Thread 11972674

How the hell did Nintendo get away with selling this thing for 12 years without replacing it with a more powerful model?

Nintendo fans have no standards and Nintendo hardware is always several years out of date, so it's natural.

One of the best-selling games of all time released at basically the end of its lifespan so Nintendo was basically forced to keep supporting it.

And nobody really cared anyway because the competition all sucked.

>>11972674 (OP)
I dunno... How did record companies get away with selling vinyl for 80 years?

>>11972691
Because it's analog?

LCD technology was basically stagnant until the late 90s, why upgrade the other hardware if the bottleneck was the display?

>>11972674 (OP)
That's kind of misleading. Pocket was already way smaller and required less batteries, that was a big deal back then, it also made GB actually "pocketable" unlike the original. GBC is obviously a bit different too.
I think in general back then handheld hardware didn't evolve that quickly. It's not like WonderSwan or NGP(C) were much better. It's only after LED screens and Li-ion batteries when the handheld devices started truly evolving fast.

>12
You're forgetting the Gameboy color

>>11972726
GBC was not a hardware upgrade.

>>11972729
Literally had color and better specs, dumbass

>>11972674 (OP)
They didn't. Youtube lied to you.

>>11972731
Not really. Nintendo officially classes GB and GBC as the same console. It's no different than PS4 to PS4 Pro.

>>11972737
are you an idiot? wtf are you even talking about "officially", officially they are two separate products, one of which has backwards compatibility, the underlying hardware is significantly different

>>11972674 (OP)
More like 7 years if you wanna consider that the Pocket had a way better screen and battery life in a smaller form factor. The original GB peaked in '95 with the "play it loud" marketing campaign. Then the Pocket in '96 and the Color came out in '98.

Still haven't covered up the hole I punched in my wall thinking about this.
12 YEARS NINTENDO
I HAVE NOT FORGOT
I WILL NEVER FORGET
STILL MAD

>>11972874
>the underlying hardware is significantly different
GBC games look exactly the same as GB games, except with colour. There is no difference.

>>11972674 (OP)
Launched with a massive game that had a very wide appeal. It was cheap, had good games, good battery life, gigantic library, the competition all fizzled out.

>>11972901
There's more to hardware than pixel counts. The GBC was backwards compatible with GB games, and some worked on both natively, but there were also GBC only games. Because they would take more than just greyscaling visuals.

>>11972901
You're only saying that so you can continue with the flawed premise of your thread. Your position is false and you are a retard.

>>11972957
this, also nintendo's brand was and still is huge

>>11972729
HURRRRR

>>11973054
>>11972986
>>11972975
These people are such saps they probably think the PS5 Pro is a whole new console.

>>11972674 (OP)
I wish more platforms would be supported this long.
>>11972737
Then explain “only for GBC” games.

Same story with the NES. Nintendo would prefer to be a do-nothing monopoly and only begrudgingly moves forward when the competition forces them to react.

>>11973058
O I am laffin. It’s a branding move, to make rubes think it was a new console. Obviously it worked.

>>11972901
learn the fucking specs you fucking retard

>>11973058
>Then explain “only for GBC” games.
There are "only for New Nintendo 3DS" games, does that make it a whole new console?

>>11972737
user is underage

>>11972674 (OP)
wtf were you gonna do about it

>>11973076
>There are "only for PS2" games, does that make it a whole new console?

>>11973104
You are straight-up retarded. You legit think mid-gen refreshes like the GBC and New 3DS are new consoles? You need to get yourself mentally evaluated, I am seriously concerned about you being allowed out in public society.

>>11973107
You sound pretty flustered, were you born after a time of concepts like addon "consoles"? Maybe cross compatibility addons? There's been a lot of wild shit to what can be squeezed into different "consoles."

>>11973068
Does the Gameboy hardware support color or monochrome? Also it has a 2x faster processor.

>>11973140
Gameboy has 4 shades of greyeen

>>11973140
Cram it, poofter!

>Game Boy Color wasn't a hardware upgr-
Not only did you get color, you also got twice the CPU speed, double the VRAM, four times the general-purpose RAM, and incredibly fast DMA for moving data into VRAM.

>>11972674 (OP)
Same reason the Famicom/NES had games from 1983 to 1994

Not everyone back then was used to the idea of "upgrading" every 2 years because Apple told them to.

With that said the GB was clinging to life starting from 1995 until Pokémon performed CPR on it.

>>11973248
Soul

Soulless

>>11973107
Pocket and Light were the mid-gen refreshes and GBC was the end-of-gen replacement that significantly altered the important hardware specs and filled store shelves with exclusive software.
New 3DS was a refresh, just like the N64 with the Expansion Pak only without a consumer-friendly upgrade, and just like the Expansion Pak there were only four physical releases which require a N3DS. Not comparable to GB/GBC at all.

>>11973057
Why are you talking about PS5 on the retro board

friendly reminder that this is what gameboy displays looked like when they were brand new

they turned yellow and green due to age

>>11972691
they didn't

>>11973516
>they turned yellow and green due to age

That doesn't seem to match my memory. I have the impression that my childhood Game Boy has not ever changed color. Could be a boiling frog situation though I suppose.

But yeah, they did originally look pretty sharp, which is the important thing. There was always the ghosting problem but at least as long as things were still, you could clearly see your game. That part has changed with my childhood Game Boy... it's a bit faded. Still usable, but not like it used to be.

>>11972680

This doesn't strike me as a Nintendo fan thing. I love Nintendo platforms (at least the old ones; haven't used the latest few) and I have never understood the Game Boy. As a kid, when it was new, I looked down on it because its audiovisual hardware was so obviously inferior and because portability wasn't important to me anyway. I saw no point in it at all. I only own one because my mom liked buying presents and wasn't 100% in tune with her children's tastes. I liked the games fine, so her purchase was not wasted, but I continued to consider them inferior to whatever NES/SNES games I was playing on my "real" game system at any given moment.

Is Tetris really good enough to carry this clunky thing? That I can believe, since Tetris is great, but it wasn't enough for me personally because I already had Tetris for my NES - and later for my TI graphing calculator, which I could actually bring to school and play on during class without causing any problems. Is Pokémon good enough? Well I'm too old for that but... I guess it would have been, probably. So how did this thing survive until Pokémon supercharged it? I didn't understand then and I don't understand now. Not that it's a problem, since there really are some good games on it. But it was impressively ugly and primitive right from the start, to everyone with any perception.

>>11972674 (OP)
People kept buying it, believe it or fucking not.

>>11972674 (OP)
Cheap hardware with cheap games is a winning formula that the industry seems have forgotten. These are GAMES and TOYS at the end of the day. Everyone knows its competitors failed because they were too expensive, too big, and chewed through batteries.

>>11972674 (OP)
>How the hell did Nintendo get away with selling this thing for 12 years without replacing it with a more powerful model?
They didn't. The Game Boy Color came out nine years after the original and featured significantly better specs. It used an expanded version of the original console's architecture, but so did the Wii when you compare that system to the Gamecube.

>>11972674 (OP)
Zero competition.

Until wondeswan and neogeo pocket.

When Nintendo was on charge was always trying to keep it's lead and slow down progress

>>11972698
>>11972674 (OP)
Even the Gameboy pocket has a much sharper and faster display, and I think the GBC uses an active matrix with basically no ghosting and has a twice as fast CPU.

>>11973057
Meanwhile you think the Wii is just an upgraded gamecube

>>11973516
>they turned yellow and green due to age
good bait

>>11972729
Fuck off retard

>>11973516
user is underage

>>11972691
>How did record companies get away with selling vinyl for 80 years?

Fucking retard.

>>11974046
user is underage

>>11972674 (OP)
It had a good games

>>11976216
>a good games
ESL moment.

>>11972674 (OP)
>How the hell did Nintendo get away with selling this thing for 12 years without replacing it with a more powerful model?
have you looked at the other handhelds released in this same span? they all sucked dick despite having more colors/buttons/lights. especially battery life. what nintendo had worked well enough for there to be fun games.

>>11972674 (OP)
Good games, lack of piracy and the LCD screen was neat.

>>11972674 (OP)
It had no real competition, Nintendo in general didn't in the handheld scene until the PSP.

I just got my first DMG today and I gotta say it has aged VERY well given the age
they look way worse on camera than in person. In any moderate indoor lighting it will be very clear.
It actually performs better in low light than I remember my GBC doing.

I've never seen "ghosting" either, and I know what that looks like given how god awful passive matrix laptops were in the mid-90s.
There's some motion blur of background elements when moving fast, but the player in the center of the screen is always clear and no projectiles/etc really blindside you like I expected

overall a much better experience than I expected

>>11972674 (OP)
It was incredibly fucking cheap

>>11973516
LOL no. That ad is using a simulated picture. And no, they didn't have to tell you that is was simulated back then.
It even looks to be a still, a photograph of a CRT due to the slight curvature of the image that they forgot to airbrush (pre-Photoshop that wasn't in consumer or Nintendo's hands for at least another year).

>>11973547
That anon is just wrong, anon, just your memory. I got one as long as an elephant's trunk, and the Game Boy's screen was always a yellowish green. The almost black and white that the ad showed was a typical industry trick that savvy consumers simply understood.

>>11973649
Before the GBC came out, there was also the Gameboy Pocket. I never had one myself since I had a regular Gameboy and it would have been a waste of money to get one, but it did come out and can also be viewed as a moderate upgrade before the GBC arrived on the scene.

>>11977678
>>11977682
>if I keep posting misinformation then maybe people will question their memory
go away

>>11977705
You're mentally ill for sure, but to the point I am correct and far older than you.

>>11977691
In a way it could be seen as an upgrade, but OP asked about a "more powerful" model, and the Pocket wasn't more powerful than the OG DMG. The GBC was, though.