Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you consider the GBC its own system or not — it's part of a lineage of portable perfection and lovely little thing. In honour of the occasion, here, a handful of us on Team Nintendo Life look back fondly on a console that, for so many gamers, opened a door to a whole world of portable Nintendo goodness...
Ollie Reynolds, staff writer
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life I distinctly remember getting my Game Boy Color on Christmas Day back in 1999. Pokémon Blue had launched just a few months earlier in the UK and I was already totally enamoured with the TV series at this point, so my excitement was through the roof.
Those early days were some of the best of my gaming life. For one, the Game Boy Color was the first piece of hardware that I could wholly call my own; up until that point, anything I’d played either belonged to my older brother or had been passed down when he upgraded to the next big thing.
Naturally, then, I carried my Game Boy Color everywhere and sunk absurd amounts of hours into Pokémon. I was in love with the franchise at this point, and I remember my friends and I would link up during our lunch breaks at school and trade Pokémon. To this day, it’s still the only Pokémon game that I’ve managed to 100% complete, and it’s honestly not even close.
One thing that makes me chuckle to this day, however, is that I used to think the console’s batteries were running out whenever my Pokémon got poisoned in battle. I didn’t realise that the flickering screen was linked to the status change and I honestly thought the handheld was simply struggling to keep its lights on. Please tell me I’m not the only one to make this mistake!
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life Alana Hagues, deputy editor
I don't have anything earth-shattering to say about the Game Boy Color. It was the first console I could really call "my own" — lime-green coloured, so it stood out next to all the other home consoles I had to share with my brother. But the GBC? It was mine.
Like any kid in the late '90s, it was all Pokémon. I took my GBC to school, and I managed to grab a link cable and trade Pokémon with my friends — though we definitely got into trouble for trying to do it between classes. Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! , Super Mario Land , Mario Golf , and Pokémon Pinball became my companions for sneaky late nights and distracted weekend mornings, but mainline Pokémon was my true obsession.
Pokémon Yellow was my very first RPG as a result. It taught me about the strategy of turn-based battles and the fun of exploration — and Pokémon Silver only expanded upon that a few years later. I became a Pokémaniac before an RPG friend, though, and that meant I desperately wanted one of those Yellow GBCs.
Alas, it never came to be... — Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life The unique colours of each console, and the limited edition, made me grow a real appreciation for unique hardware designs. My eyes always light up at interesting console colours as a result of the GBC, and even if there's a collaboration I'm not interested in, I'll always take time to admire the variations in a console.
Like much of my childhood, however, my GBC is no longer part of my small collection, but I have to wonder how different my tastes would be had I not played Pokémon Yellow all those years ago. It's the reason I love playing games while wrapped up in a blanket, whatever the weather.
Kate Gray, contributor
I had the Atomic Purple GBC, like all the cool kids did. It was largely a Tetris -in-the-car machine — I still get goosebumps whenever I see a rocket taking off — but I slowly amassed a collection of surprisingly good movie adaptations, too, like the Toy Story Racer game that Traveller's Tales made, or the Harry Potter game that cemented itself in my nostalgia gland like something I should probably see the doctor about.
Here's a fun little anecdote for you, though: I accidentally Pavlov'd myself into needing to pee whenever I play games in the car, and it's all thanks to the Game Boy Color. Some neuron connection in my brain managed to link "video games in the car" with "I really need to pee," because, well, as a kid, those are the two things that you do in the car, and ever since then, I can't play ANYTHING in the car without my brain going "OOOH, OOH, I KNOW THIS ONE." No DS, no 3DS, no Switch. You'd think the increased graphical fidelity would bamboozle my brain out of recognising it as "video games," but no.
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life Sadly, I don't have my GBC anymore, and I don't actually know why. Did I trade it in for my Game Boy SP, which I also don't have anymore (it was the silver one)? Did I leave it behind at a grandparent's house? Did I drop it in the ocean, like Rose at the end of Titanic ? I guess we'll never find out. RIP, little GBC.
Gavin Lane, editor
The Game Boy Color was my first Game Boy — the machine on which I played Pokémon, Link's Awakening , and Super Mario Land 2 . Yep, I never had to contend with the DMG's blurry screen back in the day.
One of my fondest memories is playing, of all things, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe — more specifically, looking at the extra modes and applications in that particular port. With the calendar, you were able to skip years ahead and discern what day of the week, say, 21st October 2023 was going to be. Amazing!... Okay, perhaps not amazing , but in those nascent days of the internet when you couldn't just ask Siri what day it would be a thousand years from now, that little function on the SMB GBC port felt like magical prognostication.
I've still got my original Teal system, and it's in sparkling nick, too. Obviously, my OG console has a special place in my heart, but last year a gift from fellow Nintendo Lifer Liam Doolan had me reevaluating things. He very generously sent me an Ozzie! Ozzie! Ozzie! variant from his Australian homeland, and it's a thing of beauty!
Images: Gavin Lane / Nintendo Life I've got half a mind to mod it with a new backlit screen, but I'm also hesitant to crack into such a relatively rare console. Maybe I should give my Teal the treatment?
Ah, we love you GBC. Let us know your Game Boy Color memories and favourite games in the comments, and let us know where you stand on it being part of the Game Boy 'family' of systems in this poll...
Is the Game Boy Color its own console, or just a snazzy SKU for the OG Game Boy? (778 votes)
It’s absolutely its own console! 68 %It's definitely not its own console! 21 %Pffidunno *shrugs* 10 %
