Game Boy Color

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Game Boy Color
Get into it.
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: NA: November 18, 1998
EU: November 23, 1998
JP: October 21, 1998
AU: November 27, 1998
KOR: December 20, 2000
Predecessor: Game Boy
Successor: Game Boy Advance
Competitors: Game.com
Generation: Fifth generation

The Game Boy Color (GBC for short) is a revision of the original Game Boy produced by Nintendo. It was released worldwide in 1998 and discontinued on September 25, 2003, following the release of the Game Boy Advance in spring 2001. It shares the similar design with Game Boy Light, but slightly thicker.

Why It Still Plays With Portable Power

  1. It is the first Nintendo system and handheld system to have backwards compatibility, allowing gamers to play all original Game Boy games on it. It even adds basic color to original Game Boy games by adding a special palette to the game, which can be altered on boot up by pressing a D-Pad button by itself or in conjunction with the A or B button.
  2. The screen is fully colored allowing games to render up to 56 out of 32,768 colors without draining the batteries quickly, unlike the previous handhelds with colored screens like the Game Gear. A few games switched the color palette midway through the rendering of the screen to add more than 56 colors on the screen.
  3. The screen is now an active matrix LCD, reducing ghosting effects in older games.
  4. Higher clock speed CPU than the original Game Boy allowing for more advanced gameplay and graphics. Some games even managed to get full screen FMVs, such as Cannon Fodder (and on top of that music and voiced lyrics in its intro), and Rayman, running on the system.
  5. The system came in many different colors which fits the name. This is great for collectors who want to focus on collecting the different variants of the console, rather than the console itself. As a matter of fact, some game collectors own many different colored Game Boy Color systems.
  6. Over 470 titles were made for the system, such as Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe among others.
  7. Only requires two AA batteries and still has a long battery life.
  8. No region locking like the original Game Boy.
  9. It had a cool series of commercials with a talking pair of lips similar to the lips in the old Dairy Queen commercials.

Bad Qualities

  1. Just like its predecessor, the screen has no light and is also rather small. Thankfully, you could get the worm light for the Game Boy Color or mod it to easily fix that problem.
  2. Also like its predecessor, the screen will decay if reflected by the sun for too long.
  3. A lot of shovelware and bootleg games made it to the system.

Reception

Combined, both the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color sold 118.69 million units worldwide.

Trivia

  • Depending on who you ask, some may consider the Game Boy Color as a revision of the Game Boy itself instead of a successor due to the fact that many of its games work on the Game Boy normally.

Good/Decent Examples of Game Boy Color Games

First-Party Titles

Third-Party Titles

Bad/Mediocre Examples of Game Boy Color Games

First-Party Titles

TBA

Third-Party Titles

External links

Comments

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