The Game Boy trades screen quality for battery life and wins

What happened

Gunpei Yokoi's approach favored mature, cheap components used inventively over the newest technology available, and this handheld is its clearest expression. The reflective grey-green display smeared noticeably and had no backlight, the processor was unremarkable, and the sound was thin. In exchange, four alkaline batteries lasted through long journeys, the unit survived being dropped in a school bag, and the price was low enough to be an ordinary gift. Interchangeable cartridges and a link cable for head-to-head play completed the package.

Including a puzzle game rather than a mascot platformer in Western boxes proved decisive. Tetris needed no explanation, worked perfectly in monochrome, and appealed to commuters, parents and office workers as readily as to children, which pushed the machine well past the usual audience. Competing handhelds with backlit color screens arrived within months and lost, undone by price, bulk and battery consumption. The line continued through a compact redesign and a color model into the following decade.

The world at the time

Handheld electronic games had existed for over a decade as single-purpose toys with limited displays. Nintendo's earlier pocket line had sold in enormous numbers and taught the company how to build cheaply. Color liquid-crystal panels were becoming feasible but consumed power at a rate portable batteries could not sustain comfortably.

What it changed

The system sold in the tens of millions and, revived late in life by Pokemon, sustained Nintendo through a difficult console generation. It established handhelds as the company's most reliable business, a line running through the Advance, the dual-screen systems and eventually the hybrid console. Link-cable trading also seeded a distinctive social style of portable play.