Why did Nintendo’s handheld become so successful?

Hanover. If you grew up in the 1990s, you probably came into contact with it several times – even if you weren’t a gamer yourself. On April 21, 1989, 35 years ago, Nintendo’s Game Boy was first released in Japan. A year and a half later it also came onto the market in Germany.

The small, gray plastic block fundamentally changed the gaming industry. It was sold 118.69 million times worldwide until it was gradually replaced by successor models such as the Nintendo DS at the end of the 2000s. This makes the Game Boy not only one of the most successful game consoles in the world – its pop culture influence is also huge.

The Game Boy was as much a part of the 1990s as the middle part, Buffalo Boots and Tic Tac Toe. Games like Super Mario, Zelda and finally Pokémon grossed millions and still enjoy cult status today. And its simple operation also laid the foundation for many other successful products in the gaming and entertainment industry.

What’s also interesting about the Game Boy’s success story is that it was by no means without competition. The Nintendo product was technically inferior in many areas to comparable products such as the Game Gear from Sega, the Ataris Lynx or the TurboExpress from NEC. Nevertheless, none of these consoles achieved a breakthrough – the Game Boy, on the other hand, became a box office hit and cult object. How can this be explained?

NES console lays the foundation for the Game Boy

The first Game Boy was developed in the mid-1980s by Nintendo’s chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi and his team. The extremely successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a chunky games console for the television, had previously come onto the market.

Yokoi convinced his boss, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi, that he could transfer the success to a portable device. The original internal name for the device was Dot Matrix Game at the time, the Game Boy brand was later invented by game developer Shigesato Itoi.

In the early stages of its development, the little box was rarely called that. Instead, it had the derogatory name “Dame Game” internally, the Japanese word dame meaning “useless” or “hopeless”. At first, only a few Nintendo employees believed in the great success. There was also tension within the development team at times about the exact direction the Game Boy should take.

No technical highlight

Yokoi, on the other hand, was undeterred. He had a vision that the device should be reliable and affordable. Great importance was also placed on a long battery life. For this reason, some functions were omitted, such as the backlighting of the display. The screen itself was a simple grayscale screen – even though more would have been technically possible at the time.

The ease of use of the Game Boy also played a role right from the start. For example, an eight-way control pad was installed instead of a joystick. In Yokoi’s opinion, the latter would simply not have made the device portable enough. Parallel to the Game Boy, the first games for the mini console were also developed. These included Super Mario Land, a spin-off of the console game Super Mario Bros.

In 1987, the Game Boy prototype was first presented at technology trade fairs. However, the initial reactions were mixed – similar to Nintendo internally. What particularly bothered the reviewers was that the device was sometimes miles inferior to its competitors from Sega or Ataris. Last but not least, the monochrome graphics and design of the device were criticized – many found this to be bulky.

Surprisingly, consumers didn’t see it that way: within the first two weeks of its release in Japan, all 300,000 first copies were already sold out. By the time its successor, Game Boy Color, was released in 1997, sales had risen to an incredible 64.42 million.

Why was the Game Boy so successful?

It stands to reason that the very features that were initially viewed as a shortcoming of the Game Boy contributed significantly to its success. While the competition relied on color displays, backlighting, all sorts of features and big game announcements for their products, Nintendo consciously swam against the tide – and in doing so apparently hit the right nerve with consumers.

The display wasn’t particularly attractive – but it provided an enormous battery life of 30 hours at a time, something that competing products couldn’t match. The Game Boy could be taken anywhere – and games could easily be played all day long.

By the way, the design of the device was good: it was modeled on the already established NES – players no longer had to learn any new controls. In addition, the device was extremely robust and could not be destroyed so quickly, even if it was accidentally dropped.

Nintendo is swimming against the tide

In a way, the strategy is reminiscent of the successful concept of the tech giant Apple. In the early years, its iPhone also lacked all sorts of features that the competition had long had – it was never the technically best device. However, the company created a simple and intuitive user interface that was fun – and a device that worked error-free and reliably. This was appreciated by consumers. One of Steve Jobs’ product maxims was always: As complicated as necessary, as simple as possible.

Much like Apple, Nintendo also had a certain amount of trust with the market launch of the Game Boy – the brand was considered similarly valuable among gamers thanks to its successful NES. The company’s marketing did the rest: the Game Boy was advertised as a device that you could take with you everywhere – and that you could also use with friends. Thanks to the link cable, which could be used to connect two Game Boys, you could also compete against your friends in games.

However, the price of the Game Boy was not comparable to Apple. When it was launched in Germany, the device cost just 169 marks, or around 86 euros – which was remarkably cheap for a gaming device. However, that could also have contributed significantly to his success. For comparison: The starting price of the Sega Game Gear was significantly higher in Germany at 299 marks (152 euros).

How Tetris made the Game Boy hype

But the success of the Game Boy may not only have to do with the product itself – but also with its games. Games like the Super Mario series, Donkey Kong or Zelda became cult. And then there is the number one bestseller, which is likely to have really boosted sales of the Game Boy: Tetris.

The puzzle game, in which you famously have to complete rows with falling pieces, was developed in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union and eventually licensed by Nintendo for the Game Boy. By the beginning of 1990, before the Game Boy was released in Germany, Nintendo alone sold 2.5 million games. By 1997, there were 29.72 million copies worldwide, including bundles.

It was the video game designer Henk Rogers who discovered the game from the Soviet Union. Nintendo President Minoru Arakawa also seemed quite enthusiastic about the simple but extremely addictive game. He ultimately decided to sell the game as a standard game in a box with the Game Boy.

And then came Pokémon

Smart decisions like these kept the Game Boy alive for years to come, even after its surprise success. And at the end of the 1990s, another hit game extended this lifespan by a few more years: Pokémon became a worldwide mega-hype. The first two Game Boy editions, red and blue, alone were sold 31 million times. And again, millions of kids and teenagers sat in front of their mini consoles for hours.

The success of the Game Boy was ultimately ended by the ravages of time – and by Nintendo itself. The Japanese game manufacturer developed a whole series of successors over the years, including the Game Boy Advance in various versions, which sold 81 million times. At the same time, the first Nintendo DS was released in 2004, and the Nintendo 3DS was sold until 2020. Over time, the screens became more colorful, sharper, and the graphics became three-dimensional.

With the Switch, Nintendo now offers a hybrid console that can be used both with a connected screen and with a screen in the hand. Nintendo has now said goodbye to the Game Boy brand with the last Advance model. However, the cult factor of the gray plastic chunk still has an impact today.