The first Game Boy’s battery life was inhumanly long, something Switch and other handheld gamers can only dream of – Game Boy

Console gameboy It has sold approximately 120 million consoles and is historically considered one of the most profitable and successful devices in video game history. Machine developed Gunpei Yokoi It also had one of the most impressive life cycles in the industry, with its first unit sold in 1989 and production continuing until the turn of the century. That is, more than ten years of providing pleasure to users who could also enjoy a catalog full of genuine jewelry.

However, at first even Nintendo He trusted his console. The staff knew her internally as give me the game, because to them it seemed like useless trash with no future. However, work on the portability of the machine was carried out so intensively that Hiroshi Yamauchi (then President of Nintendo) was convinced that sales would be in the millions. So it was. The machine’s successful design and games like Tetris were partly to blame, which was a brutal sales statement, but there’s another detail that’s usually overlooked and difficult to overcome on any modern handheld console.

Game Boy, a miracle of portability

I remember that when they gave me gameboy original (aka “brick”) for my birthday, two factors were decisive in its acquisition. The first was price. At the time, when it had been on the market for several years, its price was practically fixed: 6990 pesetas (which would now be about 70 euros at the exchange rate, already adjusted for inflation). Additionally, there were several famous video games, some of which were very good: Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Wario Land, Pokemon Yellow…

Sega put its play equipment has been on the market for several years now, and I have to admit that it was shocking to see a portable console with full color graphics (in fact, it used a chip from its older sister, the Master System). However, despite being on the cutting edge of technology at the time, its concept of portability was truly mediocre. It was almost twice as heavy as its competitor, had a much larger size and, worst of all, its battery lasted a long time. from 3 to 4 hours so many.

This meant a real financial drain for the parents. Keep in mind that 30 years ago, the most commonly purchased batteries were disposable batteries (rechargeable batteries came later), which meant significant expense. You can spend almost as much money keeping your console running as you did on the machine itself. Therefore the movement Nintendo It was very clever. Very compact equipment with a monochrome screen and energy-efficient chips allowed it to demonstrate brutal autonomy that could from 15:00 to 30:00. depending on the game and the conditions in which you played.

To give you an idea of ​​the milestone, this was achieved with 4 AA batteriesWhen play equipment To ensure much less autonomy, 6 AA batteries were required. It is obvious that the design gameboy He made many sacrifices, the main one being no screen backlight. Everything met the intentions of the engineers, who wanted to create a light, small car with great autonomy. In this sense, Nintendo’s portable console is a real achievement in terms of energy efficiency in the field of portable equipment.

And although all this happened in the 90s, it seems to me that this is a very relevant topic. You just need to see the quantity Consolidated PCs that emerge and the major constraints they face. There are those who rely on power, as in the case of Lenovo Legion Go or Asus Horn Ellie, but at the cost of a rather limited battery and portability concept. Then this Steam deckwho read the problem more balancedly, suggesting better balancewhile allowing you to run most games from the Steam catalog.

And then we have her own nintendo switchwho continues to defend the concept out-of-the-box thinking from Gunpei Yokoi, which is to use existing equipment to develop amazing devices. gameboy This was not only because of the fun it offered through its impressive catalog of video games, but also because of things like the ability to play for hours without having to go to the store to buy more batteries. And that was what mattered in the end. But even the Switch lags significantly in battery life compared to this legendary laptop. The original model of the hybrid console appeared around 2.5 to 6.5 hours of battery life, compared to the latest OLED model, which has a battery life of 4.5 to 9 hours. Exclusively portable, the Switch Lite model lasts from 3 to 7 hours.

By the way, did you survive that time? Tell me how you experienced it and whether you agree that it is still such a well-designed piece of equipment that it should serve as an example.

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