Mostly good article, but a couple of corrections...
It's interesting to note that when Nintendo strays from the underlying philosophy of the Game Boy, trying to compete on raw power alone, it rarely succeeds: the Super NES only outsold the Genesis because of Sega's incompetence, the N64 barely squeaked into second place against the Saturn, and the GameCube was assumed by most to be a sure sign of Nintendo's looming demise. Once the company stopped trying to keep up with the competition and instead returned to making systems that, like Game Boy, were merely good enough, its fortunes quickly turned around.
The N64 outsold the Saturn 3-to-1 worldwide, and over 10-to-1 in the US. That's not "barely". The overall point stands -- that is, that the N64 competed with the Playstation and Saturn technically but got crushed by the PSX, and Nintendo has never won by pushing tech -- but the comparison should be to the PSX, not Saturn.
Probably correct about the SNES vs. Genesis, of course; Sega was losing steam anyway thanks to Donkey Kong Country, but had they not so horribly mismanaged things, they would indeed have had a much better chance of holding the lead, I'm sure.
Four AA batteries could run a Game Boy for 15 hours or longer, making it the perfect accompaniment for a long car trip.
Where DID this number come from? I've seen it around the internet before, but it's completely wrong. The Game Boy actually gets about 40(or perhaps 35-40, at minimum) hours out of a set of 4 AA batteries, not 15. That's a big difference! (If you need proof, read the manual; like with the Virtual Boy, the average estimated battery life is listed there.)
It's the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (original mode) that get 12-15 hours out of their 2 AA batteries. The original GB has better battery life than that, overall and per battery.
Anyway, the original GB is of course one of my favorite consoles. The Game Boy was the first console I owned myself, and I loved it. The GB and GBC were the only consoles I owned before September 1999, in fact, when I got an N64... I was mostly a PC gamer, but aside from when I was playing a friends' system, my console gaming at home was on the GB.
I don't have a huge GB collection, just 39 games (32 original GB games, 2 second copies of original GB games, and 5 dual-mode GB/GBC games). Still, it includes a lot of great ones, and the original GB is still perhaps my favorite console... its platformers are easily my favorite, for sure, and Link's Awakening is my favorite handheld game ever, but it is admittedly weak in RPGs and strategy games... still, the Game Boy is a great, great console with a large library of good games. There are plenty more I don't have but would like to get...
Favorites:
1. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
2. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
3. Kirby's Dream Land 2
4. Gradius: The Interstellar Assault
5. Final Fantasy Adventure
6. Donkey Kong '94
7. Micro Machines
8. Kirby's Pinball Land
9. Mole Mania
10. R-Type DX (GB/C) (sure, no saving on GB, unlike the new GBC modes... still, it's R-Type!)
Honorable mentions: Too many to note... Super Mario Land, Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land 2 (GB/C), Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Block Ball, Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge, Mega Man IV, Mega Man V, Survival Kids (GB/C), Bomberman GB, Gargoyle's Quest, Bionic Commando, and more...
Sure, now I have a GBA, GB Player, Super Game Boy... but still, I still use the original, green-screen GB sometimes. It's still a great console, it's very durable, gets fantastic battery life, many games look and play fine... some are tough to play (Donkey Kong Land's blurriness, for instance), but I just play those on SGB. Others I play on SGB to get the special SGB features... but the original system is special.
