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50 free Game Boy trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Game Boy should not have won. It launched in 1989 with a green-tinted monochrome screen against colour rivals from Atari, Sega and NEC, and Nintendo's own president cancelled it once because he could not read the display. But Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy of cheap, mature technology meant it ran for thirty hours on four AA batteries, and a last-minute decision to bundle Tetris instead of Super Mario Land put it in the hands of people who had never bought a video game. These 50 questions trace the whole line: the Dot Matrix Game codename that became DMG-01, the screen contract Citizen lost to Sharp in a single afternoon, the Link Cable that later made Pokémon trades possible, the four Japanese launch titles, the Play It Loud colours, the Pocket, the Japan-only backlit Light, the Color with its Berry-Grape-Kiwi logo, and the landscape Advance that ended the name. There are questions on the chip inside, the Camera and Printer, the 118.69 million sales figure and the Toy Hall of Fame induction. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and carries a one-line explanation. Play it solo, or print it for a retro gaming night alongside our Nintendo and Pokémon quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country did the Game Boy go on sale first?
Japan
It launched there on April 21, 1989, three months before North America.
Q 02In which year did the Game Boy first go on sale?
1989
Japan got it on April 21 and North America on July 31 of the same year.
Q 03Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy outside Japan?
Tetris
Henk Rogers argued it would appeal to everyone, while Mario mainly appealed to young boys.
Q 04Which Nintendo engineer led the division that designed the Game Boy?
Gunpei Yokoi
His assistant Satoru Okada pushed for cartridges and took day-to-day charge of the project.
Q 05Which handheld line did Nintendo's 1989 console succeed?
Game & Watch
Each of those earlier devices was locked to a single game on a pre-printed segmented LCD.
Q 06Which Sega handheld competed with Nintendo's 1989 console?
Game Gear
Atari's Lynx and NEC's TurboExpress were the other colour rivals, all hurt by poor battery life.
Q 07What design philosophy did Yokoi champion at Nintendo R&D1?
Lateral thinking with withered technology
Mature, cheap parts were more reliable and gave the handheld its battery-life edge.
Q 08What did the project codename DMG stand for?
Dot Matrix Game
The name survives in the original model number, DMG-01.
Q 09Which company supplied the Game Boy's CPU?
Sharp
R&D2, busy building the SNES, had blocked the use of a Ricoh chip like the NES's.
Q 10Which company's screen deal did Nintendo cancel in 1987 the same day it was signed?
Citizen
Yamauchi gave the contract to Sharp instead; Citizen later made colour screens for Sega's Game Gear.
Q 11What mocking nickname did sceptical Nintendo staff give the prototype?
DameGame
Dame means hopeless in Japanese; early twisted-nematic screens were barely readable.
Q 12Why did Nintendo president Yamauchi cancel the project in summer 1988?
Poor display visibility
Yokoi kept working anyway and found Sharp's secret super-twisted nematic display, which saved it.
Q 13What type of display did the finished Game Boy use?
Super-twisted nematic
The STN panel had a green tint but a far better viewing angle than the earlier prototypes.
Q 21Which Japanese launch title was a mahjong game that never saw wide international release?
Yakuman
Alleyway, Baseball and Super Mario Land were the other three Japanese launch games.
Q 22Alleyway, a Japanese launch title, was a clone of which arcade classic?
Breakout
Tennis and Tetris were added as launch titles when the console reached North America.
Q 23Who persuaded Nintendo of America to change the pack-in game away from Mario?
Henk Rogers
He had acquired the handheld rights and made his case to NOA president Minoru Arakawa.
Q 14What was the Game Boy's screen resolution?
160 × 144
The 10:9 panel showed four shades of grey-green.
Q 15How many shades could the original Game Boy screen display?
Four
Nintendo rejected a colour screen from Citizen because of power draw and cost.
Q 16How many AA batteries powered the original Game Boy?
Four
Yamauchi threw four batteries and headphones in the box to make the price feel like a better deal.
Q 17What was the Game Boy's US launch price?
$89.95
It was backed by a $20 million marketing campaign aimed at making it the must-have holiday toy.
Q 18What was the Game Boy's Japanese launch price in yen?
¥12,500
Yamauchi had wanted it under ¥10,000, but the STN screen pushed the cost up.
Q 19How large was the Game Boy's initial Japanese production run, which sold out in two weeks?
300,000
By August 1989 sales had reached 720,000 consoles and 1.9 million games across four titles.
Q 20Which R&D1 game was developed as the Game Boy's flagship launch title?
Super Mario Land
It was meant to be the pack-in until Tetris caught Okada and Yokoi's attention.
Q 24Which princess made her debut in Mario's first handheld outing?
Daisy
Mario rescues her from the alien Tatanga across 12 levels in Sarasaland.
Q 25Which accessory, developed by Okada, later enabled Pokémon trading?
Game Link Cable
He borrowed the idea from an early Nintendo project, Computer Mah-jong Yakuman.
Q 26What was the codename of Okada's early-1990s colour prototype with a 32-bit chip?
Project Atlantis
It was shelved, then revived with an 8-bit chip to become the Game Boy Color.
Q 27What was the Game Boy's 1995 range of coloured cases called in the West?
Play It Loud!
Japan called the same cosmetic revision Game Boy Bros.
Q 28The 1996 Game Boy Pocket ran on how many AAA batteries?
Two
The trade-off was about 10 hours of play, and early units dropped the power LED.
Q 29Which 1998 model added a backlight and was sold only in Japan?
Game Boy Light
Its electroluminescent glow was blue-green, like a digital wristwatch of the era.
Q 30Roughly how many Game Boy and Game Boy Color units were sold combined?
118.69 million
That made it the best-selling console ever at its 2003 discontinuation; it now ranks fourth.