{"id":14175,"date":"2024-04-21T08:38:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T06:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/21\/the-game-boy-at-35-a-portal-to-other-magical-worlds\/"},"modified":"2024-04-21T08:38:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T06:38:25","slug":"the-game-boy-at-35-a-portal-to-other-magical-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/21\/the-game-boy-at-35-a-portal-to-other-magical-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Game Boy at 35: a portal to other magical worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The handheld console introduced millions to the joy of video games, and remains one of the best-selling consoles ever<\/p>\n<p>On April 21, 1989, Nintendo released a chunky grey game-playing rectangle to stores in Japan. It\u2019s fair to say that nobody expected much of it. Internally, at Nintendo\u2019s Kyoto HQ, the portable console was reportedly not a well-loved project. But within two weeks, it had sold out its entire 300,000-unit initial run. The Game Boy would arrive later that year in the US, and across the rest of the world over the next couple of years. Everywhere it went, it proved just as popular. Thirty-five years and almost 120m sales later, it is still the fourth <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/games\/gallery\/2019\/jul\/17\/the-10-most-beautiful-video-game-consoles-of-all-time\">best-selling games console<\/a> in history.<\/p>\n<p>Like Sony\u2019s Walkman, the Game Boy is a tech design icon of its time, still instantly recognisable from its silhouette alone. Developed by a team led by Satoru Okada and Gunpei Yokoi in Kyoto, the Game Boy is perhaps the preeminent example of Yokoi\u2019s \u201clateral thinking with withered technology\u201d maxim, a do-more-with-less <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/games\/2023\/feb\/04\/how-nintendo-keeps-levelling-up\">technological principle that endures at Nintendo to this day<\/a>. It\u2019s so simply designed \u2013 with four buttons and a cross-shaped directional pad \u2013 that you already know how to use it as soon as you look at it. Thanks to its greyscale screen, the battery lasted for days of play. And most importantly for accident-prone kids of the 90s (and their parents), you could throw it off a bridge and it would probably still work.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/games\/2024\/apr\/21\/the-game-boy-at-35-a-portal-to-other-magical-worlds\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/e254d768bb08e1aeaf2d0e4fe91d36afcf23f8e3\/0_164_5100_3060\/master\/5100.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=693a2d0004772528346ab1afff6cbdee\" title=\"The Game Boy at 35: a portal to other magical worlds\" \/>The handheld console introduced millions to the joy of video games, and remains one of the best-selling consoles ever<br \/>\nOn April 21, 1989, Nintendo released a chunky grey game-playing rectangle to stores in Japan. It\u2019s fair to say that nobody expected much of it. Internally, at Nintendo\u2019s Kyoto HQ, the portable console was reportedly not a well-loved project. But within two weeks, it had sold out its entire 300,000-unit initial run. The Game Boy would arrive later that year in the US, and across the rest of the world over the next couple of years. Everywhere it went, it proved just as popular. Thirty-five years and almost 120m sales later, it is still the fourth best-selling games console in history.<br \/>\nLike Sony\u2019s Walkman, the Game Boy is a tech design icon of its time, still instantly recognisable from its silhouette alone. Developed by a team led by Satoru Okada and Gunpei Yokoi in Kyoto, the Game Boy is perhaps the preeminent example of Yokoi\u2019s \u201clateral thinking with withered technology\u201d maxim, a do-more-with-less technological principle that endures at Nintendo to this day. It\u2019s so simply designed \u2013 with four buttons and a cross-shaped directional pad \u2013 that you already know how to use it as soon as you look at it. Thanks to its greyscale screen, the battery lasted for days of play. And most importantly for accident-prone kids of the 90s (and their parents), you could throw it off a bridge and it would probably still work. Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The handheld console introduced millions to the joy of video games, and remains one of the best-selling consoles ever On April 21, 1989, Nintendo released a chunky grey game-playing rectangle to stores in Japan. It\u2019s fair to say that nobody expected much of it. Internally, at Nintendo\u2019s Kyoto HQ, the portable console was reportedly not &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/21\/the-game-boy-at-35-a-portal-to-other-magical-worlds\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Game Boy at 35: a portal to other magical worlds<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14175"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}