【2023 Archives】

It's April 21023 Archives 2019 and that means Nintendo's Game Boy is officially a thirtysomething.

The chunky portable gaming system launched exactly 30 years ago, ushering in a new era of portable entertainment that today accounts for the industry's biggest market. Gaming on the go was mostly restricted back then to standalone handhelds with simple play mechanics that couldn't hope to compete with the console games of the moment.

Game Boy changed everything. You could swap games anytime you wanted, so long as you had the right cartridge. The screen was small, the monochrome graphics weren't quite up to NES standards, and a dependence on batteries made it a relatively expensive toy over long-term use.

But it was also a gaming console that could fit in your backpack. It was like nothing that had come before. That's a quaint thought now, in this era of explosive popularity for mobile gaming. But looking back at Nintendo's earliest Game Boy ads from the vantage point of 2019 gives you a sense of just how this product was so revolutionary.

The first ad, the one with Tetris

Here's the thing about Game Boy: it wasn't just a first taste of what console-style gaming could deliver on the go. It was also the hardware that popularized one of the most enduring success stories in all of gaming: Tetris.

This commercial -- the first released for Game Boy -- hypes them both. They go hand-in-hand, really. Tetriswas bundled in alongside the Game Boy when it launched, so if you bought the latter you were getting the former by default. And for whatever reason, Nintendo felt the best way to lock in your purchase was with some kind of mute RoboCop lookalike.

The Game Boy infomercial

These days, Nintendo communicates directly with fans via Nintendo Direct broadcasts that essentially boil down to fan-focused infomercials. But there was no internet in 1989 (not the way we think of it, at least). Instead, we got stuff like this.

Nintendo's three-and-a-half minute Game Boy ad breaks down the new technology and explains the appeal in simple, stark terms. It's extremelya product of its time -- there's even a rap? But it effectively shows of the hardware's capabilities and lays out the data behind the market's excitement for this new product.

Game Boy, a toy for real adults

Forget any notion that games struggled to cement their place in pop culture early on because they were dismissed as kid's toys. Adults were the real early adopters, especially during the '80s when any kind of gaming buy-in involved a pricey investment in new technology.

Nintendo knew that Game Boy represented an exciting proposition for daily commuters, among others. This ad made a strong pitch, highlighting the different kinds of places that handheld gaming could slot into and enhance everyday life.

Also for kids, though

Look at all this chaos. All this noise. All this fun!

If the previous commercial focused on convincing adults to buy into Nintendo's new approach to gaming, this one is all about the teens. From the chaos of the scene to the rock-like music to the graffiti-style graphic at the end, this kid-friendly pitch attempts to sell the idea of handheld gaming as the life of the party.

It's an idea that Nintendo has never really gotten away from.

The real Game Boy debut

The Game Boy's April 21, 1989 launch date applies specifically to Japan; it didn't come to the U.S. for another few months. So this Japanese commercial (and another one that arrived alongside it) are really the world's first taste of Nintendo's on-the-go gaming system.

I have no idea what's being said here, who provided the music, or why both commercials made the decision to center the same three white Australian boys. But there's plenty of historical value in looking at one of Nintendo's earliest Game Boy pitches for the company's home audience.