Game Boy

The Game Boy is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on April 21, 1989, and in North America on July 31, 1989. Nintendo's first handheld to use ROM cartridges, it succeeded the Game & Watch line of handheld electronic games and competed with Sega's Game Gear, Atari's Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress in the fourth generation of video game consoles. Nintendo Research & Development 1, under Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada, designed the Game Boy. To expand on the single-game Game & Watch, Nintendo adopted a dot-matrix display and interchangeable game cartridges. They prioritized affordability, battery life, and durability over the faster processors and color graphics of its competitors; following Yokoi's philosophy of using mature, low-cost technology, the Game Boy has a monochromatic display and an 8-bit processor. It retains the Game & Watch D-pad and the Game Link Cable, developed by Okada, which enables multiplayer connectivity and data transfer between consoles. In North America and Europe, the Game Boy was backed by a large marketing campaign and bundled with Tetris, which increased its appeal beyond traditional video game audiences. Alth