The unpublished peripheral of Nintendo Game Boy is revealed after 20 years

The Game Boy is an 8-bit portable game console developed as well as manufactured by Nintendo. The initial portable in the Game Boy family, it was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989. The console was launched in The United States and Canada later the exact same year, then in Europe in late 1990. It was created by the exact same group that created the Game & Watch series of portable digital video games and numerous Nintendo Home entertainment System video games: Satori Oneida, Junta Yoko, as well as Nintendo Research Study & Advancement 1. Nintendo's 2nd portable game console, the Game Boy, incorporates attributes from both the NEW home system and Game & Watch hardware. The console includes a dot-matrix display with flexible contrast dial, 5 video game control switches (a directional pad, 2 video game switches, and START and SELECT ), a solitary audio speaker with flexible volume dial, and, like its rivals, makes use of cartridges as physical media for games. The color design is made from two tones of gray with accents of black, blue, and dark magenta. All the corners of the portrait-oriented rectangular unit are softly rounded, conserve for the lower right, which is curved. At launch, it was sold either as a standalone unit, or bundled with among numerous games, among them Super Mario Land as well as Tetris. Numerous accessories were additionally established, consisting of a lugging bag, Game Genie, as well as printer. In spite of being highly inferior to its fourth-generation rivals (Sega's Video game Equipment, Atari's Lynx, as well as NEC's TurboExpress), the Game Boy got appreciation for its battery life as well as resilience in its building and construction. It promptly outsold the competitors, selling one million devices in the USA within a few weeks. An estimated 118.69 million devices of the Game Boy and its follower, the Game Boy Color, have been offered worldwide, making it the third very popular video game console of all time. It is just one of the most identifiable gadgets from the 1990s, coming to be a cultural symbol in the years following its release. Several redesigns were released throughout the console's lifetime, consisting of the Game Boy Pocket in 1996 and also the Game Boy Light in 1998 (Japan only). Production of the Game Boy continued right into the early 2000s, also after the launch of its 2nd follower, the Game Boy Breakthrough, in 2001. Production stopped in 2003.

An unprecedented first-hand peripheral for Game Boy Color would have given the Nintendo handheld computer a series of additional functions, including web browsing, email options and the ability to send selfies with the Game Boy camera. The device, which would have been called Page Boy, was shown in a new episode of Did you know?, Presented by Liam Robertson. In the video, Robertson reveals that the ambitious project was initiated by Eddie Gill, the founder of Source Research and Development and creator of Work boy. The Work boy was a peripheral canceled similarly for the original Game Boy, which would have given the system an address book, a worldwide clock, the ability to carry out currency conversions and more.

According to Robertson, the idea of ​​Gill for Work boy inspired him to continue trying to create a similar device. Next to Brother Christopher, he formed a group called Wizard. Interestingly, the system would not have used Wi-Fi, but radio waves, which is similar to how the pager worked at the same time (hence the name). To present the idea to Nintendo, Gill called Frank Ballot, a former Nintendo executive who supervised Work boy's production. In 1999, Wizard presented the idea to Nintendo with extensive information about technology, as well as physical models of how it would be, on behalf of a company called Sirius Moneymaking.

According to the presentation (obtained by Robertson), Page Boy would have included a search engine specifically for the device, called Ask Mario. While users expected the search results, Mario spoke to them and even whistled the subject of the world 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. ! The device would even include something called Game Boy TV, where Nintendo could make new ads on the next games, which Robertson compares with an initial version of Nintendo Direct presentations.

The device would have cost $50. Nintendo investigated the concept for three years, before closing the door in 2002. Although Nintendo was fascinated with the concept, technology would have been limited to North America, leaving out users of Japan and Europe. The company felt that it cost it to the article a large part of its attraction, which was to be able to communicate with other Game Boy users around the world. The concept was clearly ahead of time, and it could have been a very interesting device, if I had left the market!

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