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The original Gameboy was born in 1989. Created by Gunpei Yokoi. Despite having a small monochrome screen and relatively little processing power it still became the most popular handheld in the late 80's due to a low cost( Roughly $89.95 dollars) and having a long battery life.


When the Gameboy was released it started a following. With excellent games like Tetris, The Super Mario Land series, Metroid 2: Samus returns andPokemon following a bit later there was no doubt that Gameboy was king of the handhelds.

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Even when Sega Came out with the Sega Game Gear in 1991 with full-on colors, back-lighting and slightly better grpahics the gameboy didn't even flintch. It's proaboably becouse of the much higher price and the fact that you got 2-4 hours of play with 6 AA Batteries compared to the Gameboy's 4 AA Batteries for 10-12 hours.


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The next line of the popular Gameboy franchise came out in 1996( Nearly 7 years after the original) It had the same processing power. The only changes made was the abolishemt of the greenish coloring that the old Gameboy had. The Gameboy Pocket was also lighter and was also able to keep the same battery life of the old Gameboy using less batteries.


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The gameboy Color. Released just two years after the Gameboy Pocket finally brought along some color to the battlefield. It also doubled the processing power of the old Gameboys making it the handheld equivelant to the NES.

It also had the ability to play any of your old favorite Gameboy games.

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Then the day came. June 11th 2001. On this day the Gameboy Advance was born. Codenamed project Atlantis, The Gameboy Advance brought many, many new advancements to the table. With nearly double the processing power of the Super NES, Widescreen and a 32,000 color display it quickly brought the Gameboy's domination of the Handheld market to about 99.99 pecent of that.

With a kicking game Library from Oldschool remakings or Mario Games and Brand new games like Golden Sun and Minish Cap it was a force to be recconed with.

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Next came the Gameboy Advance SP in early 2003. It was a more evolved verision of the Gameboy Advance released two years back with the inclusion of illumination, a brand-new clamshell design and a Lithium-Ion rechargable battery. Long gone are the days when you have to buy batteries at the store.


Next in line( And the most recent I might add) is the Gameboy Micro. With this latest Gameboy Nintendo Drastically shrunk down the size of it making it almost like a gumball machine toy size. Relased in September 2005 not only was it small but you could also change the faceplace of the micro allowing nearly dozens of customizations.


With the current Handheld wars flamming between Nintendo's DSLite and Sony's Playstation Portable is this the end of the Gameboy? Only time will tell my friends. Only time will tell.

Until next time. Keep the game alive.


Dr. Pink