This kind of makes me feel old, and tempted to root around in my closet.
A long, long time ago in a childhood increasingly far away, I remember what mobile gaming was like. More than a bit of my childhood involved being stuck in the back of a car, bored for the duration, or stuck waiting places. Needless to say it was more remember to bring your shit with you than remember your phone charger. ‘Cuz if T-800 and Cpl Hicks lost their guns, you weren’t going back, lol.
Mobile gaming when I was little was something more like Tiger’s hand held games. I’m pretty sure that Double Dragon passed more than a few hours of my early childhood. And then there was Game Boy and Game Gear. Those were cool. More often than not, mobile gaming was borrowing my grandmother’s deck of cards, which didn’t require more power than daylight.
My first “Real” video gaming system of my own, was the Super NES. Between the original NES my brother and I played, and the THHGs I was used to, I came very close to choosing the original Game Boy for my first system, but in the end the green screen balanced me in favor of a more traditional console. The Super Nintendo had plenty of pretty colours, and Super Game Boy was eventually a thing anyway. Some time later my brother would also end up with a Sega Game Gear, but that was short lived.
Most of my time with the Game Boy turned out to be the later Color model. My mother bought me a purple Game Boy Color out of the local pawn shop around the time Pokemon Red & Blue were still young in America, and I still have that GBC in my closet. Along with my Pokemon Blue cartridge, and other games. Before the rise of the affordable smart phone, more than a bit of time spent waiting someplace, I passed either reading books or playing on my Game Boy Color.