How Pokemon Gave the Game Boy a Second Life

By the middle of the 1990s, many people had quietly written off the Game Boy. It was monochrome in an age of colour, ancient by console standards and seemingly out of road. Then a game about collecting little creatures arrived and changed everything.

Pokemon did not just sell well. It reached back and gave an ageing handheld a whole second life.

A Dying Handheld

When Pokemon was being finished, the Game Boy was widely seen as a dead console. The hardware was years old, newer colour rivals had come and gone, and few in the press expected much from yet another Game Boy release. The timing looked, on paper, terrible.

Pokemon Game Boy: An Idea Built on the Link Cable

The first Pokemon Game Boy titles, Red and Green, were created by Game Freak under Satoshi Tajiri and released in Japan on 27 February 1996. Tajiri has said the sight of two Game Boys joined by a link cable inspired the whole concept, channelling his childhood love of insect collecting into catching and trading creatures. The project took roughly six years to complete, and you can see the original Japanese Red and Green editions in the collection.

The Craze That Revived the Console

What made Pokemon special was that it turned the link cable from a novelty into the heart of the experience: you simply could not catch them all alone. That social hook, combined with cheap cartridges that children could actually afford, sent sales climbing steadily long after launch. The international Red and Blue versions followed in 1998, and Pokemon grew into one of the best-selling properties on the system and the foundation of a multibillion-dollar franchise.

Collecting Pokemon on the Game Boy

For collectors, the early Pokemon cartridges are milestones: the Japanese Red and Green, the later Yellow Special Pikachu Edition, and their international cousins. They mark the exact moment a humble grey handheld refused to fade away. Browse the wider library in the collection.

Pokémon Game Guide - German for Yellow, Red and Blue