35 years later, the Game Boy still shapes how we play games

Thirty-five years ago, Nintendo released a gaming handheld that would change the gaming landscape forever. The Game Boy might seem archaic now with its lack of a backlit screen and minimal button placement, but it resonated with a lot of people, sold over 118 million units, and inspired a generation of video game hardware and software creators. It’s even a piece of hardware that modern companies like Panic reference when creating a modern gaming handheld like the Playdate.

Playdate project lead Greg Maletic revealed to Digital Trends that Panic originally wanted the Playdate to emulate the look and feel of Nintendo’s Game & Watch handhelds, which pre-dated the Game Boy. Panic even used SHARP Memory LCD to replicate the look of Game & Watch, but it found that “attempts at making games in this style were disappointing.” In this moment that would determine the future of the Playdate as a handheld, Panic looked to the Game Boy.

“The success of the Game Boy gave us confidence that it was possible to create beautiful games in monochrome, allowing us to keep the Sharp display we’d already chosen,” Maletic tells Digital Trends when asked for the company’s reflections on the Game Boy ahead of today’s anniversary. “We also adopted the Game Boy’s control layout, ultimately deciding on its B-A button order rather than the A-B setup that initially seemed more natural to us. Nintendo’s reasoning that the primary button should be under the right thumb — and named ‘A’ — made sense.”

Design decisions made by Nintendo in the 1980s are still impacting video games and the platforms that support them in the 2020s. Speaking to creators inspired by the Game Boy, reverence for the iconic retro handheld remains strong and continues to shape the gaming hardware we use today.

Stimulating the mind

Even now, the Game Boy’s sleek design still feels iconic, from its distinct rectangular shape to its minimal buttons. It has some defining shortcomings too, like the lack of a backlit screen. Even