I had looked everywhere: Toys 'R' Us, Target, Electronics Boutique - even ePay. Every online retailer, every mail-order company, every brick-and-mortar toy chain in the entire Bay Area. Truth was, there wasn't a single Limited Edition Ice Blue Game Boy left in the universe, and I was profoundly bummed.
Little did I know that I was mere weeks away from the coolest and most anticipated Game Boy launch since its début in 1989 - the Game Boy Color. Now, this is not to be confused with all the stylish colored casings that have been introduced in recent memory. This is the first Game Boy to generate brilliant full-color onscreen graphics. Even older games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and Tetris can be played in color. My imagination goes berserker just thinking about the possibility of tiny portable pink Kirbys. The fact that the system is as compact as the Game Boy Pocket and ships with a bright purple outer shell makes it all the more fantastic.
Talk of a color Game Boy had circulated among the rec.games.video.nintendo gossiphounds for years. "Our players have asked for a Game Boy that could play their favorite games in color. But the technology and the high demand on battery life made it impossible," says Nintendo of America chair Howard Lincoln. "As the first to surmount the technical obstacles, we're able to introduce a new generation of color games to the millions of people who love Game Boy."
To put that in context, although the Game Boy Color is not the first of its kind - that title goes to the now retired Atari Lynx - it is no doubt the most visually stunning and technologically advanced. With the ability to display up to 56 colors simultaneously from a palette of more than 32,000 (Lynx could display only 16 of 4,096) on its reflective screen, battery life of more than 10 hours on two AAAs, complete compatibility with the entire library of Game Boy's existing titles (all colorized!), and new color games developed especially for this system, that's one hell of a development curve - and well worth the month-long waiting list. You bet I was on it. Now all I need is a Limited Edition Safety Orange number.
Game Boy Color: $79.95. Nintendo: www.nintendo.com/gb/.
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