Nintendo GameBoy Color: The Best Hand Held Gaming Unit I've Ever Owned

Wow, I might get some serious hate mail for the title of this review but to me, the GameBoy Color is the best hand held video game unit. Look at the variety of the titles that you can get for it [granted most of them are older but still ...], the cost of the games and units, battery life, ease of controls and overall playability. I’ve had my GBC for a long time and it has never given me a single lick of trouble - well, I take that back. For whatever reason it erased all the memory banks from my Tertis DX game. I was switching games and pressed a little too hard on the back of the cartridge when I was pulling this game out. When I went to put it back in, everything was gone - high scores, names, stats - all gone. I asked around and no one seemed to know why it happened and most said that it could be the unit dying a slow death. After losing over 200,000 lines that were stored in the score section I wasn’t all that thrilled at the thought of starting over only to have it get erased again. Since that little snafu it hasn’t happened again so I guess it was some random incident or me pressing to hard on the game when removing it.

Nintendo GameBoy Color

Even though the screen on the GameBoy Color is less than two inches by two inches, most games are easy to play and navigate through. The GBA [GameBoy Advance] has a bigger screen and the option to enlarge it but you run the risk of distorting things if you do so. One of the many things that I love about my GBC is that you can play all the color games as well as the older black and white games on it. Another nice feature about the GBC is that there is a port on the top of it so you can play against other people if they have the same game title and a GBC. You will need to have games that have the option to play against someone else in order to make use of this and not all game titles offer this. When we were going cross country I met up with someone that had Tetris DX and we played head to head and it was a blast. You do need to stay pretty close to the other person or you will lose the connection but considering the technology that was involved at the time that this was conceived, it’s something that really makes it well worth having if you like to game against other people.

The controls of the GBC are easy to use; you get the directional pad, A and B buttons, select and start - this doesn’t have advanced controls like the GBA but you can still have a lot of control over things. The width of the unit makes it easy to hold and it’s super comfortable so you can play for a long time without getting hand cramps. Viewing the screen can be a problem in low light situations and sadly, most of the after market lighting sources give you a glare on the screen. The volume on this isn’t something that is going to blow you away, because it’s located on the bottom right hand side of the unit, most of the time your hand is going to cover it when you are playing. If you want to hear all that is going on, you can slide your headphones into the port on the bottom of it but you aren’t going to be getting exceptional sound. The volume control is located on the left hand side right under the external port that’s used for accessories like lighting.

You need to have two AA sized batteries to power the unit and generally you get a lot of play from them before they need to be replaced. You can use an AC cord to power it but this doesn’t come with it. If you want to pick up an AC cord try looking at used game shops, they usually get a ton of GameBoy accessories, games and units on trade in for newer items. I can usually get about fifteen hours of play from two AA batteries when I am using the Tetris DX or Dr. Mario games, not bad in my opinion. This doesn’t have an automatic off feature to save battery life so make sure that if you put it on pause you remember to shut it off. This happened a few times when I was playing and the phone rang - I went back into the kitchen and heard this strange noise. It was the background music from Tetris DX playing and it freaked me out for a couple of seconds before I realized that I’d left it on after I completed a game. The battery power is the opposite of the GBA; when the red light is nice and bright you have full power, as it starts to dull you have to watch it and replace them before it dies in the middle of a game. The GBA starts off with a green light then dithers until it hits red.

Price

When these were first out the price was somewhere around a hundred dollars, these days you can pick them up for less than half of that - even less if you get them from a game store that carries used products. I can’t remember exactly what I paid for this but I think it was somewhere in the eighty dollar area. It did come with a small carrying case but that was about it, no power adapter or starter game. I am not sure if Nintendo is even selling these anymore; if you are looking to pick one up, check used game stores or [don’t laugh] pawn shops. You’d be surprised at some of the stuff that these places get when people are hard pressed for money. Make sure that you get some type of guarantee that the items are in working condition if you are buying used units or at the very least a return policy that allows you to return defective or non-working things.

Accessories

Unless you are buying this new, there’s no real concern with using non-Nintendo accessories. One of the stipulations of the original warranty was that if you used any type of non-Nintendo item with the unit and it caused harm, they wouldn’t repair or replace it. Since these things are practically impossible to find new, that’s not really an issue. Most of the aftermarket accessories you will come across will claim to enhance screen size, light the screen, allow for better control of the gaming functions or enhance sound. I’ve had bad and good experiences when picking up accessories; the ones that are supposed to give you more light generally leave you with glare spots and so far I haven’t come across one of them that’s been able to improve or enhance the sound.

Game Cartridges

When I got the NES home gaming system I had a lot of trouble playing used games on it until someone grabbed a cartridge and blew into the slot [get your minds out of the gutter]. I have no idea what this does - get rid of dust, provide some moisture ... whatever it did for the NES games, the same trick works with the GBC. Sometimes you insert a cartridge and the word Nintendo is scrambled or the background music is distorted - sometimes the game doesn’t load at all. Pop out the cartridge, blow into the slot, slide it back in, power up the unit and most of the time it will work perfectly. You can pick up a lot of different types of games for the GBC and as I said, you can also play the older black and white games on this however they will be in black and white - this doesn’t add color to those games. Used game stores are the best place to pick up cartridges but make sure you can try them out first to make sure they are working perfectly. Most of the time if you buy these games used you won’t get instructions with them so make sure you know the basics of it or can find a downloadable manual online. There are a lot of GB fan sites that have instruction scans for games but you have to be careful when downloading them - sometimes they clump similar titles together [like all the Pokemon games].

There are game titles for all ages on the GBC; since the controls are very easy to get used to using, this is a great thing for younger kids to have. You don’t have to sink a lot of money into a unit and the cartridges can be picked up used for five to ten dollars. If you are looking into one of these for a child you can get educational games, adventure, role playing and yes, even Mary-Kate and Ashley games. I got a Barbie one for Annabelle and she played it non-stop for about two weeks. Even though this doesn’t have the advanced controls like the GBA, it is one of the best picks for kids when it comes to low priced hand held units. You can still find some new titles if you check auction sites like eBay but most of the time you are going to have to settle for used games. If you want new titles, stick with stores that have a great repuation like Game Asylum, they might not have a lot of titles in at any given time but you can ask them to alert you when they get GBC ones in.

The Bottom Line

This is by far my favorite hand held gaming system - it doesn’t have the graphics of the Nokia N-Gage Console but it doesn’t have the high price either. When you look into buying a hand held console it’s a lot like buying a printer. Yeah, I’ll explain that. When you buy a printer you have to look at the price of it but at the cost of the ink cartridges too; just because a printer is being sold for $69.99 doesn’t mean that it is the best deal - especially if you have to play half that for refill cartridges. The same thing holds true for video game systems. You might spend a hundred dollars on the unit and think you are getting an awesome deal but the game titles are going to end up killing you. Even when the GBC games were being sold new, they weren’t all that expensive. With so many newer consoles on the market the price of them has dropped to under ten bucks a piece on the used titles. No matter where I go, one thing is for sure, I’ll have my GameBoy Color with me, a couple of extra batteries and some games.


As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2005 Freak369


GameBoy game reviews ...

Bob The Builder: Fix It Fun!
Tertis DX
Kirby’s Dream Land
Dr. Mario
Yoshi’s Cookie


Accessories ..

Radica Trap Light
InterAct Game Guard Cases
InterAct FaceMasks
InterAct Super Zoom