The Insane Engineering of the Gameboy 

Early video game engineers were absolutely cracked. Getting as much as you can from every byte is a lost art form.

Can't wait for the part where he explains how the Gameboy's blunt nose cone design holds up to mach 25 reentry.

My parents always had to read me what to do during Link to the Past because I couldn't read yet. My 86-year-old grandfather now uses my Gameboy and plays Tetris every day. It still works.I also still play Gameboy, but on emulators.

It’s amazing to think that the Gameboy was a low-powered budget game console when it appeared in 1989 and yet it was an expensive and coveted piece of tech for me as an Eastern European kid in the mid-90s. I was so happy to get a Gameboy in 1996 after years of saving my pocket money! When I saw a Sega Game Gear my classmate had (whose family emigrated to Canada and then came back for some reason) I wasn’t even envious, it was straight up sci-fi. I couldn’t believe that such a backlit color screen could exist in the real world.

The 3D art in this episode is absolutely epic!

The production quality in this video is insane. From the 8 bit pixel graphics for explaining the display to the game boy model that I could only tell wasn’t real because it was floating in separate pieces; it’s been so cool to watch this channel grow.

I don't need 50 Shades of Grey. I only need 4 shades of green. 😍

This was one of the best videos about the Game Boy's hardware. Few notes: 1: channel 3 is the wave channel and channel 4 is the noise channel (not sure why they were swapped in the video) 2: that explanation of Game Boy rendering is overly simplified. 3: if you wanted to store the Game Boy screen as bitmap data, you could! And it would take up 5760 Bytes, or 8.7% of the entire addressable memory. (144 * 160 * 2 (bit) * 1/8 (byte/bit) = 5760 Bytes) 4: the trademark defense didn't work as it was not enforceable by law (Sega v. Accolade) 5: Game Boy read the Nintendo logo twice first time to display it, second time to check it, some unlicensed games sent their own logo when it was first read to display their own logo and sent Nintendo logo data for the checking process.

What made the Gameboy superior was that it was actually doing what people bought it for. it was small enough to fit in a pocket, sturdy enough to withstand rough handling, efficient enough to last a whole road trip and cheap enough people felt comfortable taking it with them in places where it could get damaged.

I left my gameboy on pause overnight to finish Super Mario Land. That thing was a beast. I got it in 1990, still works.

I paused for like 5 minutes at 7:26 just to admire the insanely detailed PCB Animation. Great work, great Video!

Insane production values. Excellent video. I’m a 25 year VFX veteran and can fully appreciate the amount or work this video required.

Regarding the trademark defense mentioned at 9:02, it turns out Sega did a similar thing for their Genesis / Mega Drive system, but when they took Accolade to court over it, they lost, establishing the precedent that it's not trademark infringement if technical aspects of the system force you to use that trademark. But of course that was after the introduction of the Game Boy, so Nintendo wouldn't have had that precedent at the time. Still, it's an annoying thing for homebrewers, who have to put a big "just kidding, not actually licensed by Nintendo" screen after the boot up sequence.

A real engineer finally giving a deep-dive of Game Boy's technological marvel, and the constraints of Nintendo engineers were working on. Another outstanding gem from this channel.

For the algorithm. ✊

Were you even around in 1989? I was and I can assure you the Game Boy wasn't received with mixed reviews, it was the coolest thing EVER 0:05

Didn't realize how much engineering was put into something I used to spill water on. Jokes aside the Gameboy gave me a bunch of core memories that I will never forget.

Gunpei Yokoi was so pivotal in establishing the Nintendo philosophy in its most important early years. He not only established the philosophy of hardware design that made the NES and GameBoy so popular and so profitable, but also in game design by mentoring Shigeru Miyamoto, who still practices the philosophies of his mentor

Even to this day, economics and convenience are something a lot of tech companies forget about when designing new hardware. Most people don’t want bleeding edge devices, they want something practical and durable that makes sense within their budget.

While this was a fantastically put together short documentary, I must say I was more blown away by the photorealistic, pristine as hell 3D renders of everything that were presented on screen. From the Gameboy itself, the Game Gear, and all the way to the AAA Energizer battery.

Meanwhile current game developer: ok we will use 100GB of your storage space, and we need 32GB of memory, latest gen CPU, and 4080 at minimum to run our game. Oh, and there's 65GB update that you need to install. Optimization? Whats that?

How does this a tiny team making youtube videos surpass the quality and creativity of large studios in terms of making documentaries? Man this was amazing!!! Who’s your sound guy/designer? The sound effects coupled with the amazing visual effects were ON POINT. Just so good!

I love my dim lighted gameboy. Lol. When I bought the light extension for it, it was an amazing add on! This is now a cherished memory in all of us who went through this experience.

This is what VR needs, cheap reliable and simplified yet immersive experiences

The technology of the 80´s and early 90´s wasnt primitive, It was really advanced and required very skilled engineers . we only see it as primitive because today its even more mind blowing. For example the fact that we can fit 1 terrabyte of data on something the size of a fingernail,. As for software development, depending on what you are working on was also way harder back then and more often than now you had to come up with clever tricks.

"Less than a single frame in this video" that really puts it into perspective!

Never had this, but damn it brings back nostalgia always getting told "buy your own" whenever I asked to try from my classmates... As much as I always wanted one, and the Gameboy advance SP, Nintendo DS, PSP etc. I'm ultimately glad to have learnt that not all happiness in life comes from material things, and that I can only rely on myself to get whatever I want or need.

The 3D animations have reached peak professional quality. I do product animations like that for a living and I can appreciate what it takes to animate a device separating into its component parts. It looks so simple but capturing that detail with such fidelity is difficult.

A wall adapter was absolutely necessary for the Game Gear.

One of my favorite things to do is watch old videos of computers and videogames, and find all the absolutely insane ways people think they're supposed to hold a controller. 11:18 is definitely one of the best I've seen in a while.

This was cool. For me it was my 1st time really owning a real gaming console! i remember like it was yesterday when i bought a Game Boy on Oct. 16th, 1989. i was still in high school & saved up all summer long but still didn't have enough so i had to do odd jobs to get the full amount & finally had enough mid October! Still play plenty of my game boy games to this day!

My grandfather was one of the electrical engineers that designed gameboy, and I loved the small stories he would tell me about designing this when I played with it. They weren’t anything technical, but stories about how he sometimes clashed and sometimes worked together with his team to design what they believed as the perfect portable gaming device. One of the best story I still remember was when my father bought me the Wii U and how my grandfather told me that Wii U was designed by one of his juniors(?) that he mentored. He would tell me how his junior would again, sometimes clash with him, sometimes work together as a team. But I knew he was unique to my grandfather as he was crying unlike when we told all the other stories. When my grandfather eventually died, that junior came to his funeral and I, as a child just went up to him and told him about how grandfather described him. I can’t remember if he was crying, but now that I look back at it he probably was and trying to hide it. When it was time to bury my grandfather, me and the junior put the gameboy I played with as a child in the coffin together. That junior would also go on to design the Switch. Sorry if my English is not as good, I wanted to share how a small gaming device has so many stories around it, and how it brought people together.

The "blow into the cartridge" wasn't a thing that started with the Gameboy, I was doing it with the Atari 2600 back in the early 80's.

I remembered the day when one of my friend brought a new gameboy with built in backlighting and I was in awe

The way you animated the GameBoy and the use of authentic clips from its time made this video a very enjoyable watch. Thank you!

I was 12 when I watched other students play game boy. I got around playing my friend’s game boy in school. Later my parents bought me game gear when I asked them to buy me game boy. But I always wanted a game boy so I bought my first game boy advance with my own savings while I was in college. That was year 2004. I bought switch 2 years back and I love it. Nostalgia of childhood days.

The classic Nintendo sound effects accompanying the animated plots and figures was a nice touch

Damn, the quality of these animations just keeps increasing

My dad was a photographer who always needed fresh batteries to keep his camera's external flash quickly recharing, so I'd get his half-depleted AAs pretty regularly. It was a good setup, they didn't get thrown away with half their capacity remaining, and I got free batteries for my GameBoy whenever I needed them. Thanks, Dad!

As a mechanical engineer, it's hard for me to understand the electrical/chemical side

It's worth mentioning that back then, you would carry your game boy power adapter with you everywhere. Same with your game gear. My mom got me one that could charge out of the cigarette lighter so I would stay powered while driving without eating through the batteries. If you had to power the game gear purely on batteries, nobody would have bought it

FYI as someone who was a kid back then, blowing on the cartridge didn't start with the Gameboy. It was something we did to NES games.

As someone who's been getting back into some vintage handhelds to re-experience the old pixelated games of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, I say you should make this a series and do the Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and Nintendo DS as well.

The production values are so good on this video that you could just straight up run this on a TV Channel.

This is easily the most detailed video I’ve seen on the technical challenges behind the gameboy’s design.

The animations are so top notch it looks real. You could make content on any topic with these animators and it would instantly be movie quality. Massive respect

The production value of this video is absurdly good!

I really enjoyed that. The production quality is immense! Please do more episodes on vintage game consoles.

My computer architecture class will love this video!

Nothing else even remotely compares to growing up as a child during the era of the "console wars" as its called. This era, hands down, was the golden era of video game advancement from a childhood perspective.

Even though I knew all of this info, I love how it was presented. I loved all the graphics. I'd love more break downs of consoles / computers honestly.

Ah childhood memories. I remember there was an add-on you could buy separately, that you clipped on the gameboy that had lighting and magnifying. Had to beg for that add-on for ages when I was a kid. Being from the cold north, where winder time daylight is short, and made it impossible to play on long car trips.

Alkaline batteries specifically were actually invented midway through the Gameboy's lifecycle. The large improvement to battery chemistry they provided was the main reason the Gameboy Pocket could do the same job with similar battery life on just two AAA batteries instead of the four AA batteries in the DMG Gameboy.

one thing i liked about original gameboy, when the battery goes low you could darken the image to keep playing till the last drop or just save the game, while newer gameboy shutdown without warning. many times i had a death stare counting the lost hours.

Shout out for whoever did the sound design on this!

That ad was so smooth kudos

Gunpei Yokoi, a true legend.

Shoutout to the Tetris movie, it was great and it perfectly encapsulates the pros and cons of the gameboy on top of what engineers/programmers thought about it back then.

At that time I had an Atari Lynx. Mainly because it has a backlit color screen. The drawbacks of the device however were that it was very bulky, power hungry (6 AA-batteries that didn't live very long) and the games library not that extensive. I had a lot of fun with it still and I still have it lying around. A relic of my youth.

The CG renders in this video are absolutely top notch.

The background music used in the very start ('Tal Tal Heights' from Zelda Link's Awakening) is legitimately one of my favorite songs from all of Nintendo's catalog.

Good job on the CGI! It's unusual to see high quality lighting,shading,animation and compositing on RU-vid videos.

You really went all-out with the animations on this one! Nice! Looks really good!

Gotta say, the transition to plug for your sponsor was super smooth.

The way that woman at 11:19 is holding the nes controller is insane. It looks like she's about to take a bite out of it. XD

Excellent video, Brian! I would like to point one thing out, and this is a myth I’ll likely spend my entire life debunking. In your video, you state that taking out a cartridge and blowing on it will displace dust that may have caused a faulty connection. However, this wasn’t really the culprit. If any of the pins were misaligned, then that would be the cause of the error, and the reason we all thought blowing on it worked is that by removing and reinserting it, we were giving the pins another chance to realign. The reason I’m so particular on busting this myth is that the moisture in your breath can cause damage to these vintage games. So, for any of my retro gamers out there, pull the cartridge out and reinsert it, that’s all you need.

I absolutely loved this episode! Don’t get me wrong, I’m an aspiring aeronautical engineer, thanks in part to this channel, so I am incredibly interested and captivated by the usual videos (your recent video on Hermeus especially), but I think that the departure from the standard form of mechanical engineering based videos has served you well. I can tell a lot of time went in to this episode, the graphics are astounding, the information is laid out in a comprehensive and informative matter, and every ounce of the script feels heartfelt. Your videos just keep getting better and better! Keep it up! (My favorite video has got to be the one about the Thunderscreech BTW

This is why back then games were so good. When engineers have to work with limitations, they try their best to craft something good.

The 3d renders of the gameboy and game gear are incredible. Seeing the game gear dropped I genuinely thought it was real until the plates opened with the batteries.

Nice change of pace on this one. Great stuff

The graphics and animation were awesome, and the narration was clear and informative.

I remember my gameboy color with pokemon, and when i got my hands on the advance SP i spent so many nights playing in the dark in my bed and the on/off button for the light was clutch my parents never caught me, yugioh fftactics fire emblem, those nights were truly heaven

Another amazing video!! Loved the graphics and animations in this. I have always been so fascinated with old softwares and games where the engineers had to use memory and space very carefully.

I absolutely love that you are doing a vid on a classic console! They are so fascinating and often underappreciated! Would def love to see more of these :)

I used to work on the GB. At one point we had the BBC Micro classic, Elite, running at about 10fps in full wireframe 3D. That was some seriously clever coding! It could also to 8x16 sprites (so they were 2x as tall as they were wide) - this was VERY handy.

That Links Awakening music intro reeeeeeally hit a primal spot in my brain

"This 35-year-old console" Man, why'd you have to say that part right to our faces?

You can see LED pulsing with the naked eye, best example would be some of these new car headlights. You'll notice mild flickering as you approach them from a distance. I'm a professional truck driver, I see these things all the time, and I hate them

Just gonna start out with Tal-Tal heights in the background… I’m not getting choked up with nostalgia you are!

Chilling on the street and school with my gameboy, playing Pokemon Red and all my friends taking turns with the 1 link cable we had.

Gameboy for me is very early childhood, 1990/91 before I got the SNES. Mario Land 1 and 2 days. Pokemon is not really what I think of when mentioning the original gameboy. That was at the very end in 1998. By that time I was playing the n64 and ps1. We were lucky to grow up in that era. Golden times.

Starting the video with "Mt. Tamaranch Tal Tal Heights" from the best Gameboy soundtrack and game "The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening" hoocked me up immediately ! 🥰

This is the most accurate and briefly explanation of how a game boy works.

I had a gameboy classic as a boy. saved for it and all. it was the 90's and the first thing I got were rechargable batteries. no trouble at all. yes expensive but 4x4 sets of non rechargable was as much as 1 set of rechargables. no brainer

This video is pure gold. The Gameboy is definitely one of my favorite game consoles of all time, it has a special place in my heart as a kid was the first console that my dad bought me and it was love at first sight. Thanks for this video!!! Cheers from El Salvador

That sponsorship transition is amazing, you moved so seamlessly into it baiting me with a PS5 and everything.

Fantastic look back on something truly special.

We need more video game content! This was great. I knew a ton of it from other videos but I want more

The level of production is top notch!

The production of this video is just amazing

Gameboy designer Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy was "lateral thinking with withered technology". Which means taking older, cheaper, well understood technology, and using it in new and innovative ways.

Fun thing is that the Gameboy also was incorporated into industrial controls, as a cheap easy to use display and processor. There were a few systems developed around it to do things like logging, graphical display of voltage and such, using the small form factor, plus the 32k of address space available in the system, and the Z80 processor that ran it, so you could get simple to interface systems, all in a cartridge and some glue logic.

My brother and I got the Game Boy right when they came out and loved playing it. I was 9 and he was 7. Our parents bought us the attachment lights so we could play at night in the car while traveling. We loved playing each-other with the attached physical wire on games like Tecmo Bowl.

Excellent video!! In addition to having grown up playing games on my original Gameboy, today I use original Gameboys modified with IPS backlit screens, with loadable cartridges containing DIY software called LSDJ, for making chiptunes! (tho I've mostly done covers at first), sometimes with real drums over top.

9:44 It's more like 9%. You wouldn't waste eight bits on each pixel when it can only be one of four shades of gray. You'd use two bits per pixel, packing four into each byte and reducing the memory consumption to just 5760 bytes.

Really fantastic video! The little animations made it all super easy to understand. Thanks for the upload!

The quality of this video is amazing! Animations and graphics are on another level! Really well done!

Holy cow you should go work for corridor crew or something, the models in this video are insane

I'm glad this channel started covering important technology.

It was such a fun game platform.