Game Boy Color

About the family

Nintendo started in 1889 in Kyoto, making hanafuda cards, and took its current name in 1963. Its first TV game device was the Color TV-Game 6, from 1977, built with Mitsubishi and sold only in Japan, with six variations of a Pong-like tennis game; the series had other models through 1980 (Kotaku and Centre for Computing History). Before its cartridge consoles, the Game & Watch handhelds, created by Gunpei Yokoi, debuted in April 1980 with the game Ball; there were 59 titles through 1991, more than 43 million units sold, and the 1982 Donkey Kong version introduced the cross-shaped D-pad (Inverse). The Family Computer, from 1983, opened its console era. Since then the company has alternated home consoles and handhelds, and the Nintendo Switch, from 2017, merged the two into one. The exception was the Virtual Boy, from 1995, with two red monochrome screens that gave a sense of depth: released in Japan and, in August, in North America, for about 180 dollars, it never reached Europe (Home Computer Museum), had only 22 official games and was discontinued in less than a year (TechSpot). The Game Boy Color reached Japan on October 21, 1998, and North America and Europe the following month, with a color screen and support for the original Game Boy library; Nintendo counts its sales together with the Game Boy, which combined pass 118 million (Time Extension). In 2001 came the Pokémon mini, a tiny handheld with only Pokémon games: a 96 by 64 monochrome screen, clock, infrared, rumble and shake detection, one AAA battery, about 40 dollars and just ten games, lasting about a year in stores (Nintendo Life).