Game BoyColor

Nintendo did not replace the Game Boy in 1998 so much as repaint it. The Game Boy Color used the same 8-bit processor running twice as fast, the same unlit screen, and could show 56 colors at once from a palette of 32,768 — and it played every one of the seven hundred-odd Game Boy carts already in the world, in color schemes of its own choosing. That was enough. Pokémon Gold and Silver arrived two years later, sold around 23 million copies, and the Color rode the wave until the Advance replaced it in 2001.

Our Game Boy Color stock is almost all loose carts, because that is how these games survived: the cardboard boxes went in the bin in 1999. So the label is what you are buying. Look for a clean, flat label with no lifting corners, a crisp Nintendo logo on the back, and a cart that still saves — many Color games keep their saves on a coin-cell battery that can fail with age, and the Pokémon games with a built-in clock drain theirs fastest. Black dual-mode Game Boy Color cartridges generally work on both original Game Boy and Game Boy Color systems. Transparent Color-only cartridges require Game Boy Color-compatible hardware. Every cart is photographed and tested.