The fabulous engineering of the Nintendo Game Boy
Criticism was not generous at first... and it still won. Because?
Monochrome screen, low resolution, absence of backlight , mono speaker... if one closely studies the specifications of the original Game Boy , it is not difficult to imagine it as a recharged version of the Game & Watch series . However, the console managed to dominate the market thanks to these limitations , optimizing fundamental aspects such as battery life and price. Real Engineering on YouTube invites us to explore the engineering of the Nintendo Game Boy , and its video is not to be missed.
When developing the Game Boy , Nintendo chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi adopted a strategy known as "Lateral thinking with 'withered' technology . " In essence, his objective was to prioritize the stability and accessibility of a product, avoiding the bleeding edge trap and favoring the use of more mature and economical components.
When the console arrived in the West, the specialized press did not miss this detail. From a certain point of view, the expectation of a "miniaturized NES" collided head-on with the monochrome screen, the lack of backlight , and even the dimensions of the console itself. However, the Game Boy managed to sell more than one hundred million units , pulverizing technologically superior competition. As it did? Real Engineering explains it in its latest video:
Nintendo Game Boy, and the art of turning weaknesses into advantages
The original Game Boy hit Japanese stores in April 1989, and three months later it did the same in the United States. That meant one thing: Alkaline batteries . Lithium solutions were still “in the future,” and purchasing batteries would often become a huge pressure point for many families. The Sega Game Gear, the TurboExpress and the Atari Lynx required six AA batteries , for a playing time ranging between 2 and 6 hours. On the other hand, the Game Boy only used four, with an average of 15 hours of gameplay, and a ceiling of 30 hours . The economical aspect of batteries clearly favored the Game Boy.
The screen was a key piece to achieve this. Nintendo initially chose a TN (twisted nematic) effect screen , but the company's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, criticized the viewing angle and lack of contrast (in fact, the video indicates that Yamauchi even canceled the project ) . For this reason, the Game Boy adopted an STN (super twisted nematic) effect screen , and compensated for the increase in cost by reducing its size .
At the same time, the Sharp LR35902 could only work with an address space of 64 kilobytes. If the console tried to process each pixel on the panel individually (160 x 144 = 23,040 pixels) , it would eat up 35 percent of the available memory, however, the number reaches 12.5 percent, 8 kilobytes . How did he achieve this? Using tiles , small 8x8 pixel tiles . The CPU creates a background of 32 x 32 tiles, but the screen only shows 20 x 18. The solution was to place a "window" that enabled an additional resource for the programmers: With the static background, they could move that window, and generate a sensation of movement. The intro to Link's Awakening is an excellent example.
The final section of the video focuses on four-channel sound generation, and the bank switching technique , which allows the hardware to access a greater amount of memory, while maintaining its limitations. The example used here is Pokémon Red/Blue: The original Game Boy can only read up to 32 kilobytes of data, but these games have 373 kilobytes, and change banks automatically, depending on the situation.
In short, the Game Boy was more accessible , (much) cheaper in the long term than its direct competitors, and a catalog of games that knew how to take advantage of available resources only solidified its leading position.
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