GAME BOY COLOR - November 1998
| The first thing is, you're going to want
one. Despite Nintendo's best attempts at stopping anyone from writing anything nice
in the press about Game Boy Color (by supplying THE with very nearly seven review machines
with which to service the entire UK media, hence the rather muted,
copied-from-the-press-release tone of most people's coverage so far), I managed to
disguise myself as Zoe Ball - it's easier than you might expect - and steal 20
minutes on one at the company's HQ. It was entrancing. Mystifyingly, the GBC seems to be being pitched as little more than another minor enhancement to the Game Boy line, much like the Game Boy Pocket. In fact, it's something a lot more revolutionary than that. This is a genuine and major leap forward in gaming technology - a portable games console with a colour screen, but genuinely pocket-sized and using 2 ordinary batteries that last (apparently) up to 20 hours. (Suddenly, the use of the word "portable" to describe brick-sized handhelds like the Game Gear and Lynx, which barely lasted the length of a game of Tetris before the 6 - count 'em - batteries gave out, begins to look distinctly ironic.) What's more, it's fully backwards-compatible, and it not only runs all your old games, it improves them too, both by the addition of basic colour and by displaying them on a screen (a TFT liquid crystal display, like the ones used on newer, more expensive laptop PCs) whose clarity and blur-free movement knocks even Game Boy Pocket's into a cocked hat. It's even lovely to look at - exactly the same size as a Game Boy Pocket, except with a bulge in the back to cope with the larger batteries (AA instead of AAA), which actually makes it slightly more comfortable to hold - and rendered in a cheerful but easy-on-the-eye shade of purple. Make no mistake, this is something that even the snottiest The Face reader wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with on the Tube. (Which is one of the odd things about the Game Boy - over 3.5 million have been sold in the UK, which is one for every 16 people, but how often do you ever actually see anybody using one in public?) Before being rumbled by jackbooted Nintendo anti-publicity goons and bodily ejected from the premises, I was cooing over it like a new auntie. Doubtful? Wait till you see it. You're going to want one. So, it seems probable that every sane member of the public is going to want one too. Indeed, Nintendo reckon that 200,000 of them in the UK alone are going to want one, along with 550,000 more black-and-white machines, which would make it, slightly amazingly, the best year ever for Game Boy sales in its 9-year history. (A nine-year hardware shelf life and still growing? Wow, I wonder if there's some kind of lesson we could possibly learn from all this? And if there is, I wonder if the words " BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY" would feature anywhere in it?) Frankly, the proportions of sales for the colour machine seem a little pessimistic - once you've seen the two side by side there's just no going back, and with the price difference between the two only 25 quid, it seems odd that anyone wanting a Game Boy would go for a black-and-white one. Especially when Nintendo are planning to spend £2,000,000 on advertising the new version, with ads all over TV, specialist and lifestyle press, a roadshow presumably starring those enormous shiny Nintendo trucks, the tempting-sounding "in-store sampling with promotional girls", and 500 sampling units in shops. (Plus, of course, very nearly another seven for the entire country's media.) But whichever version does the numbers, two things are certain - firstly, the games industry's longest-surviving console ever has a lot of life in it yet. And secondly, when you see Game Boy Color, you're going to want one.
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TINY HISTORY IN YOUR POCKET - THE STORY
OF GAME BOY 1989 - Classic Game Boy released. The big launch title bundled with the machine is, of course, Tetris, which is later released as a stand-alone game and goes on to sell an astonishing 35,000,000 copies on Game Boy alone. 1993 - Classic Game Boy colours introduced (the same machine, but with pretty coloured cases) '93 remains the record GB sales year to date (650,000), but it's a target Nintendo are expecting to overcome in 1999. 1994 - Super Game Boy - an add-on for SNES, enabling you to play GB games on the SNES with rudimentary (customisable) colour and additional features. Costs more than actually buying a real Game Boy, and isn't tremendously popular. 1995 - The original Game Boy runs out of steam, with hardware sales down to 200,000. 1996 - Game Boy Pocket (30% lighter, 50% smaller version with a sharper black-and-white display replacing the fuzzy greenish original) provides a leap forward in technology and a corresponding 63% jump in sales to 325,000 1997 - Sales continue to rocket, reaching 500,000. Game Boy software sells 1,000,000 units. July 1998 - Game Boy Camera and Printer peripherals released November 1998 - Colour Game Boy introduced. Nintendo's official Game Boy hardware forecast announced at between 700 - 750,000 (black and white 550,000,colour 200,000). Forecasted software sales 1,500,000 (Colour games 300,000) Worldwide Game Boy sales to date: 70,000,000 Total UK sales to date: 3,500,000 Software catalogue: 500 titles |
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| THE COLOUR OF EVIL The only reason you might NOT want to stock Game Boy Color is that it's quite clearly A TOOL OF THE DEVIL and will bring SATANIC FORCES to bear on your shop. How do I know this? Because I tested the GBC with a whole clutch of my old Game Boy games - some of them almost a decade old - in order to check out the colourisation facility. Now, since these games were surely written before there was any concept of the Color's existence, there can't be any specific colour information in their code, right? So explain these: SUPER MARIO LAND The little plumber's tiny-graphics first GB outing (and still the best) shapes up nicely with a little splash of colour. Mario himself appears in... red. HOW DOES IT KNOW? SPACE INVADERS Originally, this Japanese cart played with black Invaders on a white background. Yet, plug it into a GBC and the background miraculously changes to the inky blackness of space, with arcade-accurate white Invaders. AIEEE! HOW DOES IT KNOW? TENNIS This GB launch game from 1989 still plays a fabulous game of tennis that makes modern rubbish like Actua Tennis 3 look like, well, rubbish. In colour, the court is green, the lines are white, and umpire Mario is red again. AAARRGGHH! HOW DOES IT KNOW? HOW DOES IT KNOW? AAARRRGGGHH! |
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