Game Boy Appreciation Thread ♥

[Tasty]

I did a TI85 game called Beer Quest. It got to the point where everyone in the class was playing it and the teacher totally bitched me out. Amazing days

I bought my game boy second hand and it came with DuckTales. I think I paid twenty bucks for it. I felt like I made out like a damn bandit. Dat music

What year did you get your GB?

[MyNameIsMethodis]

I just found a Game Boy Color copy of Rugrats The Movie yesterday. Odd.

[chronovore]

GBA SP + Backlit screen (AGS-101) is the best Nintendo handheld. It's also fully backwards compatible!

I'd give it to the Micro but that shit is so fucking small, the carts stick out like sore thumbs, and you can only play GBA games on it. If it weren't for the headphone jack it be a complete pile of shit. AWFUL

Really? Basically everyone I've seen online loves it. I never even considered buying one because the DS was already out, but even if I was then it was way too small for me.

They're wrapped up in the "omg rare" factor of it and because it's so adorably small. I prefer the SP because it's more comfortable to hold, still quite portable, and has full backwards compatibility. Basically it's the ultimate GameBoy hardware.

Yeah, I've been tempted by the mini, but never bit. OTOH, I'd buy an SP 101 in an instant, but the damned model never came out here. I've got the standard one and the screen is crappy.

[Mr. Gundam]

I got a Gameboy for Christmas the year it came out along with Mario Land and Tennis. That thing was awesome.

[a slime appears]

GBA SP + Backlit screen (AGS-101) is the best Nintendo handheld. It's also fully backwards compatible!

I'd give it to the Micro but that shit is so fucking small, the carts stick out like sore thumbs, and you can only play GBA games on it. If it weren't for the headphone jack it be a complete pile of shit. AWFUL

Really? Basically everyone I've seen online loves it. I never even considered buying one because the DS was already out, but even if I was then it was way too small for me.

They're wrapped up in the "omg rare" factor of it and because it's so adorably small. I prefer the SP because it's more comfortable to hold, still quite portable, and has full backwards compatibility. Basically it's the ultimate GameBoy hardware.

Yeah, I've been tempted by the mini, but never bit. OTOH, I'd buy an SP 101 in an instant, but the damned model never came out here. I've got the standard one and the screen is crappy.

At least you guys got the Game Boy Light. Would've been amazing if that thing came out here! Instead I had to rock these:

[benjipwns]

I had a Light Boy.  :'(

There was some other light like that below one that a friend bought, except if you didn't bend it around the light shone upwards instead of down onto the screen.

Except on the box it showed it straight shining down onto the screen. It was like they put the light in the wrong fucking end of the thing.

[bork]

Yeah, the SP is the best GBA. I like the Micro for its ultimate portability though.  You really can pocket that thing without having a weird bulge in your pocket.  Great for stealth gaming.

Yup.  Love the Micro.  I also find it more comfortable to hold and use than the SP.  It may lack backwards compatibility, but I never played GB games on the Advance/SP anyway.

[bork]

Sold my copy of Shantae earlier this year for $350. 

GBA SP + Backlit screen (AGS-101) is the best Nintendo handheld. It's also fully backwards compatible!

I'd give it to the Micro but that shit is so fucking small, the carts stick out like sore thumbs, and you can only play GBA games on it. If it weren't for the headphone jack it be a complete pile of shit. AWFUL

Really? Basically everyone I've seen online loves it. I never even considered buying one because the DS was already out, but even if I was then it was way too small for me.

They're wrapped up in the "omg rare" factor of it and because it's so adorably small. I prefer the SP because it's more comfortable to hold, still quite portable, and has full backwards compatibility. Basically it's the ultimate GameBoy hardware.

Yeah, I've been tempted by the mini, but never bit. OTOH, I'd buy an SP 101 in an instant, but the damned model never came out here. I've got the standard one and the screen is crappy.

At least you guys got the Game Boy Light. Would've been amazing if that thing came out here! Instead I had to rock these:

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

  I had both of those.  They were pretty awful, looking back.  The light boy was so damn clunky.  Later on I found a much smaller frame that front-lit the OG Gameboy without a magnifier.  It worked much better.

The GB Light was awesome- basically it was a slightly larger GB Pocket with an indiglo-lit screen.  IIRC it came out only a few months before the Gameboy Color did, which is likely why it never got released outside of Japan.

[benjipwns]

The Micro will play GB/GBC games if you use a Flash Cart. 

[a slime appears]

Piracy is bad, BRO.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Emulation is pretty damn good on flash carts. It's not perfect but it's close enough for me not to give a fuck. Being limited by ram requirements means having to make several booter menus but it's better than lugging around a giant stash of GB games. Who am I kidding, I don't think this shit out with me anyways so it's all a moot point, lol.

[close]

[benjipwns]

I actually only had one game on my Flash Cart I didn't own a cart for (It's Mr. Pants) when I was playing stuff again on my Micro regularly a couple years ago, I like you, just didn't want to lug all my carts around. This must be how those self-righteous GAFfers feel. 

NES emulation is pretty decent, I can't tell if the slowdown is in the actual game or not because I don't remember.

I had originally assumed the GB stuff was just telling it that it was a Game Boy game and that it had all the hardware or whatever still in the thing.

[Tasty]

I had this. Made late night road trips with relatives so much better.

Later on, this was the grandaddy of all my attention:



I wanted this stupid thing so bad. Light! Magnifier! Stereo speakers! Analog stick! OMFG!

I don't really remember using it a lot after I finally got it, lol.

[benjipwns]

Whenever I saw pictures of that I always wondered if it actually did anything to enhance the experience because it looks like it'd just make things ten thousand times worse. Especially the controls.

[Tasty]

The analog stick was assy but passable for non-action games. The rest was OK. Having to hold the thing steady for the magnifier was lame usually, which I should have kept in mind for the 3DS haha.

[bork]

Whenever I saw pictures of that I always wondered if it actually did anything to enhance the experience because it looks like it'd just make things ten thousand times worse. Especially the controls.

It was garbage.  All those 'add-ons' were crap.

[Tasty]

I remember being so hyped to finally get a GameShark but I could never get the damn thing to work. :'( Well, I didn't understand how to use it at all, lol.

[Himu]

I got a Game Gear in 1994. I liked it but I was envious of Game Boy owners. Game Gear was pretty bad and it didn't have too many quality games. My friend said I was nuts because I wanted to trade my Game Gear for his Game Boy back in the day because Game Gear had better graphics. Naw. Game Boy had Tiny Toons and Mario dammit. The Sonic Game Gear games were AWFUL aside from Sonic and Tails Triple Trouble.

I finally got a Game Boy when they refreshed with the Pocket. I really liked my Pocket and took it everywhere. It helped that it could easily fit in your pocket. Unfortunately, by that point Game Boy was kinda dry, but it made up for it when Pokemon came out in 1998.

I never got a Gameboy Color. It honestly pissed me off because you had to buy a Gameboy with minimal graphical upgrade to play things like Pokemon Gold and Silver and Dragon Warrior 1-3 - which I REALLY  wanted.

I think looking back, GBC was probably one of the sleaziest things Nintendo's ever done. Maybe this is because how I felt back then, but I was justified in my opinion when they released GBA just like two years later.

[Himu]

GBA SP + Backlit screen (AGS-101) is the best Nintendo handheld. It's also fully backwards compatible!

I'd give it to the Micro but that shit is so fucking small, the carts stick out like sore thumbs, and you can only play GBA games on it. If it weren't for the headphone jack it be a complete pile of shit. AWFUL

I miss my gba sp. May get another one of those one of these days.

[Tasty]

The official Super Mario Land 2 map from Nintendo Power.

It's beautiful, brehs.

Also, this game had some wild-ass ideas for worlds.

Mario robot? Witch house? Gunpei was certainly on a different strain of shrooms than Miyamoto.

[Himu]

i have tons of nostalgia for that game

[Tasty]

i have tons of nostalgia for that game

[Tasty]

I never got a Gameboy Color. It honestly pissed me off because you had to buy a Gameboy with minimal graphical upgrade to play things like Pokemon Gold and Silver and Dragon Warrior 1-3 - which I REALLY  wanted.

G/S could be played on original Gameboys. Crystal couldn't, though.

I think looking back, GBC was probably one of the sleaziest things Nintendo's ever done. Maybe this is because how I felt back then, but I was justified in my opinion when they released GBA just like two years later.

Three-ish years. November 1998 to June 2001.

The GameBoy Advance itself only lasted three years too, keep in mind. The DS hit in November 2004.

[Himu]

Gold/Silver could be played on GB? Why did they not make two versions then? I was so confused and thought you HAD to have a GBC. Oh well. Nintendo

[Joe Molotov]

Yeah, there were black cart games that were optimized for GBC but could be played on the GB, and then there would clear cart games that could only be played on the GBC.

[Tasty]

Gold/Silver could be played on GB? Why did they not make two versions then?

Not sure what you mean. A version for GB and a version for GBC? There's not much reason to do that when you can do both in the same cart. Crystal had to be GBC-only because it used the IR port, I think.

Trainer battle has been my ringtone for a few years. Before that it was rival battle.



Been thinking of re-doing my setup so that:

Unknown Callers = Wild Pokemon Battle
Family Members = Gym Leader Battle
Friends = Trainer Battle
BFFs = Rival Battle, or Champion Battle

My notification tone will probably always be the Pokemon Center heal jingle.


Started replaying Blue on Saturday. Game rocks just as fucking hard as I remember. And it's not as slow as I thought it'd be at all. Everything moves really briskly, even the walking speed. I can't wait until I get the bike though.

[Tasty]

Yeah, there were black cart games that were optimized for GBC but could be played on the GB, and then there would clear cart games that could only be played on the GBC.

Not much help for Pokemon carts which have their own colors. However, you could tell G/S were GB-compatible because they had the notch in the upper right:



Crystal didn't have the notch, so the "on" switch on GB/GB Pocket couldn't be moved into position to actually turn the system on.

[Himu]

Gold/Silver could be played on GB? Why did they not make two versions then?

Not sure what you mean. A version for GB and a version for GBC? There's not much reason to do that when you can do both in the same cart. Crystal had to be GBC-only because it used the IR port, I think.

The case clearly says Game Boy Color. At the time, backwards compatibility wasn't a thing, and FORWARDS compatible was NEVER a thing until recently with Ps3 -> Vita -> PS4. Except with the GBC. Shit never made sense to me. To me, if it says Game Boy Color on the front, it's for Game Boy Color. Being able to play it on your gameboy when it says GBC feels like a total what the fuck to me. There's not even a note on the front of the cover that says you can play it with your original Game Boy. Straight up sleaze.

Nintendo

[Tasty]

You're ing Nintendo because they made the games playable on GB (which you wanted in the first place) and you didn't realize it?

you

[Himu]

Yeah them because they advertised the game as being for the GBC to sell hw units without notifying their consumer base you could play it on your gb. Fucking GBA came out almost a year later, and here Nintendo is trying to coax customers into buying a GBC because the new Pokemon says for Game Boy Color on the box. Just straight up wicked tactics.

[Tasty]

You can't really fault Nintendo for trying to sell an objectively better system, with 32,764 more colors available and increased power efficiency that doubled the battery life (~30 hours compared to ~15) while halving the number of batteries required (2 AA vs. 4.) Plus it was a smaller system and available in more colors.

Oh noes, it was only out for 31 months, boo hoo.

[Himu]

Anyways, GBC definitely felt like when Nintendo first started to go batshit for me personally. It felt like such a Sega move. "Is this a new Game Boy? Or is it like the Pocket with a better screen and stuff? Most of the games look like regular game boy games but with a couple of colors added. It still looks 8-bit. Game Boy Color games are exclusive? But the games don't look like much of an upgrade over Game Boy and everyone already owns a Game Boy. Why should we get GBCs?" was pretty much the dialogue among my peers, who were 13-14 year old boys and girls. I knew about only 3 people with GBCs from launch until GBA came out. When Gold/Silver came out, everyone was asking if you needed a GBC, and everyone's answer was YES, so we played Final Fantasy IX and Skies of Arcadia instead.

I'd love to see GBC hw sales number data from Oscar to confirm my suspicions. It was just a complete fuck up of communication and confusion and was a wonderful prelude to the what the fuck Gamecube era of Nintendo.

lol at objectively better, when GBC came out and we were in the middle of the 32 bit - 64 bit days, gbc just didn't impress at all. I never saw it as that much of an upgrade.

[Tasty]

Anyways, to get this topic back on track, OCRemix released a 15-track album celebrating the 25th anniversary. It's pretty good, as expected.



http://gameboy25.ocremix.org

[Himu]

Not a fan of OCR.

[Tasty]

I'd love to see GBC hw sales number data from Oscar to confirm my suspicions. It was just a complete fuck up of communication and confusion and was a wonderful prelude to the what the fuck Gamecube era of Nintendo.

I looked into this a few days ago. Oscar can correct me, but I believe the Game Boy Color sold between 54 and 58 million units.

[Himu]

That doesn't sound right given that Gameboy classic line - including Color - sold 118 million. Then again, Pokemon: Gold/Silver exclusive to Game Boy Color. At least on the box.

[Tasty]

You sound really salty about your own oversight. Just take that L, brah.

(As mentioned in the OP, the combined sales of GB and GBC are reported as 118 million.)

[Himu]

You sound salty that GBC sucked outside of just a few games and everyone wanted a Neo Geo Pocket or Wonderswan instead.

[Reb]

Happy belated birthday Andrex.

[Joe Molotov]

Himu, it said right on the front of the box in huge-ass lettering whether it was GBC-exclusive.

GBC Only:


Not GBC Only:


If you had a subscription to Nintendo Power, you woulda known this shit.

Also, GBC has Wario Land 3, Dragon Warrior 3, Donkey Kong Country, Kirby's Tilt & Tumble, Super Mario Bros. DX, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Pokemon Puzzle, Bionic Commando, Metal Gear Solid, Shantae, Pokemon Crystal, Legend of Zelda: Oracles, R-Type DX, etc. It arguably had a better library than the original GB, just because it hit right around the time that GB games were finally starting to come into their own and companies were taking portable gaming seriously instead of just releasing some Z-grade shovelware.

[magus]

GBC had survival kids



Remember when konami was still worth something

[Himu]

Himu, it said right on the front of the box in huge-ass lettering whether it was GBC-exclusive.

GBC Only:
(Image removed from quote.)

Not GBC Only:
(Image removed from quote.)

If you had a subscription to Nintendo Power, you woulda known this shit.

No wonder, I didn't have a Nintendo Power sub.

GBC and GBA both felt rushed. I'm absolutely amazed someone didn't stomp onto Nintendo's competition ground and take over during this time. The original GBA was

[Joe Molotov]

Oh yeah, and Pokemon Trading Card Game. Nintendo needs to update that shit for the 3DS.

[Himu]

DW3 is my fave gbc game by a mile. Maybe two miles. three.

[Joe Molotov]

GBC and GBA both felt rushed. I'm absolutely amazed someone didn't stomp onto Nintendo's competition ground and take over during this time. The original GBA was

Oh God, I remember when the GBA was annouced, and it only had two face-buttons and no backlighting. People were losing their shit. How was this gonna compete in 200-and frickin-1? Fighting games would be impossible, SNES ports would struggle. Then the GBA actually came out, and the screen was even worse than anyone had imagined; worse than the OG Gameboy as far as lighting goes, Circle of the Moon was almost unplayable. Why, Nintendo, why??? Man, there were legit tears. It was the N64 going with cartridges all over again. It was all over, Nintendo was doomed, we'd all been betrayed. Then the SP came out, and it was like Miyamoto had descended from on high and delivered a miracle unto us.
Sorry if this level of nfaggortry offends anyone, but I was all about that life back then.

[Himu]

People lost their shit with gbc too! "Wait, it's just a regular game boy with a few new colors?" Mind, by this point game boy was ten years old and we were all playing on play stations and n64s. So the next gb Nintendo announces and people lost their shit even more. and then when they announced the DS the entire industry was making fun of them. Nintendo can't catch a break.

[Joe Molotov]

I wasn't trolling message boards yet when the GBC hit, so I don't know what the online reaction was like, I just remember being personally excited for it. I was bored with the monochrome GB, but the Game Gear and Lynx had already faded from the scene by then, and the NeoGeo Pocket Color was still a year or two away.

[Tasty]

You sound salty that GBC sucked outside of just a few games and everyone wanted a Neo Geo Pocket or Wonderswan instead.

Yeah, "everyone" wanted those systems.

How much did they sell, again?

The entire idea for the Game Boy line was to use way suckier hardware than the competition, and it worked. (The spirit of Gunpei lives on in the Wii and Wii U I guess. )

Happy belated birthday Andrex.

Next month, boo.

[Tasty]

I wasn't trolling message boards yet when the GBC hit, so I don't know what the online reaction was like, I just remember being personally excited for it. I was bored with the monochrome GB, but the Game Gear and Lynx had already faded from the scene by then, and the NeoGeo Pocket Color was still a year or two away.

The GBC was exciting because it promised the portability of the GB Pocket, the colors of the GG/Lynx, and the battery life of the OG GB all in one, with extra CPU and RAM on top. Great system.

First time backwards-compatibility was a thing, too. "Wait, it can play all my original GB games too? OMG. So long, you giant brick! "

The original GBA was definitely painful though. That screen just sucked and it looked weird coming from the previous vertical-oriented systems. The SP was great, but by then I had soured on the GBA platform overall. Inferior SNES ports as far as the eye could see, no original Mario platformer, and I didn't like the Pokemon games. Before the DS, I had pretty much resigned to giving up on handheld gaming altogether.

[Tasty]

Welp, just bought an OG Gameboy (DMG-01) and a copy of Tetris off eBay.

[cool breeze]

Whenever I saw pictures of that I always wondered if it actually did anything to enhance the experience because it looks like it'd just make things ten thousand times worse. Especially the controls.

the one I had lets you remove the joystick/buttons portion.  the magnifying part was like the 3ds where you had to hold it directly in front of you face.  the lights helped since the magnifying made the screen darker.  without it I never had a visibility problem until the color systems, so it was a solution to a problem it introduced.

[tiesto]

Got a Game Boy for Christmas in '89, got some games a few years later (Gargoyle's Quest, FF Adventure and FF Legend 2 being my favorites), then sold it in 1994 after beating Link's Awakening to Funcoland and bought an SNES with FF4. Skipped over GBC and first edition GBA, my next portable system was GBA SP upon its release. I used money I got from participating in this teeth whitening experiment that the dental school at my college was doing to pay for it

[Himu]

I wasn't trolling message boards yet when the GBC hit, so I don't know what the online reaction was like, I just remember being personally excited for it. I was bored with the monochrome GB, but the Game Gear and Lynx had already faded from the scene by then, and the NeoGeo Pocket Color was still a year or two away.

The GBC was exciting because it promised the portability of the GB Pocket, the colors of the GG/Lynx, and the battery life of the OG GB all in one, with extra CPU and RAM on top. Great system.

First time backwards-compatibility was a thing, too. "Wait, it can play all my original GB games too? OMG. So long, you giant brick! (Image removed from quote.)"

The original GBA was definitely painful though. That screen just sucked and it looked weird coming from the previous vertical-oriented systems. The SP was great, but by then I had soured on the GBA platform overall. Inferior SNES ports as far as the eye could see, no original Mario platformer, and I didn't like the Pokemon games. Before the DS, I had pretty much resigned to giving up on handheld gaming altogether.

I question your GBC summary because...how old were you then?

[Himu]

I'm not really much of a GB fan these days outside of Gba.

I think some of the games are fun to play still but buying some of the games on 3ds eshop really exposes how much so many of were willing to settle with back then. Today's portable landscape is much better thankfully, but I can honestly say there are very few gameboy games I would want to play now in 2014.

So I'm going to talk about Gameboy Advance.

I didn't get one until the SP, which was a pretty good idea.

I have a lot of favorites for gba and I'm sure I'm missing some:

Metroid zero mission
MEGA MAN ZERO 2 BEST MEGA MAN EVER
Castlevania Circle of the Moon
Castlevania Aria of Sorrow
wario ware twisted
wario ware 1
Rhythm tengoku
Mother 3
A Link to the Past IN MY POCKET
four swords
super Mario world IN MY POCKET
FINAL FANTASY V AND VI IN MY POCKET
Harvest moon
Puyo puyo pop fever
Super monkey ball Jr
Boktai
Astro boy
ninja 5-O
Advanced wars
Kingdom hearts chain of memories
Klonoa gba games!!!!! I miss you buddy!!!

[magus]

GBC is a treasure trove of obscure games, survival kids is one game i mentioned, another one that i like to pick is called metal walker, it's an rpg made by capcom where you attack by flicking your character toward the enemies like they were billiard balls or pogs



it's funny because one of the highest grossing mobile game in japan use a similiar idea



did you know there is a super robot taisen pinball on GBC? it's all the pleasure of humming super robot themes without the annoyance of actualy playing an SRPG

[Himu]

You sound salty that GBC sucked outside of just a few games and everyone wanted a Neo Geo Pocket or Wonderswan instead.

Yeah, "everyone" wanted those systems.

How much did they sell, again?

The entire idea for the Game Boy line was to use way suckier hardware than the competition, and it worked. (The spirit of Gunpei lives on in the Wii and Wii U I guess. )

In 1996-1997 or so, game boy sales were tanking, especially after the death of the Virtua Boy. So Nintendo started up on Project Atlantis. Developers were starting to say they refuse to support the game boy due to its limited 1989 tech, that it was outdated, and they couldn't make the games they wanted to on it anymore. Meanwhile, Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket started to take off and yet Nintendo still needed a band-aid to help the developer situation for the GB to prevent developers jumping ship. GBC was their temporary answer to the much delayed Atlantis. GBC was a rushed band-aid solution because Atlantis wasn't complete and they still needed a successor. Its tech was marginally better than the GB's, and many developers didn't deliver desired results. Most of the best gbc games weren't heavily advertised, and bombed. The best sold ones were the ones made by Nintendo, because they were heavily advertised, giving the idea to the public that the only good gbc games were Nintendo games - which was false. 

Eventually, Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket added color when Game Boy Color did, and they got lots of attention. Not Game Gear attention, but in Japan Wonderswan took out 8% of Nintendo's portable market in a very short time. Many of the big boys started to get big support on the Wonderswan, especially Squaresoft and Namco. Eventually, Nintendo needed a response and released the GBA very neat and quickly. GBA was a rushed product to combat the competition, much like with its predecessor the GBC. That's why the quality on it was so bad upon release. The GBA killed any support the competition even remotely had. It's easy to say in the present that they had no threat towards Nintendo's bottom line, but GBC and GBA were definitely direct answers to them and forced Nintendo's hand.

Your summary of GBC sounds like pr speak, no offense.

The history of Game Boy is a great example of Nintendo's conservatism. They had the same tech for practically (I say practically because GBC isn't much of a step up from GB) 12 years and when they did release their next portable, it was almost impossible to play on due to measure cutting (no backlight in 2001 ).

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the Game Boy is where Nintendo realized that they could come up with the same stuff and people would buy it. After the failure of the Virtua Boy, they hammed it up and released the GBC.. With GBC, Nintendo probably realized that people will buy their hardware even if it's not much of an upgrade, and told them that people are more than willing to pay for rehashes. ZELDA LINK'S AWAKENING!! THIS TIME...IN COLOR! And so on.

[Himu]

JOEEEEEEEE

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/gba-sucks-hardcore.6553068/

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/n-gage-vs-gba.46257200/

@ my friend who bought the n-gage and we laughed at him EVERY DAY for it

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/how-does-the-sega-nomad-compare-to-gameboy-advance.19057897/

[Tasty]

I question your GBC summary because...how old were you then?

What does it matter? Surprise: younger people get more excited about Nintendo stuff than older people, news at 11. It's no wonder to me a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds would be shitting on Nintendo hardware to feel cool, as it's a trend that continues to this very day.

In 1996-1997 or so, game boy sales were tanking

[citation Oscar needed]

So Nintendo started up on Project Atlantis.

More like, they released Pokemon and went on to sell tens of million more units. But sure. I'll follow along with this revisionist alternate reality.

Developers were starting to say they refuse to support the game boy due to its limited 1989 tech, that it was outdated, and they couldn't make the games they wanted to on it anymore. Meanwhile, Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket started to take off

"Tanking" = still selling tens of millions of units every year
"Started to take off" = Selling 3 million (WonderSwan) and 2 million (Neo Geo Portable) units during their entire lifetimes across all revisions

The best sold ones were the ones made by Nintendo, because they were heavily advertised, giving the idea to the public that the only good gbc games were Nintendo games - which was false. 

What a weird tangent to include in this discussion.

Eventually, Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket added color when Game Boy Color did, and they got lots of attention.

No, they did it after the GBC did.

The NGP Color came out five months after the GBC in March 1999. This is important to note, because the monochrome NGP was out for just five months before the NGP Color. It literally debuted the same month the GBC did and was instantly obsolete. You wanna talk about manufacturers rushing systems out to compete? Please.

The WonderSwan Color debuted in December 2000, twenty six months after the GBC. You know what came out three months later? The GBA. Nintendo didn't have to rush anything to compete with the WonderSwan because Bandai was so damn slow.

You might want to actually look up what you're talking about instead of relying on anecdotes and revisionist memories.

[Tasty]

The WonderSwan might have actually succeeded (meaning, been the PSP before the PSP) if Bandai had actually given a damn, gotten international support, and the system itself didn't have such a weird layout. Would have also helped a lot if Yokoi hadn't died, but that's neither here nor there.

[Himu]

Well met Andrex. I'll admit I'm wrong. Still have misgivings about GBC though. At least perception wise, it did feel like a window into Nintendo's future: most of the successful games were first party, and some of the better third party games weren't that advertised, and the system was a haven for shovelware. Could be wrong about that too, but that's how it felt in the 90's and early 2000's.

Also, fuck Bandai for not making an international Wonderswan release.

[Himu]

Also, Atlantis wasn't started in 96-97.  It was canceled/delayed due to Pokemon extending the GB's life.  The huge success of the GBC dropped the final nail in Atlantis, which was actually a different thing from what ended up launching as GBA.

I thought gba WAS Atlantis.