Paulette Hamilton 
There has never been a device with a variety of accessories that the Game Boy had. As the primary mainstream transportable recreation console, the Game Boy had the sort of consumer base to assist a widespread hardware ecosystem, and it came into being at just the right time to want the one’s sorts of accessories to provide an entire revel in. It turned into an ideal typhoon of hardware that resulted in the most various accessories ever made for a console. Looking lower back, there were roughly two classes that Game Boy accessories in shape into the sensible and the bizarre.
The realistic facet is much less exciting in hindsight. After all, things like attachable lighting, link cables, rechargeable battery packs, AC adapters, and screen magnifiers all make a sure amount of feel for a device that lacked these current conveniences.
While it’s smooth to look again now and deride the Game Boy (and its various successors) for their reliance on extra gadgets, returned then, it made the experience. Nintendo turned into already pushing the technological envelope to the limit with the Game Boy, and they’re honestly wasn’t room for those different capabilities. Throw a backlight on the Game Boy, and it turns into a battery-sucking hog like the Game Gear. The generation on time wasn’t exactly mature, either. Mild accessories for the Game Boy were essentially glorified book lighting that shone down at the display, and a rechargeable battery percent I as soon as owned ended up being so awful that it becomes almost worth simply using batteries alternatively.
A lot of these bizarre gadgets aren’t around anymore, really, because the generation has advanced beyond it. We don’t want lighting fixtures whilst our displays have backlights, as an example. Wi-Fi has replaced hyperlink cables (although no longer without a detour into an incredibly bizarre local wi-fi adapter for the Game Boy Advance). The life of a gadget-level OS with adjustable accessibility settings and large displays has killed off display magnifiers. Technology getting higher through the years is a great issue, and I wouldn’t alternate Wi-Fi or an integrated backlight for vintage times.
This sense of individuality and customization is largely misplaced in nowadays’s international homogenous gadgets. But we do lose something when we shift far from those accessories. My Game Boy changed into unmistakable mine, with a squiggly purple light and mismatched battery cover for the rechargeable battery that protruded weirdly from the lower back. There was a type of magic to Game Boy add-ons that permit them to rework the tool you were using in a bodily way, like while fumbling within the darkish for light to preserve playing after bedtime or inside the backseat of a vehicle on a protracted avenue journey or putting collectively an epic Mario Kart race at camp with the aid of stringing 4 Game Boy Advances together.
Nevertheless, Game Boy accessories’ alternative side, like the infamously low-decision Game Boy Camera and Printer, the Nintendo e-Reader, and the GameCube / Game Boy Advance Adapter. These initiatives didn’t seek to patch over the Game Boy’s flaws; they sought to amplify the Game Boy’s enjoyment in new and creative ways.
They weren’t continually a success. (In hindsight, having to experiment with 5 separate fragile paper playing cards to play Excitebike changed into no longer the great user enjoy.) But they challenged the manner we idea about our gadgets and gave them new uses and functions that the authentic hardware could dream of. Why no longer flip your Game Boy into a digital camera, a controller for your house console, or regardless of the e-Reader become imagined to be?
Much like how the legacy of the Game Boy and its dream of portable gaming has lived on with the Nintendo Switch, the legacy of out-there accessories that offer new degrees of creativity and play still exists in modern-day Nintendo merchandise just like the Labo’s cardboard creations or the Switch’s customizable Joy-Con shades. With a renewed attention on transportable and modular hardware with the Switch, who knows wherein Nintendo will take things in the next 30 years?