The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we’ll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day.

As the 30th anniversary of the Game Boy’s Japanese debut approached, we here at Nintendo Life Towers were thinking a lot about the ol’ DMG-01. The appeal of that chunky lump of grey plastic endures to this day, despite multiple hardware revisions and being superseded by umpteen portables. Yes, it’s bulky by modern standards, and these days you’ll find a better screen on your average set of bathroom scales, but the OG Game Boy remains a reassuringly solid and comfortable bit of kit in your hands.

A quick survey around the office reveals that a few staff members are too young to have owned the original version of the console, but thanks to the backwards compatibility of the Game Boy line (right up to the Micro variant of the Game Boy Advance), there’s nobody that doesn’t get a dose of the warm fuzzies at the mention of the classic system and its huge library of games.

We’ve already heard what developers thought of the all-conquering handheld and now it’s time to listen to us blather on for a paragraph or two about what makes the Game Boy so special. So, grab a fistful of double-As and saddle up for a nostalgia trip…

Ryan Craddock, staff writer

Sadly, I’ve never owned an original Game Boy, but the Game Boy Color (close enough, right?) was my very first gaming console. I vividly remember being painfully jealous of my next door neighbour who had a Game Boy with a copy of Pokémon Blue, and my little, six-year-old self would go round every day, play on it for as long as I could (without saving over his progress) and then do it all over again the next day.

Eventually, my mum treated me to my very own Game Boy Color (which had only been out for a year or two) and a copy of both Pokémon Red and Blue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Pokémon took over my entire life as a kid – it was everything – and that love for the series, and later Nintendo, has led me right to where I am today on this very site.

Being so young meant that I couldn’t collect the sheer number of games I do for consoles these days, so I can’t declare myself as a ‘super fan’ of the system as such, but the Game Boy family of consoles kickstarted my love for a hobby which has always stayed with me and I can’t give them any better praise than that.

Dom Reseigh-Lincoln, reviewer

The Game Boy wasn’t just a flashy toy to me. It was the start of a lifelong love of handheld gaming. And every game – even the bad ones – felt that bit more important because I could play them anywhere. It even got me into genres I might otherwise have never played. The cryptically named Soccer sent me football mad (including it’s amazing soundtrack). The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening cemented the series into my being long before Ocarina of Time. And, of course, I spent endless hours playing WWF Superstars. My love of PSP, Vita and Switch all come back to that big yellow Game Boy that meant so much.

Gavin Lane, staff writer

It’s only very recently that I tracked down an original Game Boy of my own – back in the day I briefly played on a red Game Boy Pocket (which has since been lost to time or, possibly, distant relatives) before upgrading to a beautiful turquoise Game Boy Color at the same time I swapped Pokémon Blue for the enhanced Yellow version. It was on that which I played my select library of original Game Boy games. The one that really stands out in my memory (besides the brilliant Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, of course) is the simply named Tennis.

No, this game didn’t have any ‘Super’ prefix or a new-fangled colon-subtitle to get you excited! Back in those days you could name your game after the sport it emulated and that was quite enough, thank-you-very-much; no bells, no whistles, just tennis. Even today I find the control you have over your shots impressive, and – blasphemous as it may be – it’s not Tetris I turn to for a bite of retro-relaxation, it’s Tennis.

Quiet, please.

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

My experience with the original Game Boy is hard to compress in just a few short paragraphs but I am not one to shy away from the challenge. While I was a very happy Commodore Amiga owner at the time (1991), it was not the ideal digital entertainment platform in a world where my parents ruled the TV screen (never got a monitor for it, they were expensive).

I stumbled upon the first news of the Game Boy like pretty much everything else in a pre-internet connected world: through the magic of foreign press. A Game & Watch with interchangeable games and the innards of a souped-up ZX Spectrum with a 20+ hour battery life? You can keep your colour games, Game Gear and Lynx, I need something that could last me 300-kilometre bus trips and doctor appointment waiting rooms while still fitting in my pockets. Portugal was going into the transitional period of enforcing EU copyright laws (i.e. the end of over-the-counter piracy) and video game consoles were starting to at last show up in local toy stores. Sega nearly immediately took over the country with its usual flare and aggressive marketing, but Nintendo eventually began sneaking into toy stores and the Game Boy arrived fashionably late along with the outdated 8-bit NES.

As you might imagine, things on the playground weren’t easy for Nintendo fans; games became extremely expensive overnight and none of us could afford more than one system and maybe a game every couple of months. Most of my friends turned to SEGA and they simply could not comprehend why I was so happy to return to 8-bit and a system with only 4 colours and no backlit screen. However, thanks to my monthly investment in foreign press I knew exactly what was happening in the US and Japan, with companies like Capcom and Konami releasing portable miracles every other month. Even better, local toy shops began sneaking in (thankfully region-free) Game Boy imports onto their inventory so it wasn’t long before my humble collection grew outside of official European offerings.

I am still discovering nowadays new Game Boy games by exploring the Japan-only catalogue and I have played so many brilliant titles it is truly impossible for me to pick a single game as “the one”. But like most wonderful journeys it all began with my first game and to most people’s surprise it was neither Super Mario Land nor the packed-in Tetris (which I still replay often). It was a very humble first-party developed shmup called Solar Striker. I played it so much I reckon I still know every pattern and safe spot needed to defeat all end-of-level bosses. Further proof of my eccentricity, I never played or owned any Pokémon games; when those came out I was already knee-deep into Japanese Super Famicom imports.

Besides the undeniable staying power of the system, the beauty of the Game Boy remains that there is no ‘right way’ to enjoy its fantastic game library. There is something for everyone if you look beyond the obvious choices. Who knew that 30 years later it would find a whole new life as the weapon of choice among chiptune music artists? It was a luxury back then and obsolete or not, a luxury today and tomorrow; you simply can’t put down this brick.

Alex Olney, video producer

My brother and I both got a Game Boy Pocket each one Christmas back in what must have been the mid-nineties, which considering our age was unthinkable, as we usually had to share everything. Both of them are still both going strong today, but mine was certainly put through its paces in its heyday.

One fine-ish day, I was feeling rather unwell and so stayed home from school so as not to infect all the other small humans. Naturally the shiny electronic brick was used whenever this happened, but this was before I properly understood how to take care of the things that I owned and didn’t want to be damaged. As I was given some cold medicine from my mum, I didn’t really want to pause the game, so I dried drinking it from the tiny plastic cup hands-free. What resulted was the sticky syrup slipping southwards and landing on my console’s D-pad. It soaked in beautifully, and not wanting to let my family know what a complete boob I’d been, I tried to hide it and clean it up as well as I could. Over the coming weeks the D-pad was getting stickier and stiffer all the time, making Alleyway even more unplayable than it was before.

I’d resigned myself to the fact that it was broken, and nothing was going to fix it short of some miracle my dad could perform with some power tools behind closed doors. After a few weeks in a drawer however, the sugary glue had completely hardened, and although it could still be seen through the clear body of the device, one quick press snapped its bonds in twain, and although slightly gritty, the system was working perfectly again. These little buggers are borderline invincible.

Liam Doolan, news writer

I played a wide variety of releases during the original Game Boy generation, but one game I’ll always cherish is the 1998 action-adventure title James Bond 007, created by the now-defunct developer, Saffire Entertainment.

While the Pokémon craze was growing in popularity here in the west, somehow I found myself playing this on the side, on a regular basis. Compared to various other Game Boy games at the time – such as Pokémon Red and Blue – the design of James Bond was a little rough around the edges. Long story short, I ended up getting stuck in a number of difficult segments throughout the game due to its design but managed to persevere.

I eventually saw the credits roll and to this day, it’s still one of my favourite Game Boy games – and memories – of all-time.

Austin Voigt, contributing writer

My first experience with the Game Boy was in my next-door neighbor’s kitchen, and I remember it like it was yesterday. While my friend was my age, their parents allowed them to have a Game Boy, and mine did not (because they thought videogames were the devil’s work, apparently). I’d played the SNES copiously in my youth on my uncle’s system, but this was the first time I’d experienced handheld gaming that could just move anywhere with you – mind-boggling! We played Super Mario Land while listening to the Lion King soundtrack (yeah, it was quite a few years after the initial release – I’m a youngster), and I remembered thinking: “This is the future, people. Handheld gaming, music on CDs… what next?!” Ah, if only Little Austin could see what Nintendo’s doing now…

Darren Calvert, operations director

As I started my gaming life as something of a Sega kid with the Master System, like so many others my age in the UK, I have fond memories of the Game Boy as it introduced me to all the great Nintendo franchises long before I would go on to pick up a battered old Mattel NES for myself. While many of my cherished Game Boy memories were playing Vs Tetris against my best friend outdoors via the game link cable, I also remember being completely addicted to Super Mario Land at that time too.

A local video game store which we frequented used to have the latest issue of Famitsu on the counter for customers to browse and I remember how excited we were to see the first screenshots for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan which we promptly imported a whole year before it arrived officially in the UK. Gargoyle’s Quest was another fond import in 1990; we had no idea what was going on in the RPG section of the game, but it didn’t matter. We muddled through until we could get to the next slice of Firebrand platforming action.

The Game Boy was always with us wherever we went for many years, along with a stash of AA batteries of course. While the Sega Game Gear and the Atari Lynx did their best to challenge the humble Game Boy, nothing could beat its vast selection of games which were ideally suited to its small monochrome screen. 30 years later, many of these classic games are still great fun to dip into.

Those are just some of our memories, but that unassuming lump of grey plastic stokes the old nostalgia fires like Doc Brown’s Presto logs – share your own memories in the comments below and let’s all bask in the warm green glow of the (backlight-modded) DMG-01…

Well, what another busy week we’ve had. Joker finally arrived in Smash Bros. Ultimate, Capcom announced a new plug-and-play arcade stick, and Reggie has been stealing all of the headlines with his retirement, but now it’s time to sit back, relax, and talk about which games we’ll be playing over the weekend. As always, members of the Nintendo Life team have gathered to talk about our plans below and we’d love for you to join in with our poll and comment sections. Enjoy!

Ryan Craddock, staff writer

I’m rather determined to make the best use of this long weekend as possible but, at the time of writing this, I’m not exactly sure how I’ll be doing just that. There’ll probably be a little bit of Yoshi’s Crafted World in there (my partner and I are slowly working towards completion on that one) but I’ve also developed a sudden desire to pick up any and every older game possible to start a proper collection.

My younger self foolishly decided to sell off a lot of old games and I’m growing more annoyed at myself with each passing day. As such, I might end up trying to figure out the best ways to pick up lots of games or even a console or two that I’m missing for future purchases – there’s the pesky matter of saving money for important life things to deal with first, but hopefully one day I’ll be able to treat myself! My N64 library, in particular, could use a good boost…

Gavin Lane, staff writer

Last Friday I was out of the flat when my Labo VR Kit arrived, but the building superintendent took the delivery. Phew! Unfortunately, I arrived home late that night and said package would remain locked in his office until Monday morning. To add insult to injury, I could see the damn box sitting there through the window!

So, that means I’ll be constructing my cardboard blaster this weekend instead. I’ll also be tinkering with my recently procured original Game Boy in honour of its birthday on Sunday. It’s got a line of dead pixels, but that won’t stop me enjoying some classics. It could do with a cleanup and a backlight, too… I feel a project coming on! Have a fantastic long weekend everyone.

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

I have decided to skip Cuphead until the physical release hits so this weekend will be once again filled with all sorts of Super Robot Wars T insanity. I will partake in Splatoon 2’s Spring Fest and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s Castlevania themed spirit event while giving Joker a proper go. I will also be surely spending an insane amount of time playing Super Nintendo and Game Boy for “nostalgic research”.

My game of the week goes to the artistic carnage of Katana ZERO. When a game gets refused certification in Australia, you know you are in for a good time!

Austin Voigt, contributing writer

My plans this holiday weekend will involve finally sinking my teeth into My Time at Portia, finishing the buildouts for the rest of the Labo VR kit (I’ve only gotten through about half), as well as getting a bit further in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (I hadn’t played this game before – but I got it ultra-cheap thanks to Target’s catalog misprint, so I finally caved). Excited to have so many new games to dig into!

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave a vote in the poll above and a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…

Last week, EA and Respawn Entertainment revealed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC this November.

The game stars a character named Cal Kestis who is a survivor of Order 66 and is forced to conceal his Jedi powers to stay alive.

Not long after the game was revealed, EA community manager Jay Ingram was asked over on Twitter if there were any plans for it to be released on Nintendo’s hybrid device in the future.

He responded by saying there were “no such plans” as amazing as the system is:

Not long ago, Respawn Entertainment responded to questions about a potential Apex Legends port for the Nintendo Switch.

While nothing is currently planned, the developer would “love” to bring the game to the Switch and is hearing all of these requests from Nintendo fans.

For anyone still seeking a Star Wars fix on the Switch, it looks the only option, for now, is Star Wars Pinball by Zen Studios, due out on 13th September.

Would you like to see more Star Wars games on the Nintendo Switch in the future? Leave your thoughts below.

Last June, the rhythm-based puzzle game Lumines Remastered was released on the Switch eShop. We said it was a premier puzzle experience and awarded it nine out of ten stars. The Switch version ended up becoming the best-selling version of the game, too.

If you’ve had this one on your wishlist for a while now, you might want to hold out a little longer as physical distributor Limited Run Games appears to be teasing a hard copy. While it’s unclear what platforms this announcement is for, what we do know is that more will be revealed next week on 22nd April.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the announcement trailer for Lumines Remastered. Noticeably the music matches the audio in the above teaser.

On a related, but separate note, pre-orders are now live for Minit on Limited Run Games and Special Reserve Games.

Is Lumines a game you’ve been wanting to add to your physical collection? Tell us down in the comments.

The recent release of Yoshi’s Crafted World on the Switch has encouraged Nintendo of America to take a trip down memory lane. To celebrate nearly 30 years of Mario’s green-coloured companion, a lovely timeline graphic has been uploaded to Twitter, showing off the character’s entire history. Nintendo also threw in a fun fact about the “saddle” on Yoshi’s back:

Whether you’re already throwing eggs in #YoshisCraftedWorld on #NintendoSwitch, or thinking of Flutter Jumping into the crafty fun, catch up with a refresher on Yoshi’s nearly 30 years of starring roles!

By the way…did you know that the “saddle” on Yoshi’s back is a shell?

How many Yoshi games have you played and which one is your favourite? Did you know Yoshi’s “saddle” was a shell? Tell us your own history with Yoshi in the comments below.

Efficiently managing the scope and implementation of procedural systems is tricky business, but Insomniac Games did just that during development of its 2018 open-world hit Marvel’s Spider-Man.

At GDC 2019 earlier this year, Insomniac’s David Santiago gave attendees a behind-the-scenes look at the open world pipeline of Marvel’s Spider-Man, showcasing how each procedural system was originally designed to support iterations and dependencies.

Of course, the reality of producing a “procedurally-authored open world” that also looks like real-life Manhattan provided a larger set of tasks than the team had anticipated. Insomniac’s resulting procedural systems were used to author, modify and monitor much more content than planned, and in his talk (now available to watch for free on the official GDC YouTube channel) Santiago explained how the anticipated and unforeseen challenges became success stories and have laid a road-map for future projects.

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

The moment I almost gave up on Astroneer was also the moment that its genius struck me. There I was, bombing around this mysterious planet with my new buggy; I felt like a badass for assembling the required components and doing enough research to learn the schematic. Now this was my buggy; there were many like it, but this one was mine. A triumph that would allow me to explore farther than ever from my landing site and not be bound by how far I could tether my oxygen line to it. Now I could tether from my buggy of badassery, anywhere on this uncharted world.

Then I fell into a hole because I wasn’t looking where I was going.

That led to a deeper hole because of gravity.

When all was said and done, I was stuck in a Byzantine warren with no hope of escape and only the barest trace of sunlight to remind me of how far I had fallen, my buggy upside down on some impossible geometric rockface.

At this point I was already staggeringly annoyed because I didn’t realize that the marker pointing out my base disappeared beneath the horizon, so I was already quite lost when the hole claimed me. This was the final straw; I quit the game in disgust and figured I’d set it aside until enough time had passed that restarting wouldn’t feel like a great loss.

But a fact nagged at me. My little astroneer has a tool in her spacesuit that allows her to terraform. Couldn’t I just patiently dig my way out while building a ramp? The next day, after work, I restarted the game and did just that. Painstakingly at first, smoothly as soon as the sky appeared, I paved my way out. I was still lost, but the buggy of badassery was, at least, on the surface. A quick check of the Wiki confirmed something I suspected: the base is always at the planet’s equator. Armed with that fact, I actually navigated my way back home by the stars; I returned in glory to my Lego set of a base.

***

Astroneer excels at managing the critical balance between stress and triumph. As irritated and lost as I felt, there was always a solution waiting to be discovered. The game rewards patience in a way that is entirely of a piece with its serene pace. Unless you’re running of out oxygen, you’re free from urgency here. With all the neverending discourse around “challenge” in games, it’s worth dwelling on Astroneer’s unpretentious success at balancing calmness with difficulty and reward.

These sorts of sandbox adventures are, as a matter of course, self-directed. Many of them share these features, to one degree or another. But Astroneer feels special in part because of its minimalism. Comparisons to No Man’s Sky are inevitable, of course, and if I wanted to be cheeky I could say that Astroneer was a lightweight and cartoony version of Hello Games’ offering. But it manages to be a good deal more than that (though its cartoony aesthetic gives it a stronger sense of identity).

This is, fundamentally, a game about peaceful problem solving. You will occasionally chance across hostile plant life or fungus, but there are no marauding aliens; of all the things to be researched and built from your catalogue, there are no guns to be found. Even the more devilish of flora doesn’t go out of its way to hurt you. It only does so if you’re tromping around carelessly.

There’s something relaxing and reassuring about this. A gentle vibe that pervades the whole game, and thus puts the joy of exploration front and center. What lies over that next ridge or at the bottom of that canyon is the thing that powers you through this game.

As with most games of its type, Astroneer sees you fashion crude items from basic materials which then allow you to harvest better materials to build bigger and better items and so on. Your base slowly expands as you work your way up to building things like a launch pad to help you mine materials you can only get on a nearby moon. But it’s the joy that comes precisely from going higher and farther that feels like the game’s greatest reward, seeing so much more over the next horizon.

Astroneer’s focus on exploration gives it that perfect balance between those competing forces that so often tear games apart, and its minimalism aids it by reducing the number of things that can go wrong. While future patches may add new buildings and functionality, the game allows you to do a lot with a relatively small number of inputs. Mining, gathering, and terraforming are all the same function. And, while it can be irksome to manage, the oxygen tether gives you a clear sense of physical limitation that can only be overcome through more building (i.e. using soil compound to build more tether poles and extend your range). With that, you know any solution to getting lost or finding more resources must involve one of a small range of functions.

Far from limiting you, this minimalism elegantly guides you through the world.

But, as thrilling as it can be to discover the wreckage of a crashed spaceship, say, there’s something weirdly chilling about discovering another spacesuit pack like yours and looting it for spare parts. Who were those other astroneers who clearly died here? The game doesn’t really say. Like most sandbox adventure games, Astroneer’s world is one without meaning. Of course, so many games, particularly RPGs, are built on the skeleton of acquisitiveness (kill ten rats to upgrade your leather jerkin and basic shortsword; use your silver shortsword to kill ten dire rats, et cetera). But there is, at least, a gloss of narrative overlaying it all that tells you why you’re killing ten rats.

You have to make up your own story–and I certainly tried for several hours–but it’s challenging when there’s so little help from the world itself. There are suggestions of a story, chiefly in the form of titanic alien gates that loom large over the landscape. But it’d be a stretch to say there’s even a vague narrative at work here. In time you’re just confronted with the fact that you’re on that resource-gear treadmill and nothing more.

All that really waits over the next horizon is more ore. But if you can fall into a deep hole, tell yourself a good enough story about your astroneer and what they’re doing, then the sky’s the limit.

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington who researches anti-social behavior online, and a gaming critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Ring will begin receiving the latest 1905 Xbox One system update (19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3023.190410-1904). Read on for more about the new features, fixes and known issues in the latest 1904 system update.

DETAILS:

• OS version released:  19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3023.190410-1904
• Available: 6:00PM PDT 4/12/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PDT 4/13/19.

New Features:

This first update is meant to lay the groundwork for what’s to come in 1905, so while you’ll find fixes and known issues listed below, please keep an eye out for feature announcements as they’re ready to be previewed.  Thanks, as always, for your passion for helping make Xbox One system updates the best they can be prior to release to GA!

Fixes:

My Games and Apps

• Additional fixes for an issue in which switching from media apps such as Youtube/Hulu to a game or from a game to a media app would crash the console

Known Issues:

Audio

• Some users are experiencing no audio with headsets and we are investigating
• Some users are encountering no audio on their Xbox console after boot (no shell audio, no game audio, no app audio), then have CSS ask them to perform the following steps:

1. Cold reboot the console

OR

2. Go to Audio settings on console
3. Change their HDMI audio settings to the highest supported uncompressed channel count for their equipment
4. Switch back to the desired format
5. Audio should be restored

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.