History of Game Boy Color

Console Prototype

The history of the Game Boy Color begins in 1992. Unfortunately, there is very little information about that period. It is only known that Nintendo already had a prototype of the console. Satoru Okada mentioned that he was involved in the development of this console, but it had two problems: the console only worked for an hour, and the screen was too large for a portable console. At that time, Nintendo engineers couldn't solve these issues, and the release of the console was postponed.

Interestingly, on December 10, 1992, Nintendo registered a patent for a console with an interesting design. This console was never released, but the date perfectly matches Satoru Okada's story about the prototype of a color-screen console. Note that it had three buttons.

Assumed prototype of the Game Boy Color from 1992.

Console Development

The development of the console we all know began 10 months before its release, in early 1998. In his interview, Satoru Okada mentioned that this was because they wanted to release the console for the 10th anniversary of the classic Game Boy. However, according to Yamauchi, this was due to other reasons. Competitors like SNK and Bandai were planning to release their portable consoles at the end of 1998 and early 1999, which greatly concerned Nintendo's leadership. This is why developers were given such a short timeframe, only 10 months, to develop the console.

Here, we need to take a moment to remember another console. On April 14, 1998, the Game Boy Light was released.

As you can see, the development timelines for these consoles overlapped. If you've heard of this console, you probably know that it had a backlight (something Nintendo was heavily criticized for lacking) and was only released in Japan. This console was supposed to go global, but it was overshadowed by the Game Boy Color. Nintendo faced a choice: either not release the already finished console or release it in a very limited quantity and move on to the Game Boy Color. As we now know, Nintendo chose the latter.

But let's return to the Game Boy Color. Nintendo was lucky that development on this device had been ongoing, and a prototype from 1992 became the basis for the new console. This allowed the console to be released in such a short time, as the average development time for a new console was 2 to 3 years.

Initially, Nintendo engineers were very unhappy with the idea of releasing such a console. Moreover, if it weren't for Bandai and their new console, work on the future Game Boy Advance would have continued. In 1996, development was in full swing on a new color console codenamed "Project Atlantis":

Satoru Okada mentioned that he had no plans to release the Game Boy Color, especially since the 8-bit processor had been used many times before, and Nintendo engineers wanted to release something new.

The main weak point for releasing this console was the screen, or rather its cost. But at the end of 1997, developers from Sharp contacted Nintendo and showed them new screens that were cheaper and were later used for the Game Boy Color consoles.

However, the screen wasn't the most challenging part of the development; backward compatibility with classic Game Boy games was. According to Hitoshi Nakai (who, by the way, added the feature to colorize old games in the new console), he had to test over 1600 cartridges. For testing, he assembled a team of 8 people, but as you can imagine, this was far too few for such an ambitious task. Therefore, he delegated this task to workers at the Uji factory.

The developers also planned to add an additional button—a trigger—on the back cover, but later abandoned this idea. There were also debates about the colors. Since a global launch was planned, Nintendo's Japanese office contacted their American colleagues to get their opinion on the preferred console colors. Moreover, the console's logo was designed by Nintendo's American branch.

There's another interesting story related to this logo. If you look at the classic Game Boy, you'll notice that the button labels were printed on the console's body, while in the Game Boy Color, these labels were moved to the buttons themselves. This was done to minimize costs, but printing such a colorful logo, especially with different colors, actually increased costs significantly.

There were also many debates about the color of the future console, but in the end, Nintendo developers settled on six colors:

Console Release

The first information about the release of the Game Boy Color appeared on March 18, 1998. Nintendo sent out a press release to the media, announcing that they would release the console by the end of the year. Note that this happened just 3 months after the start of the console's development. How confident was Nintendo's leadership in their developers?

At the E3 1998 exhibition, held from May 28 to May 30, 1998, these consoles were already on display. Fortunately, footage from E3 has even been preserved online.

It turns out that Nintendo spent only 5 months developing the console itself!

On September 1, 1998, it was announced that the new console would be released on October 21, 1998. And so it happened—the console hit the market on that date. The retail price of the console was 8900 yen. However, almost immediately, on April 24, 1999, the price was reduced to 6800 yen, a drop of 2100 yen. Not very typical of today's Nintendo, is it?

Even promotional leaflets from that time have been preserved!

Games

The development of this console was marked by another small incident: no one at Nintendo wanted to develop games for it. Moreover, 5 months before the console's launch, Nintendo had no games ready for the start of sales. And games are the biggest incentive for buying consoles. The release of the console in Japan was saved by Enix, which quickly developed the game Dragon Quest for the Game Boy Color.

But at that time, this game was mainly popular only in Japan, and it wasn't entirely clear what to do with the console's launch in the American market. The situation was saved by Minoru Arakawa (President of Nintendo of America), who came up with the idea to release a port of the NES game Super Mario Bros. This led to the creation of Super Mario Deluxe, which saved the console's launch in America.

However, game developers didn't use ready-made consoles, even though they were released very early, but rather special boards.

Epilogue

It may seem strange now, but the Game Boy Color is not a sequential development of the Game Boy; it is the result of competition between companies producing portable consoles. It wasn't developed in a planned manner, and Nintendo engineers were very unhappy with the idea. In fact, this console killed another Nintendo console—the Game Boy Light.

Who knows how Nintendo's fate would have turned out if SNK and Bandai hadn't wanted to release their devices. Perhaps we would never have seen this console.