PixlBit

A little late for the party but I figure I should write an article for the 25th anniversary of the GameBoy. Instead of going through the history of Nintendo’s best selling portable console I’m going to talk about my personal history with GameBoys, a sort of memoir.

 

The first one I’ve received when I was a kid was the original GameBoy, the classic grey brick that I carried with me during my days off from school. I suppose I was a gamer back then, playing Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Mario Land 1 and 2. My grandmother also gave me a game as a stocking stuffer, Power Rangers (have not beaten it to this day). Even my dad played a game he purchased himself, Kid Icarus: Of Myth and Monsters. It wasn’t until the release of Pokemon Yellow that I started to take the old brick with me, carrying it to school in my left pocket where it barely fit. Come around Christmas during my 7th year of grade school Dad upgraded to the a new unit: an Atomic Purple GameBoy Color.

 

I immediately took the Color with me everywhere, whipping it out before and after geometry class to play Pokemon. I purchased a few games for it in the following years, giving me a bit more variety than Pokemon such as Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Cory’s Journey and Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Age. Another Christmas came during my early high school year along with another upgrade, the GameBoy Advance, and the games came rolling in: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Breath of Fire II, Golden Sun, MegaMan Battle Network, DemiKids, Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Pokemon Gen III games, Metroid Fusion, and much more. Eventually I got a GameBoy Advance SP, and for a short time a GBA Micro, and gamed well up to getting one more upgrade: the Nintendo DS.

 

As for where these system are now is a short story. I still have the old grey brick but the speaker has sadly gone out. The GameBoy Color is still among my collection of GameBoys and still fully functional. I do not have the original GBA I got for Christmas; my mom asked if I could part with it to sell to her co-worker for $20 and I said it was alright (as long as I kept the Castlevania game that came with it I’m good). I sold off the Micro to a GameStop for a preorder, though I don’t remember what game it was. As for the SP I still use it to this day, even getting more games for it such as the NES classics cart Metroid and the just recent purchases of Mario Land 2 and F-Zero: GP Legends. Though I carry my Nintendo 3DS more often these days it wouldn’t have been so if I was never given a GameBoy. As a matter of fact, getting my Midnight Purple 3DS was a kind of memoir to my history with GameBoys. My dad gave me the Atomic Purple GameBoy when I was playing Pokemon Yellow non-stop, so out of nostalgia I got the Midnight Purple 3DS so I would be ready for Pokemon X, and the game continues.