However, it’s not fully correct guilty the Game Boy’s inexperienced display on the thought that there have been merely no higher alternate options obtainable at the time. After all, the Atari Lynx handheld gaming machine was launched the identical 12 months, and its display supported full-color graphics. You can also’t say that Nintendo wasn’t conscious of the existence of that know-how. The creators of the Handy Game machine (which finally turned the Atari Lynx) tried procuring their know-how to Nintendo (in addition to different main sport firms), so Nintendo clearly knew there have been extra superior alternate options on the market that provided way more energy and extra superior visuals.
There’s a giant distinction between “power” and “practicality,” although, and understanding the distinction between these ideas is the key to understanding the philosophy behind the Game Boy’s inexperienced display.
See, Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi and different key members of the Game Boy design crew have been all about protecting issues low cost and sensible. I do know that appears like one thing firms say each time they need to justify maximizing their income and screwing over shoppers in the course of, however that wasn’t the case right here.
In reality, the Game Boy crew rightfully acknowledged that handheld gaming gadgets of that period wanted to be easy in an effort to be consumer-friendly. After all, the Game Gear and Atari Lynx might have been extra technologically superior, however their base prices have been notably costlier. More importantly, these handheld gadgets required extra batteries and “boasted” battery lives that have been atrocious even by the requirements of that period. It’s additionally arduous to name the Game Boy an affordable console with a straight face. Many authentic Game Boys nonetheless operate at this time, and there’s all the time that well-known story of the Game Boy that reportedly survived a bombing throughout the Gulf War. Those issues have been constructed to final.
More importantly, Yokoi was a giant believer in a design philosophy generally generally known as “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology.” Basically, he believed that Nintendo was typically higher off discovering new methods to make use of older, cheaper, and extra confirmed know-how than they have been making an attempt to cope with the costly rising pains of determining new know-how. His beliefs on that matter weren’t all the time standard (the Game Boy was even mocked internally at Nintendo for its weak energy and easy design ideas), however they clearly labored out in the Game Boy’s favor. For that matter, Nintendo nonetheless makes use of parts of that design philosophy to today.
All of that helps clarify why the Game Boy’s designers didn’t even attempt to supply full-color graphics, however why did they settle on that bizarre inexperienced display? Well, there are actually two good solutions to that query.
