Berlin (dpa) – games on the Smartphone are now part of the everyday life – 30 years ago the first step was made. Nintendo released in Japan the Game Boy, its first mobile game console. From today’s perspective, it is a chunky block with laughable technical data.
at the Time, it was a Revolution, not widely used Videogames out game halls, and at the time, even for the consoles in the domestic TV pulled out. Nintendo made the Game Boy not only children, but – thanks to Games such as “Tetris”, even adults. Over several generations, and almost 120 million units have been sold.
The Game Boy was not the only mobile console on the market. Even strong rivals such as Sega and Atari brought out their own devices. However, the Game Boy won, among other things, because Nintendo was so smart to rein in his ambitions and the current state of technology, it is not out of it.
The LCD screen was in black-and-white instead of colour, and had no Background lighting. In-the-Dark games, you could not so so. The resolution was only at 160 to 144 pixels. For comparison: Every single App icon on the Display of today’s iPhone will be displayed with 180 to 180 pixels. The restrictions were but to the delight of the users for a long battery life.
the father of the Game Boy was Gunpei Yokoi. He came already in the 1960s, to Nintendo and had to deal first of all with the maintenance of the playing cards printing machine – that was the traditional core business of the company. By the way, Gokoi toy of thought. Already one of his first inventions – the ausstreckbare arm “Ultra Poor” – was to Hit. Gokoi stand behind the precursor to the Game Boy – a little
device with the name Game & Watch, the simple games included. Nintendo has sold more than 40 million pieces of Game & Watch but had one big disadvantage: You could not change the games, but they were hard-coded. The Game Boy and its cartridges corrected this Problem.
Nintendo was clear that the console needed to play an attractive game than a driving force – and they found it behind the Iron curtain. The of a Moscow programmer, has developed “Tetris”, in which the player must from the top of falling blocks in various shapes to install, fit perfectly to the Game Boy technology, and was good as a non-binding entertainment for on-the-go.
at The time, for the marketing of competent Soviet bureaucrats had been “Tetris”licenses sold to the West. But Nintendo quickly became clear that the new device category of mobile consoles was not covered. In the marathon of negotiations in Moscow, the Japanese secured the rights. The children of the “Tetris”Creator Alexey manage got Nintendo consoles.
“Tetris” was exactly the game that the Game Boy needed. Later, the successful “pokemon”game series, celebrated its Premiere on the platform, among other things. Gokoi invented for Nintendo in the mid-90s, also a first console with a VR-glasses. However, the “Virtual Boy”, in which the glasses stand on the table instead of, as today, worn on the head should be flopped. Well, among other things, because the look with the red LED was too primitive and exhausting for the users. Gokoi left Nintendo to start his own company and died in 1997 in a traffic accident.
dpa
