The original monochrome Game Boy is the elder statesman of Nintendo's handheld family, having arrived on the market back in 1989. The console became a commercial and cultural phenomenon, effortlessly casting aside its more technically-competent rivals and establishing a brand which would sell in excess of 200 million units worldwide, before being mothballed by Nintendo in favour of its new "Dual Screen" line.
This handheld marvel continues to attract attention in spite of its advanced years; modders are keeping the console alive by retro-fitting it with better components while chip-tune composers even go as far as using it as an instrument in front of live audiences. The appeal of the Game Boy is arguably timeless, and no one knows this better than veteran video game journalist Jeremy Parish. His career has seen him in key roles at outlets such as 1Up and IGN, and his current position as Editor-in-Chief at US Gamer gives him a very unique perspective on the entire games industry.
However, we're here today to talk about a side-project which is very dear to his heart: Game Boy World, an effort to painstakingly catalogue every single game ever released on Nintendo's handheld, from 1989 to the end of its lifespan.
Nintendo Life: What's the overall objective of Game Boy World?
Jeremy Parish: Theoretically, to unearth the history of and shed light on every Game Boy game ever published in all regions. Realistically, that's something like 2,000 games, which means if I tackled a game per week for the rest of my life it would basically take the rest of my life. Really, I just want to create a permanent reference resource for anyone interested in Game Boy, and when possible I want to dig into the history of all these games no one ever thinks about any more.
What makes the Game Boy so special to you personally?
Nothing, really! I didn't own a Game Boy until Game Boy Color. I had a Super Game Boy briefly, but really I was an outsider to the GB universe during its lifetime. Beginning with GBC and Neo Geo Pocket, though, I started to fall in love with portable gaming, and being the backward-facing dude that I am, I've grown interested in its history.
No one really pays attention to Game Boy, though, because it's not as landmark a system as the NES or as vibrant as Genesis or Neo•Geo. Yet it was the best selling game system of the 20th century - it even outsold PlayStation! I figure there's got to be something to that, beyond the obvious fact that it was cheap and convenient. So really, I guess this gets back to the first question - this project is a chance for me to discover Game Boy, a missing piece of my video gaming history.
How are you playing each title? Are you using original hardware?
Yeah, it's important to me to use real hardware whenever possible. Emulation never quite feels right to me, and part of this project is to upload sample footage of these games for anyone to use for archival purposes, or for their own video projects. I always get acquainted with games on either a Game Boy or Game Boy Light. it's all well and good to be able to see the game in action clearly, but to really feel the game you need to experience it under the conditions it would have been played in. And playing on real hardware makes a huge difference... fast-paced games are a completely different creature on a tiny screen with huge lag and ghosting.
When it comes time to capture, though, I have a Super Game Boy running in an RGB-modded Super NES feeding into an upscaler to convert the signal to 720p. It's literally the best possible image quality you can get from real carts and hardware. Maybe not authentic to the console experience, but whatever.
How difficult has it been tracking down these games? Do you think there may be some you'll never get your hands on, and if so, what's the plan in those cases?
It's as difficult as I want to make it. When I first started out, I was just grabbing loose carts off eBay, which is a cinch. But as the site evolved, I decided it would be great to include photography and scans of all the games' packaging. And that is MUCH harder. But that's what happens when you're working with a console geared toward elementary-age kids. Most of them weren't anal-retentive little weirdos who kept all their game boxes like I was. The real question is, how much am I willing to spend on them?
It's no trouble to find bare carts of even the most obscenely rare Game Boy titles, like Amazing Tater or Space Marauder, but I've been watching for complete versions of certain games for a year and have had zero luck. Even some of the more mundane Japanese games are tough to find; I figured I'd be able to grab everything I could ever need last time I was in Japan, but even there kids weren't so good at hanging onto boxes and manuals. I had the hardest time finding Golf complete in Japan. Golf! That's a common first-party title!
There are some games I accept I will never be able to photograph in their entirety, like Trip World. Thankfully, though, readers have offered to lend me some of their hard-to-find carts for video capture needs, at least. In the absolute worst-case scenario, where a game is impossible to find in any capacity, I'm OK with falling back on something like a GB Everdrive.
Which games have surprised you the most? Have you had any games which you've covered as part of Game Boy World which you perhaps missed back in the '90s?
Well, I'm playing through the library systematically, so I've only seen maybe 1-2% of the total library. That said, even these few games I've played have had their share of surprises. Stuff like Revenge of the Gator and Kwirk are games I've never have given the time of day outside of this project, but they're really good. Meanwhile, sequels to NES games (Castlevania, Wizards & Warriors) have mostly been terrible.
The real education, as I've built the site database, has been just how closely the Japanese and Western Game Boy experience were at the beginning, and how much they diverged over time. And, to be honest (skipping ahead in the syllabus here), how comparatively awful most Western-developed Game Boy titles were compared to their Japanese counterparts.
You've previously mentioned that you may also expand the site to cover the Game Boy's rivals, the Game Gear and Lynx. What's the rationale behind growing the scope of the site in this way?
Games don't exist in a vacuum. To appreciate their evolution, it's good to see what else was happening in the world around the same time. But mostly, I want to tackle other platforms because in all honesty devoting yourself wholly to Game Boy is really tough. It's such a limited system. I like the little thing, but there's only so much its games can do.
Do you see the site expanding to cover Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance in the same detail?
Ah, I could maybe get to Color, but Advance... I dunno. That's a long way out. The problem with both of those systems for my purposes is that it's a real challenge to get the same high-quality video capture from real software that I have for classic Game Boy. To get Game Boy Player to output a true 240p signal, you have to drop a lot of cash and jump through a lot of hoops that seem a bit much for the moment.
You're cataloguing the release dates of software that is over 20 years old. Has it been hard to pinpoint actual dates for some of these games?
For Japanese games, it's a cinch. The Japanese games industry tracked precise release dates of every game back to the Famicom launch for every system, and those dates are readily available. I can read enough Japanese to parse all but a handful of titles, and those last few I managed to figure out through trial and error.
Western dates are harder. Nintendo of America has a complete database of official U.S. launch dates for all Game Boy releases, but they're generalized to the month. Meanwhile, European dates - even for latter-day Game Boy Color titles! - often get no more specific than the year. You guys need to work on your indexing technology.
Projects like this are incredibly important - despite gaming being a relatively young medium, we're in very real danger of losing a lot of its history. Was this a motivation for you starting Game Boy World?
Yeah, that was a big motivation. I want this to be more than just a survey of games... there are plenty of those around. I'm really interesting in digging as deeply as possible into the origins of Game Boy's library, to learn more about the developers who made the games. Which is tough, given how poorly those things are documented, and there's a lot of guessing involved. But like I said, games don't exist in a vacuum, and I think it's valuable not only to look at games but to understand their context - their developers' history, cultural trends at the time, that sort of thing.
For instance, the Japan-only release Yakuman is a mahjong game. Who cares, right? But it's named for, and based on, a rare Nintendo LCD game from the early '80s that was like a Game & Watch on steroids. That's pretty cool to know! And it's not on the Wikipedia page. I love digging up things like that, making connections.
I'm sure some of the connections I'm making are spurious, since a lot of what I'm doing in my research involves making some assumptive leaps. So, maybe the late '80s surge in beach volleyball games like Malibu Beach Volleyball WASN'T due to Top Gun's famous shirtless volleyball scene... but even so, that's part of the cultural context for these games, and I'm enjoying the process of connecting the dots. I see some SD Gundam games on the horizon, though, so I suspect I'm going to be watching a lot of anime.
Are you accepting any help or assistance from contributors, and if so, how can people can involved?
Absolutely. I'm not too proud to beg. I have a Patreon whose income goes pretty much to acquiring software and hardware for this project. I kicked off the project using a Super NES clone on a terrible video signal, but I was able to upgrade to a much better setup thanks to hardware contributions by very generous people who share my interest in this tiny little niche of game history. I also happily accept donations of games, or even loans for boxes and manuals for photography and scans. I'm in the process of locking down all of 1990's releases at the moment, and any help is appreciated.
The Game Boy enjoyed one of the longest lifespans in gaming history, which means there's an awful lot of ground to cover here. Have there been any moments where you thought you'd bitten off more than you can chew with this project?
Oh, from the start. I hemmed and hawed over this project for almost a year before launching it, because I know there's no way I'll ever make it to the end. But I've made peace with the fact that I'll die before completing this, and that's OK! It's a project worth undertaking. What else am I going to do in my free time, binge-watch Netflix? I'd rather be productive.
You've published the first year of Game Boy releases as a book - do you plan on doing the same for each year of the console's lifespan?
For as long as I can keep this going. Several years of the system's life have 100+ titles, so I might have to break those into a couple of volumes. The books are important to me. Web content is ephemeral - it can be deleted or lost or whatever, but once it's in print, it's locked down forever.
The Game Boy is perhaps one of the most iconic gaming systems of all time. Why do you think it was able to achieve such critical and commercial success?
Nintendo (and specifically Gunpei Yokoi) were geniuses at figuring out just how much they could strip out of a product to cut costs without rendering it unusable. Game Boy is a master class in engineering, a game console pared down to the absolute minimum of functionality. Take out anything else and those games would have been too primitive to stand alongside the NES. And as a result, the system was crazy cheap, battery efficient, and easy to program for. There was just enough under the hood to deliver rich experiences like The Legend of Zelda, but at half the price of Lynx or Game Gear. Great engineering, great software, great price, great marketing...
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Comments 42
Such a weird ambition for me. I loved the original Gameboy at the time, but looking back, the hardware was poor, and the vast majority of the games are rubbish. It was a success and is remembered fondly because most of us were kids back then, and there was probably a game based on everything we loved in our life. How many of them still stand up as great games though? There are gems for sure, mostly from Nintendo, but they are surrounded by so much licensed shovelware.
Am I the only one that thinks of Sleepy Hollow when I hear Jeremy Parish?
Always enjoyed Jeremy's writing on 1Up. Pity that site shut down. It was one of the few that showed "video game journalism" didn't have to be an oxymoron.
Great initiative by Jeremy Parish. I had somehow missed there was a Gameboy World video series, despite following most of what he's up to. I've got some watching to do.
@Dr_Corndog Have you checked out US Gamer?
@Peach64 You could argue that could be said of both the NES and the SNES, too - those machines saw plenty of terrible licenced titles.
There are loads of great games on the Game Boy, so I think you're being a little harsh. It's a wonderful system which put proves that technologically humble consoles can still play host to deep and involving experiences.
I recommend that people check out some of Mr. Parish's retrospectives on the subject. This is a particularly good one:
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-game-boy-legacy-a-25th-anniversary-celebration
Also checkout his retronauts podcast (the old one if it is still accessible and the new one).
@Peach64 The ambition is not much weirder than chrontendo (which may have been an inspiration for this project), which seeks to catalog the NES games from order of release. In fact, the Gameboy was arguably one of the most important touchstones in gaming, so cataloging its lineup is very important for history's sake. I don't want to speak for him, but Mr. Parish does detailed analysis of game levels through his Anatomy of a Game series, so he seems to have a love for this sort of deep retrospective and review for things in this medium that shaped it so much.
guy would save a lot of time if he bought one of these
Amazing Tater:
Space Marauder:
Good luck with that I guess. Gaming or no, I never understood the appeal of history or the past in general. I always found that kind of thing quite boring.
@HollywoodHogan If you have to put a Micro SD Card in the head of the cart unprotected I sure as hell wouldn't buy that. If anything I would buy pic related again for rom hacks or translation.
I still have the boxes for Pokemon Yellow and Monster Max. Keep meaning to get a display box for em, they're works of art to me 😇
I wish Jeremy luck in completing this. Part of the "problem" with European release dates is that there may be more than one, if the game was staggering across various countries. At least Japan and US is a bit easier to corroborate.
@HollywoodHogan He has one of those for playing rare games, but that doesn't get you good photos/scans of the packaging, or information about precisely when games were released
@TeeJay History is boring? You don't understand the appeal of understanding what happened in the past? Seriously?
@Chaoz please warn everybody you meet that they should actually ignore completely your advice on hardware, you don't want to lead people into bad purchases.
@Barely_Able Yup and nope. And yup. I find it funny that you phrased that as if it's some sort of given that everyone likes history.
@sarkwalvein instead of just saying to warn people I recommended it to (which is zero) about not buying the thing, how about you explain as to why it's a bad purchases?
@Chaoz
Krikzz makes reliable and dependable flashcarts and will repair them if you have any issues. the one you posted appears to be a cheap "made in china" piece of crap. I think that is what he is alluding to.
I never liked that Nintendo used disposable packaging back then; it was almost shocking when we first got a Genesis and saw how Sega packaged carts.
@Chaoz Everdrive products are highly supported by Krikzz and by the comunity, not only they are actively developed but you have a contact person in case of problems. Your suggested card is very memory limited, in the other hand the Everdrive lets you use way bigger than 64MB microSD cards and store many simultaneous applications and games and change them easily, it provides many additional features and is very useful for homebrew development, it is versatile and allows you to carry just one cart instead of a bag full of carts. The one you suggested is plagued by problems, you can see a review that include both your suggestion and the Everdrive here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWOHBsGjlEE
I've been following Gameboy World since last summer and it is easily one of my favorite video game sites out there (sorry Nintendo Life!) As a handheld gamer, huge fan of the Gameboy and a historian his work has been simply incredible to find and read. Mr Parish is easily one of the best video journalists. There just isn't much love for that diminutive Gray Brick (although it is much easier to play all the games on a Light or Color, no motion blur and much more portable!) so I'm glad to see this project exist and actually have a huge passion behind it. I'll be picking up his book here soon and a classic Nintendo Gameboy Players Guide, for some good old Gameboy literature!
I've always enjoyed Jeremy's perspective on games. He's still writing and podcasting over on USgamer. The site gives more in-depth coverage to topics within the industry.
Good on him but...
"What makes the Game Boy so special to you personally?
Nothing, really! I didn't own a Game Boy until Game Boy Color."
...makes me wish this was done by someone who lived and breathed this platform, but this will be pretty must-read all the same.
@Damo Difference is there were ok / good / very good and great licensed titles at that time. Recently I can think of the Arkham Games / the first two Transformers Dark Moon games and that is it (Along with loads of terrible).
My most cherished memories of childhood are from my Game Boy, mostly because I was anti-social and didn't get along with other kids too well so I was usually burying my face into that spinach-green screen in the sunlight. I miss my old gray brick, it was my best friend on long two-day trips to visit my grandparents and I never even had to change the batteries
if he really wants to do this, he needs to hit up Dain (owner of NintendoAge). He has a complete in box Game Boy and Game Boy Color set.
I was lucky to get the original GB as a kid. Handheld gaming has been a deeply cherished hobby ever since!
These are so expertly written looks at the games, he could easily be a lecturer at some video game school!
@AshFoxX I'm pretty sure someone else changed the batteries for you, hehe.
I remember getting the system at Christmas when I was 9 years old...played it to death. Revenge Of The Gator, Dragon's Curse 1 and 2, Castlevania Adventure, Tetris, Super Mario Land, Kirby's Dream Land and some of the other great titles...then purchasing Metroid 2 later on and falling in love with it. The graphics may be outdated, but at that time, it was a classic system that had plenty of love! I still have it and can still go back and play that good old green screen with black images!!!!
@Moshugan nah, 4 double a's could last me 35-40 hours.
http://www.gameboyworld.com/1999/03/12/oha-suta-yama-chan-raymond/
@AshFoxX Oh yeah, you meant that there was no reason to change the batteries during the trip? LoL, my bad.
That first video you guys linked was very interesting to me. I'll make sure to follow this project.
Eh, don't be so glum mister archivist person. Chances are that one person in the project's inevitable cult following of less than a thousand people will take it upon themselves to complete your mission without permission and a serious quality dip in informativeness and presentation. Because that's what's happened with every unfinished thing ever.
Thank you for posting this interview, I've actually finished watching every one of this guy's videos so far, and I've really enjoyed them! Keep it up!
How awesome Jeremy is doing this.
@TeeJay Eventually everyone does like history, reminiscing is as sure as death and taxes.
The ultimate fanboy. "There are just so many GameBoy games to talk about I'll die before I get to tell you what I know about all of them"
Great interview. Great project. I'm off to check out his Patreon.
Great interview. Great project. Off to check out that Patreon.
Every time one of Jeremy's Gameboy videos is released, it's a bit like christmas. I very much enjoy them. Thanks, Jeremy, here's to the next 30 years of great reviews!
I love this guy. I love his dedication to his work. I love Anatomy of Super Metroid. I love this quote, "Web content is ephemeral - it can be deleted or lost or whatever, but once it's in print, it's locked down forever."
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