Ah, the Game Boy Color. Released 9 years after the original Game Boy, it was less of a groundbreaking console and more of an evolution of Gunpei Yokoi’s iconic work, albeit a late one (Yokoi refused to add a colour display to the Game Boy in favour of long battery life). When we finally got the colour display, it was amazing. Now you could play games with 32,768 colours!
Critical and public reception of the Game Boy Color was positive thanks to improvements to the display and the addition of color, as well as its backward compatibility which allowed you to change the monochrome colour scheme for games like Pokémon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow. Nothing was radical here, just a much-needed upgrade on a fun, reliable, and serviceable device.
With all that said, some other publications have had their say about the Game Boy Color, both to mark its 25th birthday and as general retrospectives over the years. So here are a list of my favourites:
25th anniversary blogs, retrospective blogs, and lists
- Game Boy Color Turns 25 Today (timeextension.com)
- 14 Best Game Boy Color Games Ever, Ranked (www.thegamer.com)
- The 7 Rarest Game Boy Color Games (& How Much They’re Worth) (gamerant.com)
- A Handheld History Celebrates the Time We Spent With Screens, featuring an essay about the Game Boy Color by Brandon Saltalamacchia from Retro Dodo (gizmodo.com)
- The Game Boy Color – The Story of a Childhood Icon (eu.oneblockdown.it)
- The best Game Boy Color colors, ranked (www.polygon.com)
- 7 Important Things You Didn’t Know Game Boy Color Could Do! (supplychaingamechanger.com)
- Nintendo’s official press release for the Game Boy Color in 1998 (www.nintendo.com, via The Wayback Machine)
And here are some Game Boy Color commercials.
