Search

Game Boy in Disguise, Part 1: The Family of Fake Game Boys

Marcel Pflug
2 days ago
5 min read

Some silhouettes are so famous that the object almost vanishes behind the shape. The Game Boy is one of them. By the mid-1990s the little grey slab, screen up top, D-pad below, two buttons set at a jaunty angle, was so instantly readable that it no longer needed to play anything at all. It just needed to look right. And so a small family of gadgets arrived wearing the Game Boy costume, and not one of them was a games console.

Nearly the whole family comes from a single maker, Mani Industries, working under official Nintendo licence. Mani took the console's outline and quietly swapped the insides. A radio here, a clock there, a calculator, a wristwatch, a pair of walkie talkies. Line them up on a shelf and you get a row of fake Game Boys, each one a genuine, working gadget hiding inside the world's most recognisable handheld.

There is a simple rule that unites them: each keeps the Game Boy on the outside and puts something entirely un-gamelike on the inside. The fun is all in the swap. So the best way to enjoy the collection is to look at the shape first, be fooled for a second, and then discover what the thing really does. Here is the family, oldest first.

Radio Boy (1993): first out of the disguise box

The oldest disguise in the collection is also one of the boldest. The Radio Boy, released in 1993, is styled to look exactly like a Game Boy and then flatly refuses to play a single game. Where the screen should be there is a tuning dial, the familiar Game Boy-style buttons are still in place, and a stereo earphone lets you listen in privately. Underneath the costume it is a working AM/FM radio, powered by batteries just like the console it imitates. It even carries its own item number, 83003, and it set the tone for everything that followed: take the shape people already love, and slip something useful inside it.

Game Boy - Radio Boy Merchandise (CiB) — Looks like a Game Boy, plays no games: the Radio Boy tunes in AM and FM instead.

Time Boy (1995): the Game Boy on your keyring

Two years later, in 1995, the shape shrank to fit in your pocket. The Time Boy is a Nintendo-licensed miniature replica of the Game Boy that clips onto your keyring and works as a clock, alarm included. Mani offered it in a range of colours, so you could choose a tiny Game Boy to match your keys and let it tell you, with a small beep, when it was time to stop playing the full-sized one. It is the console reduced to a charm, and somehow it loses none of its charm in the shrinking.

Game Boy - Time Boy Merchandise (CiB) — The Time Boy shrinks the whole console down to keychain size and still finds room for an alarm.

Watch Boy (1995): the console strapped to your wrist

The same year brought the Game Boy all the way to your wrist. The Watch Boy is a working LCD wristwatch built to look like a miniature Game Boy, right down to a tiny screen and a directional pad printed on the face. It does far more than tell the hour. It shows the month, the date and the day of the week, switches between 12 and 24 hour display, and adds an alarm and a six-digit chronograph stopwatch for good measure. A single SR41 silver-oxide cell keeps it ticking, and, like several of its siblings, it came in six colours. Of all the fakes in the family, this is the one you could genuinely wear out of the house and pass off as a watch, at least until someone looked twice.

Game Boy - Watch Boy Merchandise (CiB) — Watch Boy wears the Game Boy on your wrist, D-pad and all.

Walkie Talkie Boy (1995): two Game Boys that talk back

If the Watch Boy was the loner, the Walkie Talkie Boy was the sociable one, because it arrives as a pair. Two Game Boy shaped units talk to each other as short-range walkie talkies, and, in a lovely flourish, they also include a Morse code transmission function for the moments when plain speech feels too ordinary. Each unit has a flexible antenna, a quartz crystal inside and a removable belt clip, and the set shipped in six colours. Picture two friends in 1995, each clutching what looks for all the world like a Game Boy, tapping dots and dashes at one another across a back garden. No cartridge required.

Game Boy - Walkie Talkie Merchandise (CiB) — Two Game Boys that talk to each other, and the Walkie Talkie Boy even speaks Morse.

Calculator Boy (1997): the one that does your homework

The family's youngest member is also its most deadpan. The Calculator Boy, from 1997, is simply a pocket calculator shaped like a Game Boy, released by Mani as officially licensed Nintendo merchandise. No radio, no alarm, no Morse code. Just sums, served in full Game Boy costume. There is something perfect about ending the line here, with the gadget that quietly helps you through your maths homework while looking exactly like the thing that was keeping you from it.

It is worth remembering that none of this was bootleg tat. Every one of these gadgets carried an official Nintendo licence, which is why they wear their trademarks so proudly. In the mid-1990s the Game Boy look was spreading well beyond gaming, and Mani's little range is a perfect snapshot of that moment, when the console had become popular enough to lend its face to the humble objects on your desk, your keyring and your wrist.

Game Boy - Calculator Boy Merchandise (CiB) — Calculator Boy does your maths homework in full Game Boy costume.

One shape, five gadgets

Set side by side, the five of them tell a neat little story. Between 1993 and 1997, Mani Industries turned the Game Boy from a console into a look: a shape so trusted that it could carry a radio, a clock, a watch, a calculator and a pair of walkie talkies, and sell every one of them. Not a single one plays a game. Every single one is unmistakably a Game Boy. That is the whole trick of the disguise. The shape did the talking, and the gadget hiding inside simply went along with it.

Want to meet the rest of the family, and the real consoles they were only pretending to be? Come and browse the whole collection at gameboymuseum.com.