This accessory also allowed to send photos and messages to other players.
The mythical Game Boy once had a huge variety of gadgets as picturesque as a printer, a card reader, a camera … and now we also know, more than 20 years later, that the possibility of launching an accessory with it was studied. that we would have been able to surfing the Internet, send messages to other players, and even receive videos from Nintendo itself to publicize its upcoming releases.
It had an Alexa or Siri-style search engineKnown as Nintendo PageBoy, This device was developed by Eddie Gill together with a team of Wizard technicians, as reported by the well-known video game historian Liam Robertson on his YouTube channel Game History Secrets. Work began on it in 1999 and for three years, Nintendo America studied the viability of this accessory, designed to take advantage of the brand new Game Boy Color that dominated the portable console market at that time.
Nintendo was impressed with the possibilities that PageBoy opened, which among other options, allowed to send photos taken with the Game Boy Camera, and even had a search engine Alexa or Siri style with Mario as the main character, whom you could ask to search for certain content online. Curious is also the application Game Boy TV, which inevitably reminds of the current Nintendo Direct, because using a radio wave transmission technology, the objective was to connect directly with the players by sending them videos of the next novelties of the Japanese company.
With an estimated price of $ 50, why did PaperBoy never see the light of day? The main obstacle was the technology of radio transmission I was betting on it, since this network only existed in very specific areas of the world, such as the United States, so the target audience for the Nintendo PageBoy would have been very limited.
It used radio waves, which limited its success around the worldRobertson emphasizes in his video that one of the Game Boy’s maxims was always its “universality”, that it was a device for everyone, and unfortunately, PageBoy did not live up to that motto. So in July 2002 the project was canceled, although Wizard’s work was not in vain, because in the following years, many of the ideas behind PageBoy were reflected in other Nintendo projects, such as the possibility of messaging with other players. on Wii U and 3DS, or the famous Nintendo Direct, as we mentioned.
Here at 3DJuegos we have already dedicated an article to talk about the craziest Game Boy accessories, with some rarities such as a fishing rod. Currently this mythical Nintendo laptop, as well as other retro consoles, enjoy a second life thanks to homebrew.
More about: Game Boy.