The Insane Engineering of the Gameboy

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Credits:
Producer/Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Head of Production: Mike Ridolfi
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Writer/Research: Josi Gold
Animator: Eli Prenten
Animator: Stijn Orlans
Sound and Production Coordinator: Graham Haerther
Sound: Donovan Bullen
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
Head of Moral: Shia LeWoof
References:
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.
Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Thank you to my patreon supporters: Abdullah Alotaibi, Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung

[@RySoRy]

Early video game engineers were absolutely cracked. Getting as much as you can from every byte is a lost art form.

[@andysolganik8333]

Hands down the most impressive example of this was the original Roller Coaster Tycoon

[@Cryo_Gen]

not completely lost luckily, the Demo Scene is still alive and kickin

[@SadeN_0]

It certainly isn't lost, it just isn't a _requirement_ for most development work anymore... though one lowkey wishes it still was. Still the issue is much worse in the Electron-powered general application hellscape than it is in gaming.

[@Spo8]

@@SadeN_0bro quit whining and download these 200mb of node_modules

[@roku_nine]

nowadays, games are very unoptimized. older games actually looks better with higher fps.

[@douglascodes]

Can't wait for the part where he explains how the Gameboy's blunt nose cone design holds up to mach 25 reentry.

[@shootiNg_MoroN]

🤣🤣

[@NuclearTopSpot]

The insane engineering of the Иokia 3310 Armour-piercing discarding sabot

[@RodrigoM3llo]

Yup, never found anything that can sustain that much of a beating like a gameboy. I threw mine at the ground a lot of times.

[@stanb1455]

@@NuclearTopSpot Yaokia? Also, if the 3310 was a shell, it would just be an Armour-Piercing slug.

[@itsdokko2990]

next video will be like "The science and ballistics of the Nokia 3310"@@stanb1455

[@DoctorZacharySmith]

It’s amazing to think that the Gameboy was a low-powered budget game console when it appeared in 1989 and yet it was an expensive and coveted piece of tech for me as an Eastern European kid in the mid-90s. I was so happy to get a Gameboy in 1996 after years of saving my pocket money! When I saw a Sega Game Gear my classmate had (whose family emigrated to Canada and then came back for some reason) I wasn’t even envious, it was straight up sci-fi. I couldn’t believe that such a backlit color screen could exist in the real world.

[@Simon-jh1hf]

My parents always had to read me what to do during Link to the Past because I couldn't read yet. My 86-year-old grandfather now uses my Gameboy and plays Tetris every day. It still works.I also still play Gameboy, but on emulators.

[@MaximilianonMars]

Those must be fond memories. For me I couldn't read back during the point-and-click adventure games from Lucasarts. A better time.

[@Simon-jh1hf]

@@MaximilianonMars Get a used old laptop for 50-80 bucks and let the times come back to life :)

[@YamatoFukkatsu]

Same here. I'd occasionally have my mom describe the list of items in the Link to the Past instruction booklet, almost like reading a bedtime story.

[@yosefmacgruber1920]

@@MaximilianonMars Do you mean like _Maniac Mansion_ ?

[@yosefmacgruber1920]

@@YamatoFukkatsu Somehow I suspect that Mom liked the video game also?

[@mugemobi]

The 3D art in this episode is absolutely epic!

[@DyslexicMitochondria]

Right? As an animator and creator the quality is next level

[@epicstuff7522]

@@DyslexicMitochondria your comment made me check out ur profile. Damn dude ur channel is such a hidden gem

[@trumpputinkim]

@@epicstuff7522sheesh ur right

[@Freakcent]

It's at a level where you are constantly trying to figure out if the shot is real or animated. Very impressive.

[@spiderplant]

I like the game gear just fucking dropped onto the table

[@xpeterson]

The production quality in this video is insane. From the 8 bit pixel graphics for explaining the display to the game boy model that I could only tell wasn’t real because it was floating in separate pieces; it’s been so cool to watch this channel grow.

[@DJRaffa1000]

For me, it literally needed your comment to realize that i was constantly looking at renderings and not the real thing. My mind just didnt register the flying parts as odd because i was son engrossed in the story itself)

[@Handheld_TECH]

❤👍

[@rstidman]

I haven't watched this video and probably won't, but I am glad to see someone finally highlighting the release of the patients at Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill in 1985, all of whom were allowed to be freed so they could work on the next-generation gaming technology. They were insane; they were homicidal maniacs that happened to be talented engineers. The Gameboy was a development from clinically-insane psychopathic minds. We should never forget the 44 people killed by these insane developers after-hours, but I know of nobody who recalls.

[@PlaneCrasher420]

The insane engineering of the Real Engineering

[@fungo6631]

8 bit pixel my ass. The Gameboy was 2 bits per pixel. The GBA was 8 bits per pixel (but could also reach 15 bits per pixel).

[@alicethegrinsecatz6011]

I don't need 50 Shades of Grey. I only need 4 shades of green. 😍

[@marshwetland3808]

😂😆

[@jeffreydean7556]

Underrated comment.

[@zxKAOS1]

@@jeffreydean7556 Truly. It's one short of 50 upvotes!

[@nickcunningham6344]

@@zxKAOS1 You did not just call KZbin likes "upvotes" 😂

[@machupikachu1085]

@@nickcunningham6344 yes. They did. And?

[@PretendingToBeAHuman]

Even to this day, economics and convenience are something a lot of tech companies forget about when designing new hardware. Most people don’t want bleeding edge devices, they want something practical and durable that makes sense within their budget.

[@MrMarinus18]

What made the Gameboy superior was that it was actually doing what people bought it for. it was small enough to fit in a pocket, sturdy enough to withstand rough handling, efficient enough to last a whole road trip and cheap enough people felt comfortable taking it with them in places where it could get damaged.

[@tunoddenrub]

That old gray brick was a rugged son of a gun. All early Nintendo products were. We used to say they were made of solid Nintendium.

[@thisguy2958]

Cheap is relative. Was definitely not cheap for me.

[@MrMarinus18]

@@thisguy2958 Indeed but for many people at the time it was cheap enough that they could consider replacing it. Therefore they weren't afraid to take it into places where it could get damaged. With the Gamegear many wouldn't take it with them in fear of damaging it.

[@MrTweaksTV]

@@MrMarinus18 had both. Confirming 100%

[@DrGreenThumbNZL]

It was the games you noob

[@2WaterGuns]

Regarding the trademark defense mentioned at 9:02, it turns out Sega did a similar thing for their Genesis / Mega Drive system, but when they took Accolade to court over it, they lost, establishing the precedent that it's not trademark infringement if technical aspects of the system force you to use that trademark. But of course that was after the introduction of the Game Boy, so Nintendo wouldn't have had that precedent at the time. Still, it's an annoying thing for homebrewers, who have to put a big "just kidding, not actually licensed by Nintendo" screen after the boot up sequence.

[@Robinthefox88]

Sega's copyright system was called TMSS, and actually wasn't in the first revision of the console and came out because they were losing royalties on games sales, and adding the system in later revisions caused issues with some games that came out before TMSS that would hang on consoles that expected it I think at least one game couldn't progress on early models that didn't have TMSS because the TMSS system was supposed to return control back to the game code once checks were completed, but because the console never returned control, the game hung, although I might be mistaken on that one.

[@DrTune]

there's a fairly simple way around this (requires a little bit of hardware in the cart) see my comment above

[@arthurmoore9488]

@@DrTuneIt's still a massively important precedent. Every couple years a company tries this same trick, and has to be slapped down again. Unfortunately, the US legal system is designed so individuals who aren't rich will never win. Even if we win, we loose from more than a house's worth of lawyer fees.

[@m.hosseinmahmoodi]

This was one of the best videos about the Game Boy's hardware. Few notes: 1: channel 3 is the wave channel and channel 4 is the noise channel (not sure why they were swapped in the video) 2: that explanation of Game Boy rendering is overly simplified. 3: if you wanted to store the Game Boy screen as bitmap data, you could! And it would take up 5760 Bytes, or 8.7% of the entire addressable memory. (144 * 160 * 2 (bit) * 1/8 (byte/bit) = 5760 Bytes) 4: the trademark defense didn't work as it was not enforceable by law (Sega v. Accolade) 5: Game Boy read the Nintendo logo twice first time to display it, second time to check it, some unlicensed games sent their own logo when it was first read to display their own logo and sent Nintendo logo data for the checking process.

[@diogokamioka]

Such depth of knowledge! Sorry to ask, but how come do you know so much!? Did you work with it? Just curious :)

[@m.hosseinmahmoodi]

​@@diogokamioka yes, I developed some (bad) programs for it. It's easier than most people think it is. if you want to know more about GB's technical side, search for "gbdev pan docs" it has almost everything that the GB community knows. If you rather watch a video explaining it, search for "The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)" it's less comprehensive but has all the things that a normal developer needs to know.

[@anthonychu3471]

​@@diogokamioka More than likely they did some work with Gameboy emulation, or at the very least that's how I got my knowledge of the platform. A Gameboy is one of the simpler game consoles/handhelds to write an emulator for, and it's usually one of the first projects someone does if they want to get into console emulation (by no means does that mean it's extremely easy to write an emulator for though). Although if you want to get simpler you could do a CHIP-8 emulator. If you're interested in learning more yourself, Pan Docs is the main resource people recommend if you want to learn more about the platform.

[@maxim_ml]

cool!!

[@lukamagicc]

Reading this comment makes me cringe it’s so hard to explain. even if it’s 100% correct -its like is it just me or do nerdy communities always find a way to make things less fun. Like do the video then man, this is by far an insanely great and concise video. Pedantic.

[@LPanic.]

I paused for like 5 minutes at 7:26 just to admire the insanely detailed PCB Animation. Great work, great Video!

[@MonkTorius]

I came across this comment at 7:24, great timing, thanks

[@ShaneGoodson]

I left my gameboy on pause overnight to finish Super Mario Land. That thing was a beast. I got it in 1990, still works.

[@kmieciu4ever]

Yeah! I remember I would turn the brightness all the way down so the screen would basically power down :-)

[@dbrenz]

Crazy and creative tricks that gamers today will never have to think about themselves. An occasional load error maybe but there is never a worry about saving progress anymore with cloud-backed autosave and batteries that last a whole day of gaming a recharge within an hour or two...

[@jamesjdh6787]

'all the best stuff's made in Japan' Marty McFly

[@kmieciu4ever]

@@jamesjdh6787 nowadays it's China :-)

[@jamesgizasson]

​@@kmieciu4ever Absolutely not. XD

[@FireWyvern870]

Meanwhile current game developer: ok we will use 100GB of your storage space, and we need 32GB of memory, latest gen CPU, and 4080 at minimum to run our game. Oh, and there's 65GB update that you need to install. Optimization? Whats that?

[@talideon]

That annoys me too, but I'll put on my developer hat and say that some of it is understandable once you understand what's going on. A bugfix can end up producing a binary that doesn't diff neatly against older ones, either because the compiler doesn't do deterministic builds (which can be to prevent exploits or because the compiler devs didn't put time into making builds deterministic) or you have asset pipelines that don't produce deterministic outputs. Now, some of this can be dealt with in build pipelines, but there's often no resources given to it. If you see a game with big updates that have small downloads, either that's a studio that goes out of their way to keep updates small or you've a rogue dev who's trying to do the right thing. Not all of this is easily solvable though and there may not be a sane way to keep binary patches small, especially if you have to prioritise asset streaming speeds.

[@FireWyvern870]

@@talideon just make asset quality downloadable based on player request. Don't need to push down 4K texture to players that don't need it.

[@Roxor128]

@@FireWyvern870 I'd argue that the only games that could benefit from 4k textures would be 2D ones, as at least that would come close to the screen resolution of the more overkill displays. A 3D game is going to be scaling it down almost everywhere. A 1m*1m surface with a 4096*4096 texture is going to have the texels come out at about 0.25mm. That's a scale comparable to the pixels on a regular monitor. You're not going to see that without your nose up against the wall or a virtual magnifying glass.

[@Thornbloom]

Things need to stop being made of spaghetti code.

[@FireWyvern870]

@@Thornbloom spaghetti code actually doesn't really make game larger, eseentially code are just text that cost miniscule amount of space. It's the assets thats the problem. Either they don't do cleanup of unused asset, or they don't care about efficient use of space.

[@kodoyama]

Insane production values. Excellent video. I’m a 25 year VFX veteran and can fully appreciate the amount or work this video required.

[@bananachild1936]

While this was a fantastically put together short documentary, I must say I was more blown away by the photorealistic, pristine as hell 3D renders of everything that were presented on screen. From the Gameboy itself, the Game Gear, and all the way to the AAA Energizer battery.

[@therabbithat]

Surely those are assets you can buy and import, then manipulate yourself? If not, Nintendo is missing a trick 😁

[@leftyfourguns]

Gunpei Yokoi was so pivotal in establishing the Nintendo philosophy in its most important early years. He not only established the philosophy of hardware design that made the NES and GameBoy so popular and so profitable, but also in game design by mentoring Shigeru Miyamoto, who still practices the philosophies of his mentor

[@SuperM789]

and his swan song for the company was the virtual boy lmao

[@EdgardoMX]

​@@SuperM789 Actually, his last project for Nintendo was the Game Boy Pocket...

[@HipposHateWater]

@@SuperM789 That was initially going to be his final project, but he changed his mind after it flopped terribly and he didn't want to leave on that bad note. His next project was to refresh the Game Boy Pocket, and when that was fairly well received he decided "eh, close enough" and went ahead with retiring then.

[@t3hpoopsmith]

​@@HipposHateWaterjust from Nintendo. He worked for bandai afterward. His final project in his career was the tamagotchi. Dude was brilliant and so influential. And the only reason he got to work in such roles was because he was fucking around on the production floor and Yamauchi saw his Ultra hand creation and thought it was genus. Incredible man with an incredible story. Died way too soon. Cars are so deadly.

[@flipsolo]

A real engineer finally giving a deep-dive of Game Boy's technological marvel, and the constraints of Nintendo engineers were working on. Another outstanding gem from this channel.

[@Badsniperarmy]

fr, love this channel!

[@pyrob2142]

I believe ModernVintageGamer has a series that looks at these limitations from a programmer's point of view for quite a lot of retro consoles. It's astonishing what these guys were able to get out of the hardware!

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

There was another channel that had a series for the Gameboy but it is abandoned

[@cube2fox]

The Game Boy wasn't a technological marvel, nor was it underpowered for its time. It was basically a portable NES, with a few of the NES limitations fixed (scrolling related) but without color.

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

@@cube2fox it's more appropriate to say that the game boy was a graphics calculator with the ability to play games the gameboys z80 would have been seen as a hobby chip like the pis of old

[@Exen88]

I love my dim lighted gameboy. Lol. When I bought the light extension for it, it was an amazing add on! This is now a cherished memory in all of us who went through this experience.

[@topdeckdog]

Were you even around in 1989? I was and I can assure you the Game Boy wasn't received with mixed reviews, it was the coolest thing EVER 0:05

[@dontsubtome8088]

Didn't realize how much engineering was put into something I used to spill water on. Jokes aside the Gameboy gave me a bunch of core memories that I will never forget.

[@solarsolid]

I was using my gameboy well into the 2000's. They live forever

[@juanb8203]

A wall adapter was absolutely necessary for the Game Gear.

[@KaitouKaiju]

Mine exploded from the strain

[@TheCrewExpendable]

Don't forget the car adapter as well! Otherwise the Game Gear would go through its 6 × AA batteries in just a couple of hours.

[@melvinpretlow7921]

I was always envious of the kid with the battery pack

[@jasonblalock4429]

Yeah, the rechargeable battery pack was the true must-have accessory if you had a Game Gear. It would typically give 4-5 hours on a charge, plus you could keep AAs in the unit as backups if the main battery died.

[@johnshoemakerpbc]

All I ever had was a game boy. I wanted a game gear so so bad but they were too expensive.

[@Chuntise]

The 3D animations have reached peak professional quality. I do product animations like that for a living and I can appreciate what it takes to animate a device separating into its component parts. It looks so simple but capturing that detail with such fidelity is difficult.

[@erneststackhouse1133]

This was cool. For me it was my 1st time really owning a real gaming console! i remember like it was yesterday when i bought a Game Boy on Oct. 16th, 1989. i was still in high school & saved up all summer long but still didn't have enough so i had to do odd jobs to get the full amount & finally had enough mid October! Still play plenty of my game boy games to this day!

[@fyisic]

The technology of the 80´s and early 90´s wasnt primitive, It was really advanced and required very skilled engineers . we only see it as primitive because today its even more mind blowing. For example the fact that we can fit 1 terrabyte of data on something the size of a fingernail,. As for software development, depending on what you are working on was also way harder back then and more often than now you had to come up with clever tricks.

[@Michaelonyoutub]

It is all seriously insane. On the terabyte of data thing, I would have still been skeptical whether it was even possible to store a whole terabyte of data on anything less than a flash drive at best, but I went to the store to buy a new microSD card for my phone and they were literally selling 1 terabyte microSD cards. It is truly mind blowing just how far we have taken technology.

[@abhinavvenkat-xb8ee]

Modern development philosophy feels more like care less about optimization and more about business logic. Even if the developers try to optimise them Time becomes a heavy constraint

[@tedstriker4278]

Yes, they had to program efficient code back then which was quite smart, compared to todays quadruple A devs that just tell you to throw more expensive hardware at it 😢😢

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@Michaelonyoutub They've had those for quite a while. There are 1.5 TB microSD cards too, and Kioxia is making 2 TB cards, though I'm not sure if they're available in stores yet.

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@abhinavvenkat-xb8ee Optimization is basically optional now. They spend some time and money optimizing most games to an extent, but hardware is so powerful that it doesn't have to be perfect. Back in the GB days, optimization was also far from perfect, but it was necessary to optimize the most resource-intensive games a lot or they wouldn't run at all. (And before you get too excited about resource optimization by Nintendo, check out Super Mario 64, which gets like 20 fps on a good day in many levels but has been recoded by a hobbyist to get 60 fps in all environments and with fewer bugs.)

[@dan725]

How does this a tiny team making youtube videos surpass the quality and creativity of large studios in terms of making documentaries? Man this was amazing!!! Who’s your sound guy/designer? The sound effects coupled with the amazing visual effects were ON POINT. Just so good!

[@fungo6631]

They literally don't LMAO. This video is very infantile sounding, targeting little kids.

[@LuznoLindo]

@@fungo6631 It's pathetic how you came to this video just to insult the people who made it. "LMAO" if you want; at least they're actually _doing_ something with their channel.

[@LuznoLindo]

@@fungo6631 Just another nobody with an empty channel that'll be forgotten disrespecting people who actually spend their time making things that'll be watched forever.

[@fungo6631]

@@LuznoLindo You truly sound like a fanboy that soyfaces over anything they make.

[@UnknownMaster21]

I do not understand the question. You already saw this video. Assuming, you have watched more videos from this user. And if you have any slightest idea about how to do something and if ever heard terms such as "Planning" or "Scripting"... or even "Go W/ The Flow"... surely enough, you do know an answer of your question. Perhaps you were highly impressed and oversold your thoughts to this by acting somewhat dumb.

[@MultiSciGeek]

Never had this, but damn it brings back nostalgia always getting told "buy your own" whenever I asked to try from my classmates... As much as I always wanted one, and the Gameboy advance SP, Nintendo DS, PSP etc. I'm ultimately glad to have learnt that not all happiness in life comes from material things, and that I can only rely on myself to get whatever I want or need.

[@MegaManNeo]

The way you animated the GameBoy and the use of authentic clips from its time made this video a very enjoyable watch. Thank you!

[@LockTheMage]

"Less than a single frame in this video" that really puts it into perspective!

[@davemccage7918]

“$1.16 per hour of game time” in battery life. That really puts it into perspective! I forgot about how sh*t that was back when I had a GBC and had to beg my parents at every grocery store check out line to buy another pack of AAs. Kids have it so good now that they just plug their iPad in pretty much anywhere. But on the positive side, 90s kids knew how to self limit screen time because we were constantly rationing our batteries.

[@umjackd]

@@davemccage7918 haha, rather that we were forced to ration our batteries. If it were up to me, I'd have played a LOT more.

[@roachymart2318]

It was also crazy when there was a picture of a frame of Super Mario Bros. for the NES where the picture itself was several times the size of the entire game, which clocked in at about a whole 32KB

[@joewelch4933]

@@davemccage7918 That was until they introduced rechargable packs/direct plug ins. I had one for my GBC, was the greatest thing to save batteries.

[@capoman1]

I was so jealous of Game Gear. But it was a battery hog and way too big to pocket. There is a reason Nintendo has continued to be so successful.

[@RickHowell89]

The "blow into the cartridge" wasn't a thing that started with the Gameboy, I was doing it with the Atari 2600 back in the early 80's.

[@cherrybit1554]

The old bang and blow, which later showed was more likely to increase chances of cruft and corrosion on the contacts. Still the magic seemed to work at the time. Never had this issue on game boy myself only the NES. I can see it on the 2600 or other cartridge systems

[@funnynotwitty]

Came here just to look for this comment. You can tell the writer's of Real Engineering are under 40 :P

[@promethbastard]

I remember doing it on my Intellivision.. Now that was wild. Tron deadly discs anyone?

[@molybdaen11]

The 2 main enemies of every electronics: water and dust.

[@SnakebitSTI]

Yeah, reseating the cartridge is what actually worked, not blowing on it. The common recommendation these days is to wipe the contacts with isopropanol soaked cotton swabs.

[@HLl564]

This is what VR needs, cheap reliable and simplified yet immersive experiences

[@danmobile]

Hell yeah, like the *checks notes* Virtual Boy!

[@ktmidol]

I was 12 when I watched other students play game boy. I got around playing my friend’s game boy in school. Later my parents bought me game gear when I asked them to buy me game boy. But I always wanted a game boy so I bought my first game boy advance with my own savings while I was in college. That was year 2004. I bought switch 2 years back and I love it. Nostalgia of childhood days.

[@vest816]

One of my favorite things to do is watch old videos of computers and videogames, and find all the absolutely insane ways people think they're supposed to hold a controller. 11:18 is definitely one of the best I've seen in a while.

[@hirobian2]

Considering todays techniques in competitions for input accuracy and speed, the way that person was holding the controller was unintentionally ahead of their time if you think about it that way. Haha.

[@HanmaHeiro]

I think that would also just be a way certain people play when going fast. Speed runners have strange ways to hold controls

[@TRD6932]

Wait till you see armored core grip.

[@EricJW]

On top of speed and accuracy, changing your grip every once in a while is good for warding off carpal tunnel syndrome.

[@RendiRetnandito29]

I remembered the day when one of my friend brought a new gameboy with built in backlighting and I was in awe

[@microbuilder]

What I wouldve given for that! I had the lighted magnifier attachment for mine, it was not great lol

[@ABArsenal]

it worked though@@microbuilder

[@phurbasherpa7441]

I had the first gameboy Advanced SP in my school and everyone were shocked to see the backlight.

[@802Garage]

​@@microbuilder I had that too hahaha it was ballin'. Looked like you were performing archeology on your games.

[@molybdaen11]

Must have been a SP. I only had one with background light with the DS. New players do not know how spoiled they are 😢.

[@lucasduval4635]

Good job on the CGI! It's unusual to see high quality lighting,shading,animation and compositing on KZbin videos.

[@yornav]

At that time I had an Atari Lynx. Mainly because it has a backlit color screen. The drawbacks of the device however were that it was very bulky, power hungry (6 AA-batteries that didn't live very long) and the games library not that extensive. I had a lot of fun with it still and I still have it lying around. A relic of my youth.

[@NicholasRehm]

The classic Nintendo sound effects accompanying the animated plots and figures was a nice touch

[@jackofclubs8791]

Damn, the quality of these animations just keeps increasing

[@mattg2091]

Really fantastic video! The little animations made it all super easy to understand. Thanks for the upload!

[@kirmie44]

As a mechanical engineer, it's hard for me to understand the electrical/chemical side

[@thornanddusk]

It's worth mentioning that back then, you would carry your game boy power adapter with you everywhere. Same with your game gear. My mom got me one that could charge out of the cigarette lighter so I would stay powered while driving without eating through the batteries. If you had to power the game gear purely on batteries, nobody would have bought it

[@knightcrusader]

My parents got me that but also that external rechargeable battery pack they had with it, the official one.

[@cube2fox]

Are you talking about Game Boy or Game Gear? The Game Boy lasted about 20 to 30 hours on 4 batteries. No need for a power adapter.

[@knightcrusader]

@@cube2foxBoth, but it applies to the Game Boy as well. 20-30 hours or not, AA batteries cost money (especially in the early 90's) and when you don't have much money, they were much more attractive options in the long run. Not everyone could piss away money on batteries.

[@MustacheMerlin]

Alkaline batteries specifically were actually invented midway through the Gameboy's lifecycle. The large improvement to battery chemistry they provided was the main reason the Gameboy Pocket could do the same job with similar battery life on just two AAA batteries instead of the four AA batteries in the DMG Gameboy.

[@TheCrewExpendable]

Reminds me how the Sega GameGear took 6 × AA batteries and could chew through them in under 2 hours depending on the game.

[@deyfuck]

@@TheCrewExpendableI was reminded about that as well when he talked about it in the video.

[@jama211]

Woah, what were they before alkaline? Google says alkaline was around from the 60's but I imagine there was a gap before they were common?

[@HackCausality]

​@@jama211 zinc batteries in the same form factor. You can still buy them in dollar stores.

[@xureality]

​@@jama211a lot of it were Zinc-Carbon batteries. They don't work well when used in high current draw devices, but something like a remote or a wall clock it's decent.

[@dark2koneko]

Even though I knew all of this info, I love how it was presented. I loved all the graphics. I'd love more break downs of consoles / computers honestly.

[@davidbuckingham8046]

The production values are so good on this video that you could just straight up run this on a TV Channel.

[@geuis]

FYI as someone who was a kid back then, blowing on the cartridge didn't start with the Gameboy. It was something we did to NES games.

[@therabbithat]

And I remember it being recommended in the instructions books?

[@OhhWelll]

The animations are so top notch it looks real. You could make content on any topic with these animators and it would instantly be movie quality. Massive respect

[@RsrBxr]

This is why back then games were so good. When engineers have to work with limitations, they try their best to craft something good.

[@MarcelE80]

What a video. Super high production. I loved every bit of it and learn a lot! Thanks for making this

[@johnbone0115]

This is easily the most detailed video I’ve seen on the technical challenges behind the gameboy’s design.

[@ODIOPOWER]

Gunpei Yokoi, a true legend.

[@LiraNuna]

His final swan song, aptly named WonderSwan is a masterpiece of hardware design. It runs for ~10 hours on a single AA battery with a PPU that is almost as powerful as a GBA.

[@SnakebitSTI]

10 hours? The battery life of the original model is closer to 30 hours. "Almost as powerful as a GBA" is exaggerating.

[@plainlazy2097]

I really enjoyed that. The production quality is immense! Please do more episodes on vintage game consoles.

[@chyldofthebeat]

Excellent video!! In addition to having grown up playing games on my original Gameboy, today I use original Gameboys modified with IPS backlit screens, with loadable cartridges containing DIY software called LSDJ, for making chiptunes! (tho I've mostly done covers at first), sometimes with real drums over top.

[@FutureAIDev2015]

My computer architecture class will love this video!

[@TheUglyGnome]

Ask your class if anyone pointed out a stupid error around 9:30. It's quite essential one for computer architecture designers.

[@FutureAIDev2015]

​@@TheUglyGnomeI think I get it. He mentioned a certain number of pixels that the computer needed to be able to address, but those are individual numbers, which are I think more than one byte long, so his estimate of how much memory the screen would need per frame was off.

[@TheUglyGnome]

@FutureAIDev2015 Close. In GameBoy every pixel can be stored in 2 bits (4 shades if grey). So 4 pixels can be stored in one byte.

[@FutureAIDev2015]

@@TheUglyGnome 4 pixels per byte, 23,040 pixels... 5760 bytes. That's 5,760 8-bit numbers, assuming that the Game Boy was an 8-bit system.

[@FutureAIDev2015]

Yeah, I see his mistake. One entire screen worth of content would be only about 9% of the total memory.

[@A_peoples]

one thing i liked about original gameboy, when the battery goes low you could darken the image to keep playing till the last drop or just save the game, while newer gameboy shutdown without warning. many times i had a death stare counting the lost hours.

[@squrrll]

My dad was a photographer who always needed fresh batteries to keep his camera's external flash quickly recharing, so I'd get his half-depleted AAs pretty regularly. It was a good setup, they didn't get thrown away with half their capacity remaining, and I got free batteries for my GameBoy whenever I needed them. Thanks, Dad!

[@DavidBerglund]

I was in a similar situation with my dad who was a photographer too. :)

[@enthused7591]

As someone who's been getting back into some vintage handhelds to re-experience the old pixelated games of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, I say you should make this a series and do the Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and Nintendo DS as well.

[@jgg204]

Nothing else even remotely compares to growing up as a child during the era of the "console wars" as its called. This era, hands down, was the golden era of video game advancement from a childhood perspective.

[@filanfyretracker]

And despite being actual children during the 8 bit and 16 bit console wars, The arguments were still less childish than what i see today between Xbox and Playstation fans on Twitter. relatedly when I see ads for the luxury car brand Genesis(they dropped the Hyundai prefix) there is still a memory of the console wars and "Genesis does what Nintendon't"

[@costalmole280]

The way that woman at 11:19 is holding the nes controller is insane. It looks like she's about to take a bite out of it. XD

[@hirobian2]

Considering todays techniques in competitions for input accuracy and speed, the way that person was holding the controller was unintentionally ahead of their time if you think about it that way. Haha.

[@HanmaHeiro]

I was wondering if they were using that method to better control Mario. Maybe early speedrunning

[@costalmole280]

@@HanmaHeiro i think she was just new and didnt know how to hold it

[@kamenlee]

I came here to find someone talking about it. I had one very nerdy, very smart friend. He and his dad both held the controllers that way and I thought it was insane, but they said it was indeed for better, faster, more accurate reactions.

[@lasthopelost9090]

That ad was so smooth kudos

[@HappyGM-R]

My grandfather was one of the electrical engineers that designed gameboy, and I loved the small stories he would tell me about designing this when I played with it. They weren’t anything technical, but stories about how he sometimes clashed and sometimes worked together with his team to design what they believed as the perfect portable gaming device. One of the best story I still remember was when my father bought me the Wii U and how my grandfather told me that Wii U was designed by one of his juniors(?) that he mentored. He would tell me how his junior would again, sometimes clash with him, sometimes work together as a team. But I knew he was unique to my grandfather as he was crying unlike when we told all the other stories. When my grandfather eventually died, that junior came to his funeral and I, as a child just went up to him and told him about how grandfather described him. I can’t remember if he was crying, but now that I look back at it he probably was and trying to hide it. When it was time to bury my grandfather, me and the junior put the gameboy I played with as a child in the coffin together. That junior would also go on to design the Switch. Sorry if my English is not as good, I wanted to share how a small gaming device has so many stories around it, and how it brought people together.

[@lukemoonwalker8444]

Shoutout to the Tetris movie, it was great and it perfectly encapsulates the pros and cons of the gameboy on top of what engineers/programmers thought about it back then.

[@logarhythmic6859]

The background music used in the very start ('Tal Tal Heights' from Zelda Link's Awakening) is legitimately one of my favorite songs from all of Nintendo's catalog.

[@qwertydavid8070]

It's crazy how much of videogame music, art, and design we find "nostalgic" was actually born out of technical limitations. To this day people still love chiptune music or pixel art. We've long surpassed the technical limitations that forced us to make videogames that way, but people still like old-school graphics and music.

[@Ice_Karma]

9:44 It's more like 9%. You wouldn't waste eight bits on each pixel when it can only be one of four shades of gray. You'd use two bits per pixel, packing four into each byte and reducing the memory consumption to just 5760 bytes.

[@itsthevoiceman]

The production value of this video is absurdly good!

[@UptownBoogieDown]

Nice change of pace on this one. Great stuff

[@saranshgautam6551]

Another amazing video!! Loved the graphics and animations in this. I have always been so fascinated with old softwares and games where the engineers had to use memory and space very carefully.

[@rolfathan]

The CG renders in this video are absolutely top notch.

[@AlexMusayev]

Great video, thank you! I really liked the 3D animations.

[@lolza-qh2xw]

The 3d renders of the gameboy and game gear are incredible. Seeing the game gear dropped I genuinely thought it was real until the plates opened with the batteries.

[@robertjenkins6132]

Yeah I thought it was stop motion animation 😂

[@JunoStella-cj8kg]

I absolutely love that you are doing a vid on a classic console! They are so fascinating and often underappreciated! Would def love to see more of these :)

[@Xerionius]

Absolutely incredible video. Never would have thought that the engineering behind the Gameboy would be so interesting and the 3D animations are amazing.

[@edaten4205]

Shout out for whoever did the sound design on this!

[@MediocreHexPeddler]

"This 35-year-old console" Man, why'd you have to say that part right to our faces?

[@ricky_pigeon]

Chilling on the street and school with my gameboy, playing Pokemon Red and all my friends taking turns with the 1 link cable we had.

[@JoepSwagemakers]

You really went all-out with the animations on this one! Nice! Looks really good!

[@ExilSvensk]

Ah childhood memories. I remember there was an add-on you could buy separately, that you clipped on the gameboy that had lighting and magnifying. Had to beg for that add-on for ages when I was a kid. Being from the cold north, where winder time daylight is short, and made it impossible to play on long car trips.

[@Vvardenfell_Outlander]

Never heard anyone call them A-A batteries instead of just saying Double A.

[@masterimbecile]

I do both. I draw the line at A-A-A though.

[@EightNineOne]

DW I’ve reported the video.

[@DrakonBlake]

This comment made think “ATAT batteries”

[@osdboza]

I mostly say AA

[@Vvardenfell_Outlander]

@@osdbozaOf course I think of this after leaving the comment. Maybe it's a Europe vs North America thing.

[@BrianJ.]

Gameboy for me is very early childhood, 1990/91 before I got the SNES. Mario Land 1 and 2 days. Pokemon is not really what I think of when mentioning the original gameboy. That was at the very end in 1998. By that time I was playing the n64 and ps1. We were lucky to grow up in that era. Golden times.

[@cosmicfish1000]

This is great! Absolutely loved watching this. Informative and great visuals. Thank you

[@franzpattison]

Holy cow you should go work for corridor crew or something, the models in this video are insane

[@tiemenvanderbijl785]

I had a gameboy classic as a boy. saved for it and all. it was the 90's and the first thing I got were rechargable batteries. no trouble at all. yes expensive but 4x4 sets of non rechargable was as much as 1 set of rechargables. no brainer

[@MrJimheeren]

The horror when your mum let you play for 30 minutes before bed, and your batteries died and you couldn’t charge them till the next day

[@retroman7331]

We need more video game content! This was great. I knew a ton of it from other videos but I want more

[@QaysPoonawala]

Gotta say, the transition to plug for your sponsor was super smooth.

[@js-gc2hk]

The graphics and animation were awesome, and the narration was clear and informative.

[@CappyLarou]

You can see LED pulsing with the naked eye, best example would be some of these new car headlights. You'll notice mild flickering as you approach them from a distance. I'm a professional truck driver, I see these things all the time, and I hate them

[@vurevul]

They do for me also, and I also hate them

[@SuLokify]

Especially noticeable when moving your eyes

[@Lil_Puppy]

LED headlights don't pulse on and off like a display screen does, headlights pulse and flicker because of the power system in the vehicle not being stable due to vibration and poor connection technologies, and the alternator itself.

[@tangydiesel1886]

​@Lil_Puppy I would also say poor quality aftermarket lights with cheep hardware will also have a flicker or pulse. On the flip side, it can be designed into the system for getting ones attention. Motorcycle headlights now pulse to stand out.

[@reaganharder1480]

The visibility of LED pulsing is dependant on the frequency of the pulsing. Even at the relatively low 60hz of a poorly designed LED on US mains voltage, the flicker isn't easy to see. By 120hz it's invisible to most people (basically every office with fluorescent tube lights will be flickering at 120hz). If I recall correctly most systems using PWM to control brightness are operating closer to a frequency of 2000hz, so there is no shot you're seeing that without an expensive high speed camera.

[@SapphireDreamsSimulations]

The level of production is top notch!

[@StuartCGadgetRev]

Brilliantly explained with superb graphical explanations

[@commentercommenting6963]

The production of this video is just amazing

[@cameronwilde7599]

Excellent video, Brian! I would like to point one thing out, and this is a myth I’ll likely spend my entire life debunking. In your video, you state that taking out a cartridge and blowing on it will displace dust that may have caused a faulty connection. However, this wasn’t really the culprit. If any of the pins were misaligned, then that would be the cause of the error, and the reason we all thought blowing on it worked is that by removing and reinserting it, we were giving the pins another chance to realign. The reason I’m so particular on busting this myth is that the moisture in your breath can cause damage to these vintage games. So, for any of my retro gamers out there, pull the cartridge out and reinsert it, that’s all you need.

[@evanray8413]

Bump

[@gyroninjamodder]

Saying blowing into a cartridge damages it is just as much of a myth.

[@evanray8413]

@@gyroninjamodder Say you don't know how moisture corrodes metal without actually saying it.

[@gyroninjamodder]

@@evanray8413 I am not denying that corrosion is happening. In fact there is already moisture in the air corroding the contacts without you doing anything.

[@evanray8413]

@@gyroninjamodder Blowing on them adds more, obviously.

[@EddyRodz91]

This video is pure gold. The Gameboy is definitely one of my favorite game consoles of all time, it has a special place in my heart as a kid was the first console that my dad bought me and it was love at first sight. Thanks for this video!!! Cheers from El Salvador

[@jada7493]

The video edit and animations is WORLD CLASS..good job👏

[@fouchi3203]

I remember my gameboy color with pokemon, and when i got my hands on the advance SP i spent so many nights playing in the dark in my bed and the on/off button for the light was clutch my parents never caught me, yugioh fftactics fire emblem, those nights were truly heaven

[@Thatoneguy0007]

I absolutely loved this episode! Don’t get me wrong, I’m an aspiring aeronautical engineer, thanks in part to this channel, so I am incredibly interested and captivated by the usual videos (your recent video on Hermeus especially), but I think that the departure from the standard form of mechanical engineering based videos has served you well. I can tell a lot of time went in to this episode, the graphics are astounding, the information is laid out in a comprehensive and informative matter, and every ounce of the script feels heartfelt. Your videos just keep getting better and better! Keep it up! (My favorite video has got to be the one about the Thunderscreech BTW

[@JoelJGames]

Brilliant video, sharing now, thanks for putting together!

[@brichan1851]

An excellent video. I love the technical breakdown of this wonderful system. Fantastic! Thank you.

[@ttrestle]

My brother and I got the Game Boy right when they came out and loved playing it. I was 9 and he was 7. Our parents bought us the attachment lights so we could play at night in the car while traveling. We loved playing each-other with the attached physical wire on games like Tecmo Bowl.

[@RadDadisRad]

Did you peel off the plastic cover on the top? Me and my brother did to get rid of the glare from the attachable light.

[@ttrestle]

@@RadDadisRad I can’t remember, but that sounds like something we’d do as we were always trying to out ways to improve our electronics.

[@Frytech]

The quality of this video is amazing! Animations and graphics are on another level! Really well done!

[@bradleycross5448]

A lot of work in this video! Thank you.

[@mistralbeach]

The graphical illustrations are phenomenal. Absolutly stunning.

[@SeanBZA]

Fun thing is that the Gameboy also was incorporated into industrial controls, as a cheap easy to use display and processor. There were a few systems developed around it to do things like logging, graphical display of voltage and such, using the small form factor, plus the 32k of address space available in the system, and the Z80 processor that ran it, so you could get simple to interface systems, all in a cartridge and some glue logic.