Second coming: The Game Boy | Game Boy Works Vol. 2 001
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- čas přidán 9. 06. 2024
- Let's take a second look at Nintendo's second game console. Yes, I've already published a Game Boy system retrospective. About 10 years ago. However, this new video covers the U.S. launch of the system rather than the Japanese-obviously it touches on a lot of the same material, but from a different angle... and with the added insight and detail that I've gleaned in a decade of putting together weekly retrospectives on systems from this era.
Production notes:
Video Works is funded via Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its CZcams debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more!
Why watch when you can read? Check out the massive hardcover print editions of NES Works, Super NES Works, Virtual Boy Works, and Segaiden are available now at Limited Run Games (limitedrungames.com/collectio...! SG-1000 Works: Segaiden Vol. I is available NOW, and Metroidvania: The First Decade is due in 2024-25.
Game Boy footage captured from Super Game Boy 2 in RGB from Analogue Super Nt and a Super NES. Video upscaled to 4K with RetroTink 4X and 720p with xRGB Mini Framemeister. - Hry
![[LIVE 🔴] HELL ROOMS 2/6. The Tube is Unforgiving](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5Ed8ilStkS8/mqdefault.jpg)
I remember my grandpa getting a Game Boy for his birthday one year. He was apprehensive about it at first, but after a couple sessions of Tetris- he was hooked and even got the Shuttle ending once! I ended up inheriting it after he passed and once in awhile, I still take it out to play it for awhile and think back on those memories. Miss you Grandpa.
That was great! Thank you for sharing. Sounds like grandpa rocked!
👍👍👍
How to get shuttle ending?
"It's Game Boy World. And this, at last, is the Game Boy." -- Jeremy almost ten years ago.
This series has gone zero episodes without mentioning Heiankyo Alien.
When 14 year old me got a Game Boy for Christmas, it became my “don’t leave home without it” creature comfort.
Mom!! Game boy works is back!!
We have game boy works at home
I love the commercial showing the boys playing their Game Boy by the fire and them being able to see the screen without ghosting
I also love how that commercial feels like a mini version of Stand By Me. Half expect to see young Jerry O'Connell pop up in it XD
I'm fully of the mind that we're at the age of long-tenure journalists and content creators revisiting some of their older work. And that is not a bad thing at all-you've improved so much in ten years, and here's to another ten! It's worth it to shine that newfound experience, time, and knowledge upon old topics. The "What did Nintendo Power Say" and the mention of other systems is a perfect example of that. Great video, Jeremy.
It's not just journalists. I contemplated calling this series "Game Boy Works (Taylor's Version)"
I can't believe it's Wednesday already. Thank you JP for keeping me in place in space and time.
My nickname in high school was "Everyone's Favorite Little Memento Mori."
@@JeremyParish Duty now for the future...
lmao intriguing the variety of uses people find for jeremy’s work!!
@@verygoodfreelancerJeremy & Watch
The beauty of this series was always your historical look at stuff, its inspired me for a decade. As a viewer it was never really about whether you have the cart or box (although the photography always looks nice!). The coverage of those non English games always blew me away. Over at RetroAchievements we have been slowly trying to build out sets for the entire Game Boy lineup, inspired to hit the stuff the west never knew of like Yakuman or Cave Noire (You didn't get there yet but man what a gem that is). Cheers!
I will definitely continue visiting import greats via GB Gaiden, and Cave Noire is at the top of the list!
Ahh, DK '94. One of my 5 favorite video games of all time. Sheer puzzle platformer perfection.
Yeah it's genuinely the game boy's best game, and the best ever version of Donkey Kong. And led to the Mario vs Donkey Kong series, which Nintendo have now revived on the Switch. So this handheld game from 1994 is still making waves today.
It's criminal how low your views are. You're better than 90% of gaming historians on here.
90% is lowballing it.
The Game Boy's middle years are a stretch of history that I'm kind of interested in seeing in more depth. I feel like people have kind of forgotten how disregarded the Game Boy was in the mainstream after its initial years but before the Pokemon renaissance, and that was a *long* stretch of time, basically an entire 5-year console generation in itself. EGM would do year-end reviews of every platform in their magazine, and I have vivid memories of them saying things like "we can't believe Nintendo hasn't put this thing out to pasture yet" year after year.
I actually just binge read/skimmed the first 100 issues of Nintendo Power semi-recently and up until around 1995 or so there was the Super Game Boy to give the Game Boy a bit of a second wind. That said, there wasn't a whole lot new being released.
I totally forgot how many SNES and GB games got re-releases in 95 and especially 96 though.
1:37 Good to see Japanese marketing at the time was on point when depicting the average American boy's life: A combination of 'Stand by Me' and 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?'
Happy 35th anniversary, Game Boy, and happy 10th to the Works series!
While I never thought it strange as a kid, the fact that monochrome 8-bit games were still being produced as the rest of the gaming world was pushing polygons is absolutely wild, and creates some almost anachronistic games that apply mid and late-90s advances in design sensibilities to games for hardware that was already dated in the 80s.
The Wario Land titles and of course Pokemon are fascinating to me as they never really feel limited at all, and Link's Awakening only ever feels limited by the amount of face buttons.
Here's to you, Game Boy! Thanks for a decade plus of games, and many more of fun and discovery
I spent most of Christmas in 1989 playing Tetris and Super Mario Land. Good times.
Also, based on Jeremy’s recommendation I purchased a copy of Kung Fu Heroes yesterday. Thanks for letting me know about that one!
The first handheld system to offer a link cable was actually Redline Drag racing by Kenner, in 1980. It used essentially a head phone Jack to connect the games together. Allowing for simultaneous drag races.
A thing like that.
@@JeremyParish Pete Campbellism ftw!
The Game Boy..provided us hours of entertainment out in the middle of the desert during Desert Shield/Storm
13:44
That unit is a quite a legend.
I'm a bit surprised. I've remembered the letter in Nintendo Power about it since the day it showed up in my mailbox, but never realized that it stuck in the memory of so many others as thoroughly as it did my own.
@@Belgand
The circuit board survived, the aftermath of a missile strike, casing melted and screen busted, but still functioned.
That cemented in my memory that I can trust their handhelds to survive a fall, from non extream hights.
Gameboy world is my favorite series of yours... although for fairly shallow reasons. I collect gameboy games and I love watching people talk about them. Regardless I am excited for a follow up.
And please... don't let the price of physical games get in the way of your amazing videos. You can have one collector friend lend you a copy or... you know... other methods that shall not be named.
Me too! My favorite videos from Jeremy are the obscure GB games from this series. I am so thankful I got to know gems like Amazing Penguin, Daedalian Opus, Godzilla and Mercenary Firce because of this series.
@@GabMacedoo Yeah totally... some games really don't get proper coverage outside of Jeremy Parish. At best you get like a shallow review/overview in some hidden gems video. Really sad that Jeremy Parish felt the need to start over, it will take a while before he is up to speed and we can get some new awesome recomendations!
When I was a kid my mom won me a gameboy when they first launched in Ireland. It was a competition to make a slogan for a brand of milk. I started off with game and watch donkey Kong, then NES, then Gameboy all the way up to Switch (minus the Wii u and virtual boy).
Pokémon Mini?
@@MJFallout didn’t have one of those! Just red, blue and yellow on the gameboy
What was her winning slogan?
Whoop whoop!! I'm happy to see this series come back!! Even if its mostly repetitive puzzle games, the 1991-1996 releases deserve attention!!
You're the best doing it, Jeremy. Thank you.
He1l yes, GameBoy World is back, Baby!
I've watched so many of your old episodes over the years to learn about possible obscure cartridge pickups, so thanks a bunch for those!
Just the other day I watched the episode on 'Koro DIce', subsequently picked up the cart, and it's actually really fun, almost a sleeper hit (for such an early game, which is also a puzzle game.)
This is perfect timing; after a while of being subbed to your channel, I recently started Game Boy World last week and have been having a blast. Your videos are fantastic!
I have a very vivid memory of my dad taking me to the Toys R Us on Telegraph Road in Pontiac Michigan to buy the Game Boy soon after it launched.
All this Game Boy coverage on CZcams lately has motivated me to pick up an original DMG model with a backlight mod. I've been playing it nightly before bed for the last couple of weeks. Who'd ever think this is the sort of gaming relaxation I'd need in 2024?
I've had a question for years that you might not be able to answer.
Many years ago on Retronauts, Shane Bettenhausen mentioned that Mark Macdonald once compared playing decent games on the not-so-decent original Game Boy screen to "drinking a fine wine through.....something you wouldn't want to drink a fine wine through."
I've been a fan of Mark's since I was a 13 year old kid reading EGM (I'm 38 now). I've been dying to know what, exactly, Gaming Jesus said about the Game Boy. 😂 I'm so sorry to bring this up here on your monumentous Game Boy Works relaunch. As always, incredible work from the Toastiest of Frogs. We appreciate everything you do here and everywhere else, Jeremy!
No idea, sorry.
15:03 some of my most beloved childhood memories is one kid playing on the GBC or GBA, and other kids surrounding them and coming with advice.
Bro I'm definitely a fan or the webcam look over the foggy old school appearance. Good stuff as usual. Be well
What a fantastic video! A great summation, of Game Boy's time, from its inspiration, in the form of various proofs-of-concept, to its final years. Thank you so much, for doing this!
Ship of theseus reference in a game boy retrospective!? I knew i liked your content for a reason
I’m very excited! I’ve been a long time fan of your work and I have to say among Segaiden series, your Gameboy World/Works is my favorite. I’ve been long awaiting this day you’d continue your Gameboy deep dive. My favorite system. Thank you for all your amazing in depth work over the years Jeremy
This will always be near and dear to those of us who had one in its day. I feel fortunate to have grown up in the 90s.
Walk Man walked so that Game Boy could game.
did Jeremy just invite us all to his house!? he has so much cool retro tech in there!! RETRO PARTYYY!!!
I used my game boy earbuds for a very long time. There was nothing else quite like them at the time at least where I lived. You could put them in your pocket unlike the normal headphones with the metal strip on top
Game Boy for President!
Got this on my 13th birthday and it is to this day still my favorite birthday.
One of the best channels on CZcams. Love your content!
I've never been so happy to be so early. My day is made.
24:33 I wonder if that's because of the Gameboy's absurd hardware ecosystem, with magnifiers and lights and battery packs and so on, not to mention official addons like the camera. It's always been a highly "modable" console.
Also: It has been 0 days since this channel mentioned Heiankyo Alien. ;-)
And headphones and link cable! The Gameboy set came fully packed!
Regarding GB vs GBC, at least here in Europe it was the upgrade we always wanted, a TFT screen that didn't wash out the graphics. Sure, still no backlight, but it ran the around the same amount of time on two AAs instead of four, was a bit smaller and, thanks to a memory and CPU upgrade, bigger games. I doubt that a Heroes of Might and Magic in all its glory for example would have been possible without any simplifications on the classic GB. This way we had an 8-Bit version with at least the feature set of HOMM 1, to stay with my example.
Jeremy, your videos are always great, informative, entertaining, and full of wit & charm, but I wanted to let you know you've been on fire of late!. (We even got a Heiankyo Alien mention this episode.) Thanks for all that you do!
The world needs one more mini console. The gameboy mini -now in color. Preloaded with all the best.
Gunpei Yokoi's little grey box of glory. My eyes were literally moist with nostalgia throughout this video. This WAS my childhood.
In 1988 or so I remember a kid at school with the classic "my uncle that works at Nintendo" thing talking about how Nintendo was working on a miniature Nintendo you can take around with you and play. Of course everyone called him a liar, but when the Gameboy came out I feel like we kinda owed him an apology.
How do I not remember that there was a time when Nintendo Power was seemingly trying to make a cat girl on a 4 wheeler (apparently either her or the 4 wheeler being named "SUSIE") into a mascot character for the gossip section? I'm guessing one of the Japanese artists was a fan of Dominion Tank Police.
Very excited for you to get back to Game Boy for a bit!
It has been [0] days since Jeremy last mentioned Heiankyo Alien
35 years later The Gameboy is still brilliant today. 😀👍🎮
The way the early 90's had this seismic shift in handheld gaming after LCD games were the bleeding edge of handled games through the previous decade was nothing short of amazing.
Though in the interests of full disclosure, I was one of those poor fools who backed the Lynx. I still have that battery-chugging chonky bludgeon.
Damn I missed these, been a minute, Game Boy was needing some love lol
Next time, you'll never leave Eurasia...without playing this great little block-stacking puzzle game that's all the rage over there.
Always happy to see a new Video Works every Wednesday, and this one certainly doesn't disappoint! I can't believe it's been 10 years since you've started this project. Since I've discovered this channel, my opinion of the Game Boy has gone from "primitive relic" to one of my favorite handheld systems, and you've helped me and many others discover so many obscure games. It's awesome to see your Super Game Boy footage in stunning HD after you made the leap to higher quality with your Mega Man 2 retrospective, and the discussion of Nintendo Power's coverage of the system that was never in your original Game Boy Works series really makes this restrospective feel like a culmination of everything that you've built this channel up to be (not to mention the Heiankyo Alien/Tower of Druaga gag lol). I'm honestly really bummed to hear that Game Boy Works Vol. II won't be covering every single game released worldwide considering how many amazing Japan-exclusive games you've helped me discover, but it's understandable considering the time, effort, and money that would need to be put into making videos on all of them, not to mention getting photos of those games to showcase them like you always do. Here's to (at least) 10 more years of Game Boy Works, and I sincerely hope you do manage to come into that money to bankroll a Game & Watch Works someday!
Btw, I'm also super excited to hear about your upcoming TurboExpress video for Turbo Works! It's such a unique handheld with seemingly not a lot of coverage online, so I'm happy to see it get some much-needed attention.
The Game Boy is a good example of utilizing a principle of consumerism: PRICE IS KING.
By utilizing cheaper components and giving it longer battery life, the savings went in the buyers pockets and they responded by making it a success.
Having a killer pack in game: Tetris helped as well.
I had a Lynx and Game Gear, the color and backlit screens were much better...
But the short battery lifes killed them.
I got power packs for each one, but by then, it was too late, Nintendo was the handheld king and still is.
The lack of a backlit screen was my major frustration with GB.
Let's gooooooo
Hopefully this means that the Limited Run reprints of Game Boy Works are imminent 🙏
I wouldn't say "imminent," precisely. Those books need a lot of TLC and reworking, and I need to get a few other books out first (Metroidvania, NES Gaiden, NES 1988, Master System 1986-87).
Looking forward to all of them.
@@JeremyParish Fair enough, I will continue to wait patiently 😅 Thank you for the update!
Thanks for asking, I was going to... I've got all the other in the WORKS series but this one. Really hope a revised and augmented edition sees the light of day at some point then!
Sorry, augments are illegal under current Federation law.
I remember brother getting the system on launch. Which was funny because he didn't have job. Turns out he stole it, and my parents made him let me play for a bit before he had to give it up. I wasnt impressed and stuck with my NES. I think this is why i never gave it a chance.
Honestly, probably the best video about the Game Boy ever made.
The GB did have a lot of weird synergy with America at launch. They apparently got the guy who redesigned the NES console for the west to help design the look of the device, so in a way it was always designed with western sensibilities in mind. Japan even got the US TV commercials dubbed over in Japanese, which was particularly strange.
To this day I still take my SP with me when I go out or during my breaks at work!
Great content like always Jeremy! Love the DMG!
I too would also vote for president elect Game Boy 🫡
Fantastic video, Jeremy! Can't believe the little boy is already 35. A true Game Man.
Game Boy is almost ready for his first midlife crisis. Gonna buy him a copy of Roadster
@@JeremyParish That is the kind of niche comment I subscribe and watch you for :)
game boy was my first console and this made me cry, thanks mr parish
Holy heck, i just finished watching your 1990 game boy works series for the first time. Now that is good timing if i ever saw it.
Currently playing Metroid 2 on NSO. It definitely is a good portable Metroid. Glad Game Boy Works is back, kinda sad that Japanese releases will be very few from now on in the series but I guess that's the price of progress.
I was gifted my first Gameboy by a teacher in 89 long may it live
Really happy to see you explore other retro system libraries again. Hopefully by the end of next year we can see Snes works 1992 as well.
25:46 - 26:05 This is why the original Game Boy is my favorite handheld of all time.
The simplicity of it all--lacking even a color screen--yet being able to produce games that hold up even today.
19:24 I never did test if the Link Cable port on my HB Boy Colour actually worked. Now I don't have to!
I remember getting my Atomic Purple Gameboy Color for Christmas with Game & Watch Gallery 2, Pokemon Blue, and Donkey Kong Land 3 (my mom was really good at hiding stuff, so she hid it in the fridge. Imagine my surprise when I went to go get breakfast the next morning). Saying that I love Gameboy is an understatement, I ADORE IT! I love everything about it and I almost considered getting a modded Gameboy and a Everdrive Cart, but I went with an Emulator handheld and spend most of my time playing the Gameboy's library. While most of it's backlog is pure shovelware, there's just something about even the lowliest of games that irresistible
If your starting point was Pokémon, I salute you for bothering to go back and revisit the Game Boy’s earlier hits (some of which may be even older than you!)
@digamejh Funnily enough, me and the Gameboy are roughly about the same age. Both born in 89
In their yearly game console report cards, EGM said something along the lines of "This has to be the last year for the Game Boy" every year starting in, like, 1991 otr something. Sorry, nerds, it lasted forever. They covered handhelds like people whose jobs paid for their batteries.
I hope that you do a video on Faceball 2000 from the Gameboy.
I gotta say, I hated the GameBoy and didn't get one until the Play It Loud series. A LARGE argument which changed my mind was that business travelers were using them (like they would take to the DS Lite years later). It also helped that the Turbo GraFx portable with TV tuner and Sega Nomad cost way too much.
JP hits another one out of the park.
man that hyper lode runner commercial goes hard; very toriyama-esque.
I preferred Nintendo Power's limited Gameboy coverage. As I knew I wouldn't be owning a Gameboy any time soon, I would have hated for Nintendo Power to suddenly start devoting half its space to Gameboy titles that I wouldn't be playing. I hated when magazines would immediately commit significant space to whatever the new hotness was, whether it warranted it or not. For the Gameboy, NP told you enough to know why you might want it and what you'd be getting, and from their you could look at a demo model in a store or just pick one up. Once the system became a hit, and once its games started getting more complex, NP gave its titles more coverage.
I thoroughly enjoyed this!
14:30 That is such a great idea I need to have a listen.
I was at the perfect age when the Gameboy and its competitors launched. I vividly remember all of the "hype" at the time (it's funny how little Nintendo themselves promoted it). But, it was certainly the talk of the playground, and I was able to see it for myself at the local toy store, along with the Atari Lynx, Turbo Express, and Sega Game Gear. I ended up with both the Gameboy and the Game Gear. My impression of the Lynx at the time was that it was huge, and even though they were promoting it as "16-bit", I was dubious, because the low resolution made the graphics look just a bit too blocky for my taste. It didn't look good to me. I have no evidence to support this, but from various articles I've read over the years, the developers of the Lynx purposefully designed it to be bigger, because they thought Americans wanted things to be big and bulky. I think that, along with the very low battery life, and the price, killed interest in the Lynx.
I never connected the region locking of games to the intricacies of the different video standards. Seems so obvious now that you've said it.
7:49
That's a real good way of putting it. It's hard to imagine how the fifth generation would have shaken out had Pokemon not given the Game Boy the grandma of all second winds.
The N64 was overall successful, even the GameCube to some degree. The Wii U was the real flop, but the Nintendo 3DS sold okay at the time, especially Pokémon games.
@@cube2fox The Wii U didn't sell well, but some of the games developed for it sold well when they were ported to the Switch, so it wasn't a complete loss.
The Virtual Boy was Nintendo's biggest flop. Less than one million units were sold, it was discontinued after a year, and its games have never been re-released for other consoles.
@@ginormousaurus8394 Yeah but the Virtual Boy didn't threaten Nintendo's existence. While the Wii U did, if it weren't for the Game Boy, I mean the 3DS.
The Nintendo 3DS seems to count as a Game Boy successor of sorts, insofar the Nintendo DS could easily have been named "Game Boy DS".
@@cube2fox The Wii U didn't threaten Nintendo's existence. Even if Nintendo decided to stop making home consoles they would have continued to exist as a video game developer/publisher. Nintendo had a net loss of $527 million in 2012 and a net loss of $225 million in 2014. In every other year since 1981 Nintendo has had a net profit. Nintendo's overall net loss for 2012-2016 was $183 million. Nintendo made billions of dollars in net profit during the Wii-DS years so it could afford to lose $183 million during the Wii U-3DS years. Nintendo has made billions of dollars in net profit since the Switch was released. Ironically, the best-selling game for the Switch is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which was originally developed for the Wii U. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Switch has sold over 60 million copies.
Unfortunately, Game Boy cannot run for President, because it was born in Japan.
Glad to see the reason i subscribed to this channel back!
I can't remember what movie the clip from the beginning is from but I saw it when I was a kid and to this day it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.
Race Driving Is incredible
This is the series that will turn the Game Boys into Game Men
as a child in 1999 and mostly playing at the time contemporary gameboy gmes and even then sticking to RPGs like Pokemon it really humbled me in a way where the medium would come so far in such a relatively short time, but also humbled by early gameboy games basically held up so well that it could compete with late gameboy games.
Not to say every game did, most early gameboy games are like... Sokoban, but some of them were Final Fantasy Adventure and Links Awakening and Mario Land 2
and that holds up as well as Pokemon tends to, for me anyway
I think the longest supported console is the Master System, because new itterations still release in Brazil.
5:13 - The GameBoy version is a lot more faithful to the movie than the NES version.
So sad how Nintendo treated Gunpei after the failure of the Virtual Boy. Even sadder is his untimely death.
The WonderSwan looked awesome. A shame it was never released in the US.
I spent so many hours on Tetris and Super Mario Land when I got my Gameboy for Christmas 89.
Yeah, good point about Nintendo Power doing a lackluster job in promoting the Game Boy. For a long time, I considered the Game Boy as lesser, something that, if we had one, would be relegated to my little sister-not that she really cared about video games enough to be upset about it. It wasn’t until much later on that I realized that this was not the case at all; consider Metroid II, that not only was it just a well made game, but it improved on the original (one of my overall favorite games at the time) and introduced many elements that became standard for Samus in her subsequent subterranean assaults on the Space Pirates. Then there was Super Mario Land 2, which looked every bit as good as its contemporary, Super Mario World, just in a more compact, monochromatic package.
And when it really comes down to it, after the initial entry price, it was a much better value than the cheap garbage LCD games from Tiger, et al., who were trying to cash in and call their shovelware an economic alternative. The game cartridges cost a bit more, but they provided far more entertainment than those pieces of junk.
I was wrong with my original assessment of the Game Boy, and apparently so was Nintendo of America.
Anyway, I have a lot of catching up to do on the Game Boy Works series, but that makes for a lot of Sunday Afternoon PBS-style viewing, meant in the best way possible.
Speaking of Hip Tanaka: while everyone loved Korobeyniki-and rightfully so-I think his original composition for Tetris, Type C, deserves _far_ more love than it gets.
LET’S GOOOOOOOOO
21:16 while it took me nearly 20 yeas to get a copy, I actually would like to hear your thoughts on this one sooner than next century.
Wow Jeremy seem to really not want to tackle that whole Eurasia subject does he?
What are you talking about? And this video is explicitly about the North American launch of the system.
@@Tirgo69 it’s meant to be a jab at the fact that Jeremy has referenced Strider NES (which takes place in Eurasia) as the next video for the past couple of weeks but another video comes up instead like he doesn’t want to talk about it
We have always been delaying videos with Eurasia.
Love how Jeremy's going to essentially redo his old Game Boy World series, effectively responding to people's long term cries for him to return to Game Boy Works with "OK!", followed by whiners responding in turn with "No, not like that!". That's why Parish rules.
Still have my og system and carts (some with save states surviving)
Loved my Microvision. Had Blockbuster.
I saw that Mendel Palace footage.
i loved my OG game boy. I bought so many lights for it lol