About The Nintendo Game Boy Color Handheld

The Game Boy Color is an 8 bit handheld system created and released by Nintendo in 1998. It is the successor to the Game Boy and was eventually paved the way to Nintendo’s next handheld iteration, the Game Boy Advance.

Depending who you ask, some consider the Game Boy Color more of a hardware iteration of the original Game Boy more so than an entirely new product. Like the name implies, the GB Color has a color screen which was a drastic improvement from the original Game Boy’s limitations. It is not backlit however like the later version of the GBA.

The GBC was released in the 5th generation of video game consoles and the Game Boy and GBC combined sold over 118 million units worldwide. This made the handhelds the 4th best selling video game console ever.

The GBC was home to many great games and they had the sales to back that up. Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal sold nearly 30 million copies, Pokemon Pinball sold over 5 million, and Super Mario Bros. Deluxe also sold over 5 million. Link’s Awakening sold nearly 4 million copies as well.

The GBC featured the unique ability to enhance original Game Boy game cartridges by turning them into full color experiences. The system could output up to 16 different colors. If a game didn’t have a color palette stored for it, the GBC would automatically default to its base dark green palette.

Users could also select different color palettes by holding down the D-pad and the A or B buttons when booting up the handheld.

One fun fact about the GBC is that the different color variations that the handheld was released in spell out the word color:

• Berry: C
• Grape: O
• Kiwi: L
• Dandelion: O
• Teal: R

How To Emulate The Game Boy Color

There are plenty of emulators available for emulating the GBC. TGB Dual, MyOldBoy!, and KIGB are a few standout names. In addition to the ones we just mentioned, RetroArch also has the ability to play Game Boy Color games with the use of its GBC core, Gambatte.

It should be noted that most Game Boy emulators out there will also emulate the Game Boy Color. It’s pretty easy to emulate the GBC these days and since Game Boy Color emulation has been around for so long at this point, most games are highly compatible and run fairly well.