Game Boy Background

March 22nd, 2008 by Mitch

The Game Boy is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo, released in 1989 at $89.95 USD. The Game Boy was the first successful handheld console, and was the predecessor of all other iterations of the Game Boy line. The Game Boy was originally bundled with the puzzle game Tetris, since Nintendo thought that an addictive puzzle game would get consumers' attention. It is the most successful portable in the history of video game selling 69 million units.

• Input/output
The Game Boy contains the following input/output connectors:

- A power input, located on the left side of the handheld console. The power adapter was included in a rechargeable battery pack kit. Separate editions of the battery pack were made for 110V and 230V countries. The Game Boy requires 6V DC of at least 250mA.

- A link cable port, located on the right side. It connects two Game Boy handheld consoles, and transfers information between two games of the same type or same series. This was widely used in games such as Pokemon.

- A 3.5mm stereo headphone jack output is located on the bottom side of the console.

- An input for Game Boy cartridges (also called Game Paks) is situated on top of the Game Boy.
• Technical Information
CPU - Custom 8-bit Sharp x80 core at 4.194304 MHz which is similar to an 8080 in that all of the registers introduced in the Z80 are not present. However, some of the instruction set enhancements from the Z80, particularly bit manipulation are present. Still other instructions are unique to this particular flavor of x80 CPU. The core also contains integrated sound generation

RAM - 8 kByte internal S-RAM

Video RAM - 8 kByte internal

ROM - 256 kbit, 512 kbit, 1 Mbit, 2 Mbit and 4 Mbit and 8 Mbit cartridges

Sound - 2 Square Waves, 1 voluntary Wave (Triangle/DPCM), 1 White Noise. The unit only has one speaker, but headphones provide stereo sound

Display - Reflective LCD 160 × 144 pixels

Screen Size - 66 mm (2.6 in) diagonal

Color Palette - 4 shades of "gray" (green to (very) dark blue)

Communication - Up to 16 Game Boys can be linked together via serial ports

Power - 6 V, 0.7 W (4 AA batteries provide ~35 hours)

Dimensions - 90mm(W) × 148mm(H) × 32mm(D)/3.5 × 5.8 × 1.3 (inch)