Game Boy

Nintendo · 1989 – 2003

Gunpei Yokoi's masterpiece of "lateral thinking with withered technology" sold over 118 million units across its original and Color versions. Despite technically inferior hardware to competitors, the Game Boy's battery life, durability, and Tetris bundle made it the dominant portable gaming platform for over a decade.

The Game Boy launched in 1989 with a dot-matrix LCD screen, four AA batteries for roughly 30 hours of play, and (outside Japan) Tetris bundled in the box. Despite the Sega Game Gear's backlit colour screen and the Atari Lynx's superior hardware, the Game Boy outlasted all competitors because Yokoi prioritised playability over spectacle. Nintendo's grip on the handheld market through its first-party exclusives — Pokémon, Zelda, Mario, Metroid — made the platform a self-reinforcing ecosystem. The Game Boy Color (1998) and Game Boy Advance (2001) extended the lineage, with the combined family selling more than any single home console of its era.