I think I still have my brother's original Game Boy in a box somewhere. I have memories of trying to catch the light from street lamps at night while in the back seat of my parents' car trying to play Link's Awakening, and holding the Game Boy up to my ear just to listen to the Tal Tal Heights music.
Happy Anniversary, Game Boy.
Playing GB by streetlights in the back of the car is a core memory for me. So is my GB gradually getting built up with the crazy amount of accessories- I had a combination light and magnifying screen that slotted onto it, that was my favourite as it meant I could play in bed with the lights off.
I loved my GB, as a kid it was my most precious, favourite possession. It lived in a box covered in stickers, with a stack of the games in those little square plastic cases. One Christmas my dad got me four rechargeable batteries and a charger for them, plus a mains adapter (probably to stop me asking for batteries) and I remember thinking that was magic too, that I no longer needed to ask for batteries.
Links Awakening was my favourite game. Probotector (Contra C), Bionic Commando, the Megaman and Gradius games too. I think I played more JRPGs on it than the SNES, as we got the FF Legend (Saga) games here as well as Mystic Quest, but very few home console ones. Weirdly I only got into Mystic Quest (the first Mana game) as it looked a bit like Link’s Awakening on the back of the box, and I didn’t make the connection between it and Secret of Mana until many years later, as it’s not like Dark Lords and Mana Trees are anything particularly unique in JRPGs.
I liked Super Mario Land 1/2, Tetris and DK ‘94 too, but at the time I remember being really a ‘Capcom and Konami action games’ kid, as I liked those on the NES and I couldn’t afford to make a bad purchase, so I stuck with the names I trusted on the box. The first Castlevania on GB just not being much fun was something I didn’t like at all, so I skipped the second one, which was funny as it turned out to be really good when I played it 20 years later!