The Insane Engineering of the Game Boy
Real Engineering (via John Gruber):
The original Gameboy was launched in 1989 and was received with mixed reviews. While its success is ingrained in our cultural memory now, when it was launched it was a technologically inferior product. The Gameboy was designed to be a cheap, low-powered, portable gaming system. It was limited in many ways. No backlight for the screen and incredibly low installed memory available for coding games. Review magazines of the time viewed these features as a negative, but these compromises in design were exactly why the Gameboy succeeded. This was a console for the masses. Even with these limitations, engineers and programmers came up with ingenious methods to create games that have not only stood the test of time but launched some of the most valuable franchises in the history of the entertainment industry, TV shows, movies, toys, and even theme parks.
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