PixlBit

Winning shouldn’t be this hard.

As we age, we sometimes look back on a game we once enjoyed and discover that isn’t nearly as fun as we thought all those years ago. F-1 Race is one of those games for me. Originally released in 1984 on the Famicom, Nintendo reworked a few gameplay elements for its Western release on the Game Boy in 1990. Back then, I was enthralled with the idea of racing around in a Formula One machine while battling it out for first place. Maybe it was the thrill of screaming down the track at 360 km, or perhaps it was just the excitement of playing a new Game Boy game. Whatever the case was, I thought I had gold in the palm of my hands.

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As Told by Gunpei

The Game Boy- created by the late Gunpei Yokoi- was Nintendo's first handheld system to mix the portability of the Game & Watch with the seemingly infinite possibilities of interchangeable cartridges.  Although Tetris was the pack-in game with every unit, Nintendo still wanted to have at least one title in the 1989 launch lineup that their consumer base would instantly recognize.

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Back for the first time

Nintendo is no stranger to making risky decisions that could have resulted in utter failure. After all, they released the Famicom\NES during a time when the consumer market shunned video games. Then there was that time in 2004 when most of us thought they were crazy when they announced the dual screen handheld DS. And many were skeptical when motion controls were introduced on the Wii console. Nonetheless, their decisions proved to be a significant success. Such was the case with the early Metroid series.

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