UNDERRATED: Game Boy Micro
By Shaun Hatton - March 22nd, 2008
With the Game Boy now ending its reign as the portable system champion, I find myself looking back on its career with a great fondness as a parent would recall a child’s academic success. The Game Boy has been a part of my life for just about 19 years now and to be honest it freaks me out a little that it has already been that long.
My first Game Boy was the original grey brick with the yellow-green screen and I loved that thing like it was part of my family. I took it with me on family trips, to friend’s houses, and on days when I was feeling more adventurous, to school.
The monochromatic graphics never bothered me. How else could I play Tetris? I didn’t have an NES and even if I did, taking it to play in the car wouldn’t have been realistic. I also had the Nuby Game Boy light so I could game in the dark, which made the Game Boy trump my then-loved Sega Master System as my favourite gaming device.
Today my original Game Boy sits housed in a Rubbermaid container underneath my living room sofa with all its games and its sleeker cousin, the Game Boy Color (which I bought in 1999 when my obsession with Pokémon caused me to go through AA batteries too quickly for my budget). It still works.
I skipped over the Game Boy Advance entirely and instead picked up its successor, the Game Boy Advance SP and enjoyed many hours with it. The first game I bought for it was the excellent Phantasy Star Collection and I was immediately blown away by the idea that a system as tiny as the SP could basically take the power of the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo and put it into my hands.
But little did I know it would get even smaller.
