Before phones played games

I like Scramble, Airline Conqueror, and Mega Jump on the iPhone as much as anybody, but there was a time when portable gaming had nothing to do with your phone.  I’m not talking about the Nintendo DS, or DSi, or whatever version is the most current, I’m talking about my most recent pick up, the Game Boy Pocket:

This particular system was an ‘upgrade’ over the original Game Boy in that it was more compact and had a sharper screen resolution.  Also, the color was actually black and white instead of the greenish scale used by the original.  Instead of four AA batteries, the GBP used two AAAs.

And if the system alone wasn’t a sweet enough deal, it included the matching Game Boy Camera:

Plug in the doohickey and take pictures of yourself!  Remember, this device came out long before digital cameras, and I read or heard somewhere (probably Wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt) that the Game Boy Camera once held the Guiness World Record for world’s smallest digital camera.  There was also a Game Boy Printer, which I’m assuming allowed you to print out pictures that you took with the camera.  I never owned one (I’ll fix that in due time) but I can only imagine that’s how it worked.

Of course, when have I ever been sufficiently satisfied with one of anything?  To go with the Game Boy Pocket I purchased a Game Boy Color:

This is where portable gaming got interesting.  About the only downfall with the Game Boy was that it was black and white (or green).  Sega released a hand held system of their own, the Game Gear, but it was clunky and was a total drain on batteries.  Battery life was so bad, actually,  that it was virtually unplayable without an AC adapter, which kinda killed its portability.  Finally, Game Boy games could be played in color!  The system was backwards compatible, so even if you didn’t feel like forking over the cash for a ‘color’ game, your old Game Boy games (the Pocket never had unique games – it was simply a smaller Game Boy) could be played with a pre-assigned palette.

Do I need two Game Boys?  Absolutely not.  But are two Game Boys better than one?  Obviously, especially for the crazy low price I bought them for.  Of course, I’ll need games to play:

The Griffey baseball game was a bit of an oddity: it was the first Griffey endorsed Nintendo game that featured real players.  I’ve never played Tetris Attack, but I’ve read that it’s absurdly addicting and it’s regarded as one of the best puzzle games of all time.

These games – and the many others I’ll pick up along the way – are far more entertaining than anything I could possibly download on my iPhone.

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