Game Boy Color

The Game Boy Color was Nintendo's long-awaited response to years of consumer demand for a colour screen on the Game Boy. Released in 1998 — nine years after the original Game Boy — it brought a 56-colour display while maintaining near-complete backwards compatibility with the existing Game Boy library, a critical feature that gave it an immediate software catalogue of hundreds of games. The translucent coloured shell designs — grape, teal, kiwi, dandelion, and berry — became iconic fashion accessories of the late 1990s, photographed in countless school bags across Australia. Pokémon Gold and Silver were the killer apps, selling over 23 million copies and cementing the Game Boy Color's place in a generation's memory. Though technically modest, the GBC bridged the gap between the original Game Boy and the more powerful Game Boy Advance in 2001.