puzzle game and was convinced that this was the perfect game to package with the game boy it was like bread-and-butter tetris was a huge success and was the perfect portable game to go with the game video link and blow your opponent away game boy only from Nintendo now you’re playing with power more power Nintendo shipped over 1 million game boys in 1989 by 1991 it seemed like everyone had a gameboy hell even President Bush had a Game Boy despite competing against systems with superior technology the Gameboy creamed the competition with its simple design awesome battery life and great game selection the Game Boy ended up being the most successful system of all time for Nintendo selling over 118 million units it was also inducted into the National toy Hall of Fame in 2009 Game Boy lives on today in its evolutions but I will still never forget that wonderful Christmas day when I got my gameboy well that about wraps it up now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ve got a game I need to play