2020: things that didn’t quite make the cut

This year we’ve covered gadgets and inventions from the 1800s and up. But there are plenty of other things that had anniversaries this year that we didn’t mention.

One of the most important inventions debuted in 1810 – the tin can. A key product of the industrial revolution, the tin can answered many of the millennia-old questions about how to preserve foodstuffs. More reliable and palatable than salting, drying, pickling and a variety of other methods this humble tin can meant food security for growing populations in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Also hailing from the nineteenth century was celluloid, a versatile class of materials that were pioneered in billiard balls in 1870, and then found their way into many other products from toys to films. However, celluloid’s habit of bursting into flames means that it is rarely used as a material today.

Canned food in a store in Hong Kong, Easter brooch with celluloid flowers

Somewhat related to celluloid is cellophane, a lightweight and flexible material that lent its properties to Scotch Tape, introduced in 1930. Also from 1930 – and perhaps a little bit more edible – is the Hostess Twinkie cake bar. Allegedly, Twinkies last forever – but eat a decade-old box at your own risk.

Vintage scotch tape container, Twinkie cake bars

Fast forward to 1960 and the white heat of technology forges something even more high-tech than sticky tape and cake bars, with the laser. Don’t ask me to explain how these things work, they just do. Pew pew.

Visible lasers being demonstrated

People who remember the home computers of the 1980s probably remember the Commodore VIC-20 – but it had an immediate predecessor in the shape of the VIC-1001 which was sold successfully in Japan only. The main difference between the two is that the VIC-1001 supports Japanese Katakana characters.

Commodore VIC-1001

By 1990 of course things were really getting more advanced. The Sega Game Gear was an 8-bit handheld console that carved a significant market for itself. Another 8-bit games machine, the Commodore 64 Games System (or simply the C64GS) was a more traditional console based closely on the legendary Commodore 64 home computer. The C64GS held great promise with the potential of a huge games library, but it failed to deliver in a spectacular way.

Sega Game Gear, Commodore 64 Games System

In the same year, the Macintosh Classic breathed a bit more life into a familiar format at a sub-$1000 price point, but the 68000 processor was getting a bit long in the tooth by then. More powerful, but three times the cost, was the 68030-based Macintosh IIsi which was much more forward-looking.

Apple Macintosh Classic, Macintosh IIsi

Handheld gadgets continued to develop, and in 2000 the Sharp J-SH04 was launched in Japan which was the world’s first recognisable camera phone, with a rear-facing 0.11 megapixel camera. It wasn’t great, but it set a pattern that other early camera phones improved on.  

Sharp J-SH04

That’s it for 2020, a difficult year for many people. Let’s hope that 2021 will be better. A big shout out to all those key workers, healthcare professionals and everybody trying to be socially responsible (or even just managing to keep themselves sane) this year. 

Image credits:
Canned food in a store in Hong Kong: Bairgae Daishou 33826 via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
Easter brooch with celluloid flowers: Pinke via Flickr – CC BY-NC 2.0
Vintage scotch tape container: Improbcat via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0
Twinkie cake bars: Photog Bill via Flickr - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Visible lasers being demonstrated: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons – Public domain
Commodore VIC-1001: Thomas Conté via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0
Sega Game Gear: James Case via Flickr - CC BY 2.0
Commodore 64 Games System: Thomas Conté via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 2.0
Macintosh Classic: Christian Brockmann via Wikimedia Commons – CC0
Macintosh IIsi: Benoît Prieur via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 4.0
Sharp J-SH04: Morio via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)

 Introduced November 1990 (Japan)

The best-selling 16-bit gaming console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or just “SNES”) ruled the roost in the early 1990s, despite an epic battle with the Sega Mega Drive. Relatively late to the market, one of the key reasons for the success of the SNES was better games and good marketing.

Nintendo SNES (PAL Version)

Models varied throughout the world with different cases between North America, Japan and Europe with imcompatible cartridge slots and region locking in both hardware and software. In Japan the console was called the “Super Famicom”. At its heart was an unusual 16-bit development of the venerable 6502 processor called the Ricoh 5A22 – the previous generation Nintendo Entertainment System used another 6502 derivative, this time the Ricoh 2A03.

A wide range of colour graphics modes, an impressive audio subsystem called S-SMP (made by Sony) and ergonomically designed controllers made the SNES a capable hardware platform. But with games consoles, that’s just one of the ingredients you need for success.

What the SNES did have was games... lots of games. Super Mario, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, SimCity and many more games were available. Many games were only available on Nintendo platforms, some (such as Mortal Kombat) were available of several. Nintendo did insist of elements of graphic violence being removed from games, which made them more family-friendly but ultimately probably lost them sales.

Depending on market, the SNES was around for about a decade and sold an astonishing 49 million units compared to the Mega Drive’s 32 million or so. A few revisions were made to the hardware, along with quite a lot of hardware expansions that had a limited audience, but ultimately the success of the SNES continued well into the 32-bit console era.

There’s a healthy retro gaming community around the SNES – used units are inexpensive, although game cartridges – especially rare ones – can be worth much more that the systems themselves. In 2017, Nintendo released the Super NES Classic Edition – a modern take on the classic console. There are also emulators and other reimagined versions out there – even after 30 years, the SNES still has the power to captivate gamers.

Image credit: JCD1981NL via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 3.0

Apple Macintosh LC (1990)

Introduced October 1990

The Macintosh LC helps to demonstrate the tricky situation that Apple found itself in at the beginning of the 1990s. On one hand, sales of the Macintosh were doing well with a continually evolving product line including the powerful colour Macintosh II range. On the other hand, a large slice of the their sales were still to educational markets who very much favoured the ancient Apple II platform, development of which had continued into the late 1980s with Apple IIc Plus, IIe Platinum and even a 16-bit version called the Apple IIGS.

Not unreasonably, Apple wanted to move this market on from warmed-over products of the late 1970s. Schools in particular demanded colour, but the Macintosh II platform was very expensive and the cheaper Macintosh Classic platform was monochrome-only. The challenge was to create a colour Mac that didn’t cost the earth, and the LC was created in response to that challenge.

Apple Macintosh LC

Although half the price of the contemporary Macintosh IIx, the LC was crippled in performance terms by the out-of-date Motorola 68020 processor, 16-bit internal bus and a maximum of 10Mb of RAM. Graphics capabilities were more limited than the Macintosh II, leading to some compatibility problems, and internal expansion was more limited.

Still it was a Mac, and if you wanted a colour Mac but didn’t have the substantial amount of cash needed for a Mac II then the LC was the way to go. And it turned out that a lot of people wanted a colour Mac very badly, and they were prepared to put up with the performance hit that the LC came with. So despite everything, the LC was a sales success.

Although it was cheap compared to the more than $7000 demanded for the IIx, the base unit of the LC by itself had a list price of $2400, more than four times the price of an Apple II. Still, it was around the same price and same market segment that 80386SX PCs were selling into. Schools stubbornly stuck with the Apple II though, which soldiered on until 1993. After that point you would need an Apple IIe card in your Mac LC series to run Apple II programs (which was another $250).

It was always going to be a tricky transition – the LC certainly took sales away from the Mac II and it wasn’t the budget computer that could replace the Apple II. Performance was an issue, mostly because the LC could easily have been made faster for a little more money.

But perhaps the biggest problem was fragmentation… by the end of 1990 there were four different models of Macintosh II on sale, plus the Mac Classic, SE/30, the esoteric Portable and the LC. In a few year time, Apple would have 20 or more competing products which confused both consumers and showed a lack of direction within the company that nearly led to its bankruptcy in the late 90s.

The LC itself didn’t last long, replaced by the similar 68030-based LC II in 1992 and finally getting the performance it needed with the LC III in 1993. Surprisingly, prices for an original LC in decent condition can easily be a few hundred pounds whereas an equivalent model 386SX PC of the same era is basically landfill. Old Apple devices are quite collectable, but really you want to find an Apple I in a cupboard rather than a humble Mac LC…

Image credit:
Jay Tong via Flickr - CC BY-ND 2.0

Amstrad GX4000 (1990)

Introduced September 1990

During the late 1980s Amstrad had been on a roll. The Amstrad CPC range had taken a respectable share of the home computing market, the cheap all-in-one PCW wordprocessor had been a remarkable success for small businesses and home users, the PC-compatible PC1512 and PC1640 had sold in huge quantities and Amstrad had bought out arch-rival Sinclair to produce their own take on the iconic ZX Spectrum micro.

Not everything had been a success. The deeply strange portable PCs – the PPC 512 and PPC 640 – proved to be a high-profile flop. Worse still, the next-generation PC2000 series which had been launched to great acclaim ended up as a disaster with a batch of faulty hard drives significantly damaging Amstrad’s reputation.

Amstrad’s success had been built on offering quality devices at bargain prices, typically by exploring ways to drive down costs. The CPC computers were a good example, a home computer, monitor and storage device starting at £399, all inclusive. Amstrad leveraged their relationships with makes of TV tubes and cassette players to give them a price advantage, the inclusion of the cheap-but-capable Z80 processor drove down costs further. Amstrad chose to use the CPC platform for their next venture.

Amstrad GX4000

The Amstrad GX4000 was essentially a games console version of the CPC. Stripped of the cassette drive, TV and keyboard, the GX4000 used cartridges and hooked up to a domestic TV. Still running a Z80 with 64Kb of RAM the console was modestly specified even by 1990’s standards… but at just £99 it was really cheap.

It was an elegantly packaged device, with two slightly creaky games controllers attached and video output via RF, SCART or and Amstrad DIN connector for a CPC monitor. You could add a light gun or an analogue joystick took, but expansion options were pretty limited. Still, it was pretty capable for an 8-bit platform and the related CPC had a huge variety of good quality games available for it. So, it should have been a success? Not exactly.

By 1990 the 8-bit era that had dominated the 1980s was at an end. 32-bit home computers such as the Commodore Amiga had been established for some time, and the games console market itself was in the process of moving to 16-bit platforms such as the Sega Megadrive. But technological obsolescence had never been a problem for Amstrad - a company that shipped CP/M computers well into the 1990s – where instead they were interested in value-for-money. And the GX4000 certainly seemed to have that.

But the GX4000 was a massive failure, and perhaps the key problem was games. CPC games on cassette cost a few pounds where a GX4000 cartridge for the same game cost £25 (a quarter of the price of the console). Only a couple of games were available at launch, and a combination of manufacturing delays and high costs means that just 27 games of varying quality were launched. The 8-bit CPC platform that the GX4000 ran on wasn’t something that gamers could be excited about either.

Perhaps if the GX4000 had been released a few years earlier with more (and cheaper) games plus better designed hardware, it might have been a success. As it was, the GX4000 was discontinued in 1991 having sold just 15,000 units. Of course, that makes this console quite collectable today with prices for ones in good condition going for up to £200 which would be a lot more than was paid for it in the first place..

Image credit:
Evan-Amos via Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

IBM PS/1 (1990)

IBM PS/1 Model 2011

Introduced June 1990

By 1990 the PC-compatible marketplace had changed a lot since the launch of the original IBM PC (model 5150) in 1981. No longer just the choice of businesses, PCs had largely replaced an eclectic range of incompatible home microcomputers that had dominated the earlier 1980s. It was increasingly common to see PCs in the home, but they weren’t generally IBM PCs despite IBM inventing the platform.

IBM had tried to break into the home computing market in 1984 with the IBM PCjr, a short-lived crippled version of the PC that was a sales catastrophe. Apparently unperturbed by this, in 1990 IBM tried to break into the same market again… and they repeated many of the same mistakes they had done years earlier.

Worse still, IBM’s attempt to redefine the business PC market with the IBM PS/2 launched a few years earlier was floundering. Instead of moving the market from DOS and the old ISA hardware architecture to OS/2 and Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) it seemed that IBM just split the market between themselves and competitors such as Compaq who were improving the old platforms instead.

In 1990 IBM tried a shift in direction with the new IBM PS/1. Rather more based on traditional PC architecture than the PS/2, it was designed for home users who wanted to be able to unpack something from the box and get working in minutes Models such as the 2011 made this really easy, and when assembled they booted into a friendly screen allowing easy access to DOS, Microsoft Works on online services if they had been included.

IBM PS/1 Model 2133

A Mac-like simplicity to the hardware had some drawbacks – it wasn’t really expandable and the non-standard power arrangement where the computer was powered by the monitor (like the Amstrad PC1512) meant that you were stuck with using the IBM PS/1 monitor for ever.

The hardware was excellent though, and it wasn’t stupidly expensive (competing with Compaq on the likes of price), but consumers were not that interested. It didn’t help that IBM had to create a completely new sales channel for the things as traditional IBM dealers didn’t sell to consumers, but in the US large-deal with Sears who bundled access to Prodigy with the computers. On early models DOS was included in ROM, which made the machines very quick to boot up.

Consumers were cool about the PS/1 though, preferring other brands where they were available. IBM was still seen as a business PC, and the incompatibilities of the PS/2 range rubbed off on the PS/1 even though it was a different hardware platform. IBM stuck with the range though, making the machines more expandable and more standard in terms of hardware and software.

The range lasted until 1994 when IBM replaced the PS/1 range with the architecturally similar but more appealing IBM Aptiva range which continued until IBM’s exit from the home PC market in 2001. Today the PS/1 is an uncommon beast but it commands decent prices of about £500 to £700 or depending on model.

Image credits:
Kungfoocow369 via Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
Science Museum, London – CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Digital VT05 and VT420 (1970 and 1990)

The video terminal is the unsung hero of the computing world. Often toiling aware in warehouse, factories, colleges, shops and other places out of the public eye, the video terminal was a dependable workhorse for decades… well into the era of the PC.

Arguably the king of the terminal market was Digital Equipment Corporation (“DEC” or just “Digital”) who made terminals that were attached to minicomputers or mainframes, where they could run a wide variety of centralised applications that typically ran on Unix or VMS boxes.

They comprised of not much more than a display, keyboard and serial interface – and although they were not always cheap to buy, they were certainly cheap to run with no moving parts and complete immunity to computer viruses and other malfeasance. You could plug one in and forget about it for years, and it would keep doing its job.

DEC VT05

The DEC VT05 was introduced in 1970 and was Digital’s first standalone raster video terminal. Sure, I could tell you that it was a bit of an upgrade from the glass teletype concept with a bit of cursor control thrown in but probably the thing about the VT05 that most people will notice is how it looks. Digital’s radical space-age design made it look like the terminal was leaping out of the work surface. Inside the system boards were slanted behind the CRT rather than subsequent models which were more conventional inside. It looked fantastic, but the downside was that the VT05 was 30 inches (76 centimetres) deep which meant that you’d likely have to re-engineer your working environment to put one in. At 55 pounds (25 kilograms) it was hardly a lightweight device, so you wouldn’t want to move it anyway.

It could only display uppercase characters, but the keyboard could enter both upper and lowercase. Quite how you were meant to tell what you were typing is a mystery. Maximum data transfer rate was 2400 baud. The VT05 had a video input so you could display other things on the monitor, and mix them together with the text. The VT05 was around for five years until the much more capable – and conventional – VT52 was launched.

DEC VT420

Fast forward twenty years and the direct descendant of the VT05 – the VT420 – is launched. Don’t expect two decade of development to count for all that much though, the VT420 was still conceptually the same thing. Unlike the VT05, the VT420 was a practical design with a separate keyboard and a monitor on a tilt-and-swivel stand that was supplied as standard (unlike previous versions). It weighed just 8kg so wasn’t a problem to move about a bit, and the ANSI character set that it supported allowed full cursor addressability and enough predefined graphics to make a nice user interface.

The VT420 also supported dual sessions, typically by using the two serial ports on the back. Not only could you interact with two utterly different systems, but you could also copy-and-paste between them. That might not seem like a big deal now, but back in 1990 most people still couldn’t paste data between applications on their PCs so it was kind of a big deal.

The data transfer rate was a speedy 38,400 baud using the compact phone-like MMJ sockets, the screen had a maximum capacity of 132 x 48 lines of text and the latest revision of DEC’s legendary keyboard – the LK401 – was almost perfect in every way except for the annoying lack of an Escape key.

Where the VT05 marked a point near the beginning of DEC’s journey, the VT420 marked a point near the end. The days of centralised minicomputers were starting to fade and throughout the 1990s PCs and Macs became more capable professional computing environments. The VT420 was a success but it lasted just three years before being replaced by the VT520 which was almost identical. DEC sold the entire terminal division in 1995 and they themselves were taken over by Compaq in 1998, who were then taken over by HP in 2002.

The VT range soldiered on with Boundless Technologies until 2003, and other manufacturers either closed down or shuttered production in the following years, including Wyse and Qume until there were none left.

Even though the manufacturing of terminals dried up, the computer systems that relied on them still exist. VT terminals are still in use around the world, but newer installations will typically rely on a PC with some terminal emulation software – a more complex and less reliable solution.

Today a DEC VT420 in good condition second-hand can cost a couple of hundred pounds, and maybe budget a thousand or so if you want to acquire a VT05. Of course terminal emulators can be had for less, a client such as PuTTY is free or Reflection is a more commercial offering.

Image credits:
Matthew Ratzloff via Flickr – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Adamantios via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0

Windows 3.0 (1990)

Software... in a box!

Introduced May 1990

By 1990 Microsoft’s Windows platform had been around for five years and had made pretty much no market impact at all. Early versions of Windows were truly terrible and combined the very worst of clunky user interface design with the technological backwardness of late 1980s IBM-compatible PCs.

Most PC users stuck with plain old-fashioned DOS and were seemingly happy to run just one program at a time, each with a different user interface and incompatible file formats. WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase and ruled the market – all very different products from different vendors. But a high-end business PC could have an Intel 80386 running at 20 or 25MHz with up to 4MB of RAM, plus a VGA card and a 100MB hard disk and a really high-end system might have a powerful 486 processor inside. But by a large of lot of these systems just ran DOS programs… but very, very quickly.

The limitations of DOS were pretty crushing. One application at a time and a maximum memory address space of 640KB. Various tools and memory managers existed, but many of these were incompatible with each other and they couldn’t make up for the clumsiness of DOS itself. Microsoft’s way out of this was to partner with IBM to make a new operating system called OS/2. This had been developed alongside earlier versions of Windows, but it was a much more modern operating system designed for 80286 processors and above where Windows 1 and 2 could run (just about) on a first generation 8086-based PC.

But Microsoft too had been pushing technological limits with Windows/286 and Windows/386 with special versions of Windows 2.1 which maintained the clunky look-and-feel of the old Windows but could actually take advantage of newer CPUs, including multi-tasking DOS applications. These were niche products, but when Windows 3.0 was introduced in May 1990 it included enhanced support for the 286 and 386 processors out of the box.

Not only was it better underneath, but Windows 3.0 had a complete overhaul of the user interface, featuring the application-orientated Program Manager rather than the brutally ugly and simplistic MS-DOS Executive in previous versions. Utilising attractive icons and taking advantage of what was then high-resolution VGA graphics, Windows 3.0 was approaching the usability of the Macintosh – although the Mac’s Finder was more about data files than programs.

That's a billion person-hours down the drain then

Windows 3.0 design was a mix of polished-up elements from previous versions of Windows with a rather flat feel to them, along with 3D elements largely borrowed from Presentation Manager in OS/2. Compared with modern minimalistic versions of Windows, Windows 3.0 had a lot of “Chrome” around the edges which resulted in visual clutter and wasted space. But it certainly wasn’t bad looking for a 30-year-old design.

It had flaws – many flaws – in particular it wasn’t very stable and the dreaded Unrecoverable Application Error (which was Windows 3.0’s Blue Screen of Death) was all too common. Driver support was fiddly, if you didn’t have a popular system out of the box then you’d need to acquire and install things like video drivers and sound drivers. Most importantly, it wasn’t really an operating system in its own right, it was an operating environment perched on top of the ancient DOS OS. It took another three years and a major schism with IBM to create a completely modern version of Windows with Windows NT.

Windows 3.0 was a huge success (perhaps in part to the maddeningly addictive card game of Solitaire it shipped with), and of course the quest for ease-of-use spread beyond the operating system itself. Microsoft Office 1.0 was launched in November 1990 with Word for Windows 1.1, Excel 2.0 and PowerPoint 2.0, typically priced at around half of what it would cost you to buy the programs separately. Windows 3.1 followed two years later with improvements all around, and because Microsoft would cut PC manufacturers a good deal to ship Windows with new PCs it eventually got everywhere and wiped out all the other PC-based opposition.

As an operating system it isn’t of much practical use today, but if you want to play with it there are a few places that you can get virtual machines to run under VirtualBox or VMware, and you can relive the frustrations of Solitaire if nothing else. Complete set of installation disks, boxes and manuals are quite collectable too with prices typically ranging from £60 to £100.



Image credit: David Orban via Flickr - CC BY 2.0

Squarial (1990)

A Squarial on display

Available March 1990

Direct-to-customer satellite television started in the late 1970s, but back in the early days it required a big and expensive dish to receive the broadcasts which had the effect of turning your back garden into something that looked like Jodrell Bank.

Although technology improved during the 1980s, by the end of the decade a typical satellite dish for Sky in the UK could still measure 90 centimetres across. Typically painted white, the dishes were regarded as an eyesore and when there were lots of them in an area – for example with blocks of flats and terraced houses – it made the place look like a KGB listening post.

Although Sky was popular in the UK, it gained a reputation for being rather lowbrow. A mix of imported US TV series and cheaply-made shows had a certain appeal, but neighbours might judge you harshly if you attached a massive dish to the side of your house to watch American wrestling.

It became obvious in the 1980s that the market could do with some competition, and through a complex mix of government legislation and business deals the idea of creating a company knows British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was born.

After some delays, BSB eventually started broadcasting in March 1990. It attempted to offer a more highbrow mix of shows including original content, high-quality imports and repeats of popular BBC shows... not to mention a bit of science fiction slash soap opera.

Low-level class warfare is a thing in the UK, and indeed the BBC TV show “Keeping Up Appearances” first broadcast in 1990 satirises just that. And for many middle-class people, the idea of sticking up a huge Sky satellite dish seemed frightful. But how could you differentiate that you were a middle-class BSB customer? BSB thought it had a secret weapon… the Squarial.

A Squarial in its natural habitat

The Squarial looked quite unlike other satellite receivers. Just 38 centimetres across, the Squarial was completely flat and inside was a phased array antenna made up of a large number of tiny individual antennae working together. This different technological approach was possible because BSB’s twin Marcopolo satellites had a higher power output than the Astra 1A satellite used by Sky.

It became something of a design icon, and created a significant buzz around BSB’s launch. Squarials started to appear on hundreds of thousands of homes. It looked like a success. But it wasn’t.

The problem that both Sky and BSB were losing huge amounts of money, a staggering $1.5 billion dollars between them (equivalent to about £2.5 billion today). Subscriber numbers were nowhere near the figures that either company needed to be sustainable. So in November 1990 Sky and BSB dropped a bombshell – these two bitter rivals would merge to become British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB).

Although on paper it was a 50/50 merger, in reality Sky was the dominant partner. And although costs could be saved by rationalising the TV channels, in the end it was inevitable that BSkyB would want only one broadcasting system – and that meant using the Astra satellite and not Marcopolo.

By 1992 BSkyB shuttered the service on the Marcopolo satellites, leaving both the Squarial and attached satellite set top boxes obsolete as they were incompatible with the Astra system. Essentially, for all but the most die-hard tinkerers the Squarial and all the rather expensive equipment that came with it ended up as junk. For owners it was like being on the wrong side of the VHS-Betamax war.

But the Squarials lingered – because of the fact that they were mounted in difficult-to-access places it meant that you’d have to pay somebody to take it down. So they lingered and lingered, a testament to making the wrong technological choice and a reminder of high-profile failure. Even today it is still possible to find a forgotten Squarial on the side of a house. For a few tens of pounds you could even acquire one yourself, and see if it really is “smart to be square”.

Image credits: Alex Liivet via Flickr
CC BY 2.0
pauldriscoll via Flickr
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Nintendo Game Boy (1990)

Launched September 1990 (Europe)

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo Game Boy in Europe. This relatively simple 8-bit device proved to be hugely popular and the Game Boy turned out to be a game changer.

The Game Boy wasn't the first hand-held gaming console, but it hit the sweet spot when it came to technical features, design, prices and software. By today's standards the Game Boy seems primitive - it had a 8-bit CPU with a 2.6" monochrome display and loaded games in with a cartridge - and even in 1990 it wasn't exactly high-tech. But the Game Boy retailed for just $90 in the US, which made it very affordable.

The hardware comprised of a Sharp LR35902 processor clocked at 4.2 MHz (a sort-of-cross between an Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80), a pitiful 8Kb of RAM (plus 8Kb of video memory), a 160 x 144 pixel display that could display four shades of.. errr.. green and a slot that could take a cartridge of up to 8MB.

The Game Boy had simple but elegant controls ("START", "SELECT", "A" and "B") housed in an unfussy and cleanly designed box. Power was provided by four AA batteries which could give between 15 to 30 hours play time.

Perhaps the killer application that the Game Boy had was the bundled Tetris game, but there were quite a wide range of other games available too (helped by the fact that Europe had to wait a year for the Game Boy after Japan and the US). Although cartridges were relatively expensive, it was at least a simple solution. A very popular later series of games were based around Pokémon characters.

The Game Boy series continued until 2008, selling a massive 200 million units overall. Although mobile gaming would have probably happened even without the Game Boy, it is likely that this little device raised people's expectations and helped to create demand for the vibrant market that we have today.

Today, an original Game Boy in working order will set you back between €35 to €70 or more depending on condition and the number of games it comes with. Thankfully, rechargeable batteries are a lot better than they were 25 years ago!


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