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Game Boy - 01

The Game Boy, commonly abbreviated as GB, is an 8-bit handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The first handheld in the Game Boy family, it was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, then North America, three months later, and lastly in Europe, over a year later. It was designed by the same team that developed the Game & Watch and several Nintendo Entertainment System games: Satoru Okada, Gunpei Yokoi, and Nintendo Research & Development 1.

Nintendo's second handheld game console, the Game Boy combines features from both the NES home system and Game & Watch hardware. The console features a dull green dot-matrix screen with adjustable contrast dial, five control buttons (a directional pad, two game buttons, and "START" and "SELECT"), a single speaker with adjustable volume dial, and, like its rivals, uses cartridges as physical media for games. The color scheme is made from two tones of grey with accents of black, blue, and dark magenta. All the corners of the portrait-oriented rectangular unit are softly rounded, save for the bottom right, which is curved.

Despite being technologically inferior to its fourth-generation competitors (Sega's Game Gear, Atari's Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress), the Game Boy received praise for its battery life and durability in its construction. It quickly outsold the competition, selling one million units in the United States within a few weeks. The Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, have sold an estimated 118 million units worldwide. Production ceased in 2003.

Game Boy Color[]

Game Boy Color - 01

The Game Boy Color, commonly abbreviated as GBC, is the successor to the original Game Boy and is part of the Game Boy family. It was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November.

The GBC features a color screen rather than monochrome, but it is not backlit. It is slightly thicker and taller and features a slightly smaller screen than the Game Boy Pocket, its immediate predecessor in the Game Boy line. As with the original Game Boy, it has a custom 8-bit processor made by Sharp that is considered a hybrid between the Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z80. The American English spelling of the system's name, Game Boy Color, remains consistent throughout the world.

Castlevania games available on these systems[]

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Game Boy. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the Castlevania Wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.
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