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GAME BOY JOURNAL
Welcome to the Game Boy Journal, the field
notes of a lifelong DMG-01 collector.
This is where the little grey box that fit in a
pocket and quietly changed gaming gets the
attention it deserves: the stories behind the hardware, the games that defined it, the strange accessories and the rare variants most people never knew existed.
Expect well-researched articles, surprising facts and the occasional look behind the scenes of the collection itself. Whether you are a serious collector, a curious newcomer or simply nostalgic for that pea-green screen, there is a story here waiting to pull you in. Pick an article and start exploring.
CATEGORIES
DEEP DIVES - SPECIAL ARTICLE SERIES
The Paper Trail: The Game Boy in Print
The Game Boy did not just live on shelves and in pockets. It left a paper trail: comics, guides, catalogues, fan magazines and books. Here is the map to all of it.
Marcel Pflug
2 min read
Great Game Stories: 12 Game Boy Tales, from Once Upon a Time to The End
The Game Boy's little grey cartridges held real stories. Great Game Stories retells twelve of them from the museum's collection like fairy tales, from once upon a time to the end.
Marcel Pflug
3 min read
Write Your Own Game Boy Games: A Beginner's Journey in Two Series
You do not need to be a programmer to make a real Game Boy game. Two hands-on series take you from an empty folder to a polished, cartridge-ready game, explained in plain English. Here is where to start.
Marcel Pflug
3 min read
Third-Party Game Boy Hardware, Part 1: The Big Names
Nintendo built the console; a whole industry built everything else. Part one of a series on the third-party makers, with a dedicated look at Nuby, Joyplus, ASCII, Naki, Beeshu, Saitek, Datel and InterAct.
Marcel Pflug
3 min read
The Game Boy Around the World: One Console, Eleven Stories
The same grey box lived a different life on every continent. Our series traces the Game Boy from Tokyo to Lagos to Switzerland, market by market.
Marcel Pflug
3 min read
Build Your Own Game Boy Game, Part 1: Setting Up Your Workshop
The start of a hands-on series. By the end you will have written Snake for the Game Boy in C and run it on a real DMG-01. Today, we set up the tools.
Marcel Pflug
5 min read
Great Games, Tiny Screen: The Game Boy's Finest Hours
The Game Boy had no business hosting great games. Even in 1989 it was modest hardware: no colour, a screen that smeared during fast motion, and sound from a single tinny speaker. Rival handhelds were flashier and more powerful. Nintendo made a different bet, that a game people wanted to keep playing mattered more than raw horsepower, and a decade of brilliant, strange and stubborn cartridges proved the bet right. Great Games, Tiny Screen is a tour through some of the finest,
Marcel Pflug
2 min read
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The Game Boy Comics: When Nintendo Gave the Handheld Its Own Comic Book
In 1990, the Game Boy did not just star in games. It got its own comic book, a genuinely strange four-issue series where the cast of Super Mario Land climbs out of the screen and into the real world.
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The Paper Trail, Part 2: Player's Guides and Strategy Books
The official Player's Guides and per-game strategy books on the shelf, from Nintendo's 1991 US guide to the Game Boy-shaped Victory Book, and the games they helped you finish.
Game Boy on the Big Screen: Playing Handheld Games on Your TV
The Game Boy was built to be portable, yet players kept finding ways to put it on the television. From the Super Game Boy to a PlayStation adapter and the GameCube Game Boy Player, here is how handheld games made the jump to the big screen.
The Tetris Story: From Moscow to the Game Boy
It was born behind the Iron Curtain, fought over in courtrooms, and became the game that sold the Game Boy. The full story of Tetris, its tangled rights, its trivia and its Game Boy successors.
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Fresh Find: The Second German Game Boy Player's Guide (1994)
The scarcer of Nintendo's two German Game Boy guides. This 1994 second volume joins the collection, a harder-to-find companion to the 1992 original.
New Arrival: Game Boy Bath and Shower Foam
A Game Boy for the bathroom, complete with a Yoshi skill game. This 1997 Takara shower foam joins the collection's oddities.
The Paper Trail, Part 5: The Books That Made the Game Boy History
The coffee-table books, reference guides and logbooks that treated the Game Boy as history and art, decades after it launched as a toy.
The Paper Trail, Part 4: Fan Magazines and Sticker Albums
From a UK newsstand to a Tokyo bookshop, the independent magazines, Famicom Tsushin supplements and sticker album the Game Boy inspired.
The Paper Trail, Part 3: Catalogues and Club Nintendo
The Game Boy was sold on paper first: Nintendo's own catalogues, Nintendo Power and Club Nintendo. Follow the marketing paper trail from Japan to Germany, the UK and France.
The Paper Trail, Part 2: Player's Guides and Strategy Books
The official Player's Guides and per-game strategy books on the shelf, from Nintendo's 1991 US guide to the Game Boy-shaped Victory Book, and the games they helped you finish.
The Paper Trail, Part 1: The Game Boy Comic Books
In 1990 the Game Boy earned its own comic book, and Valiant Comics printed exactly four issues. Here is the story of the run, and the collector's game of telling a 1990 first print from its 1991 reprint.
Third-Party Game Boy Hardware, Part 3: Cases, Screens and the Modern Makers
The final part of the series on the Game Boy's third-party makers: the cases, screens and controllers from A.L.S., Pelican, nYko, Recoton and Hori, and the modern maker keeping the console alive.
The Paper Trail: The Game Boy in Print
The Game Boy did not just live on shelves and in pockets. It left a paper trail: comics, guides, catalogues, fan magazines and books. Here is the map to all of it.
Great Game Stories, No. 12: Three Days Until the End of the World (Deadeus)
A boy dreams a god will destroy his village in three days. Deadeus, the homebrew Game Boy horror with eleven endings, told as a dark Grimm fairy tale.
Great Game Stories, No. 11: The Summer Camp with No Way Home (Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly)
Bart and Lisa are trapped at Camp Deadly, run by Mr. Burns's rotten nephew Ironfist. A fairy-tale retelling of the 1991 Game Boy game.
Great Game Stories, No. 10: The Knight Who Gathered a Shattered Star (Dragon's Lair)
The 1992 Game Boy Dragon's Lair is nothing like the arcade cartoon: a sword-less knight, 194 scattered Life Stones and an ending that refuses to end.
Great Game Stories, No. 9: A Farm Boy, a Falcon, and a Faraway Star (Star Wars)
A galaxy far, far away in four shades of grey: how Capcom's 1992 Game Boy Star Wars retells A New Hope, from Tatooine to the Death Star, told as a fairy tale.
Great Game Stories, No. 8: The Boy, the Blob and the Tower (The Rescue of Princess Blobette)
A fairy tale retelling of The Rescue of Princess Blobette on the Game Boy: a boy and his shape-shifting blob climb a castle of traps on planet Blobolonia to free the imprisoned princess.
Great Game Stories, No. 7: A Trainer's Journey Across Kanto (Pokemon)
A fairy tale retelling of the Kanto journey across Pokemon Red, Green, Blue and Yellow: a young trainer from Pallet Town, eight Gym Badges, Team Rocket, and the climb to become Champion.
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