The Paper Trail: The Game Boy in Print

The console fits in a pocket. The paperwork needs a shelf.

We tend to remember the Game Boy as plastic and glass: the grey brick, the pea-green screen, the buttons worn smooth by a thousand hours of Tetris. But the machine generated an astonishing amount of paper. Before you ever pressed start, a catalogue had already sold the thing to you. While you played, a comic gave the cast a life off-screen and a Player's Guide sat open beside your elbow. Around it all, fan magazines argued about the best games, and decades later, hardback books put the same little console behind glass and called it design history.

A museum keeps the paper trail because the paper is where the story lives. Hardware tells you what the Game Boy was. The print around it tells you what people thought it was, what they wanted it to be, and how that changed across thirty-odd years. This is the hub for that trail. Five articles, five kinds of paper, one handheld. Follow whichever thread you like.

The comic books

In 1990 the Game Boy earned its own comic, and Valiant printed exactly four issues before the run ended. Part 1: The Game Boy Comic Books tells the story of that short, strange series and the collector's game of telling a 1990 first print from its 1991 reprint. For the wider history of Nintendo handing a handheld its own comic, our feature The Game Boy Comics goes deeper.

Player's Guides and strategy books

Long before an online walkthrough existed, finishing a tough game often meant buying a book. Part 2: Player's Guides and Strategy Books walks the shelf from Nintendo's 1991 US guide to the Game Boy-shaped Victory Book, and the games they helped you finish. For the deeper history of Nintendo's official line, see our feature The Game Boy Game Guide.

Catalogues and Club Nintendo

The Game Boy was sold on paper first. Part 3: Catalogues and Club Nintendo follows Nintendo's own sales catalogues, Nintendo Power and Club Nintendo from Japan to Germany, the UK and France, the glossy paper that turned a grey brick into something you had to have.

Fan magazines and sticker albums

Not everything printed came from Nintendo. Part 4: Fan Magazines and Sticker Albums runs from a UK newsstand to a Tokyo bookshop, taking in the independent magazines, the Famicom Tsushin supplements and the sticker album the Game Boy inspired outside the official channels.

The books that made it history

Decades after it launched as a toy, the Game Boy became a subject for serious hardbacks. Part 5: The Books That Made the Game Boy History gathers the coffee-table books, reference guides and logbooks that treated the little console as history and art rather than a plaything.

Five kinds of paper, one handheld, and a story that outlasted the battery. If you have a Game Boy comic, guide, catalogue, magazine or book that belongs on this trail, or you simply want to see more of the collection, come and explore the Game Boy Museum. The paper trail is still growing.