Shark MX was InterAct's attempt to put the Game Boy online. Sold under the GameShark brand, it paired a cartridge with a small adapter that plugged into an ordinary telephone outlet, so a Game Boy Color or Game Boy Pocket could send and receive real e-mail through InterAct's SharkWire service. Every owner got their own address in the form yourname@gamesharker.com, and the box included thirty minutes of access time to get started.
Beyond plain messages, the service delivered gaming news, tips and cheat codes straight to the handheld, a natural fit for a company best known for the GameShark. It arrived around 2000, a few years before mobile phones made pocket e-mail ordinary, which makes it a charming dead end in the story of Game Boy connectivity.
The packaging lists only the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Pocket, but this is a monochrome cartridge and runs on the original DMG-01 as well, confirmed by later hardware testing. The older model was simply left off the box, having been discontinued by the time Shark MX appeared.
