by Antony M. McCartney

Created on: November 04, 2009   Last Updated: November 05, 2009

The Nintendo Game Boy. King of Nineties portable gaming. During it's main run the Sega Game Gear was its main competition, yet the Game Boy was the toy of choice in an way so overwhelming that Sega dropped out of the hand-held race altogether even though the Game Gear was obviously technologically superior with a color back-lit screen.

So what was it that set the Game Boy apart? The games. Not that Sonic wasn't fun, but the Game Boy was just overloaded with exceptional games.

Firstly, there was the big title spin-offs, Including Mario and Zelda games which were enjoyable cousins to their home console predecessors. Zelda: Link's Awakening is still my favorite in the saga and Super Mario Land was in my opinion just as enjoyable as any home console Mario game. Another spin-off worth mentioning is Donkey Kong Land which was excellent for its time.

Secondly were the ports. A port is when a popular game from one console (or platform) is recreated on another. The best of these would have to be the puzzle games. Tetris, Dr. Mario, Bust a Move 2, and Pac Man all saw respectable ports to the Game Boy. Many other genres also were ported to the Game Boy, Most notable in my experience would have to be the ports of the Super Nintendo fighting game Killer Instinct (although not as good as the home system) and the arcade adventure game Bubble Bobble.

Now all those classics and spin-offs were nice, and they take up the bulk of great Game Boy games, but more importantly are the franchises that debuted on the Game Boy. The biggest franchise to spawn from a Game Boy game would have to be the fantasy epic role-playing game Pokemon. It originally was released in two flavors, Red and Blue, that featured a similar story (The names of the Hero and Rival were reversed, giving the feeling of rivaling others who had the other version) but featured different collectible characters that could be traded with other Game Boy owners.

Another Franchise that was started on the Game Boy will try to trick you. The Final Fantasy Legend was a series of 3 Game Boy games that in America were released under the Final Fantasy franchise as a marketing ploy. In reality the games were the first three games of the Romancing SaGa, which includes The SaGa Frontier games for the Sony PlayStation.

As all "Greatest Games" lists are purely opinion, I would like to offer my personal opinion. As a young man I enjoyed the very time consuming role-playing games such as the aforementioned Pokemon and The Final Fantasy Legend series. But as I am far busier these days, if I pick up a Game Boy I am most likely to play a quick game of Bust a Move (also known as Puzzle Bobble) as it's levels are usually fairly short yet challenging, and it's password system makes it easy to pick up where you left off.

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