Original GameBoy and Game Gear boxes?

[intelli78]

Does anyone know which box variants the GameBoy and Game Gear were originally released with? I'm talking about USA/NTSC release, the VERY FIRST units to hit shelves.

For GameBoy I believe it is either wire hands or the orange grid:

http://i.imgur.com/M8kWhK9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/SPg0TcA.jpg

However there is also a wire hands version w/ Tetris promo:

http://i.imgur.com/WE5IFuZ.jpg

Not sure which was the first.

For Game Gear I am really not sure at all. Most box pics I see online have Sonic 2 as a pack-in, which wasn't released until 1992 (a year after the console in USA). There are some OG looking boxes like this:

http://i.imgur.com/tchdOsF.jpg

But I think those are PAL, not NTSC.

Anybody remember?

[bb_hood]

Pretty sure for GB it was Wire hands with tetris. I think it was released with tetris, I got it for christmas the year it came out.

[SparTonberry]

Tetris is definitely the original release, in 1989.
Tetris was not released individually (and consequently the system WITHOUT Tetris) until 1993.

[Einzelherz]

Wire hands with tetris. It's the one I got at the time.

[Scissors]

Both wire hands Game Boy boxes you pictured included Tetris, but the one without the Tetris cart on it is the US release. The one with the Tetris cart is the German version.

[Tanooki]

Its the one scissors said, they didn't feature Tetris on the front of the box. I got a launch one my parents hid until that christmas along with mario land.

[intelli78]

Thanks for the info!

Anyone know about Game Gear?

[Rickstilwell1]

Sonic the Hedgehog could not have been on the original Game Gear box either because Sonic 1 did not come out on the Game Gear until the end of the year (December 1991). Castle of Illusion (April 26 1991) and Columns (also April 26 1991) were a couple of the first Game Gear games. "Columns was the first pack-in game for the Sega Game Gear. "

The gray checkered boxes seem to be the PAL art style which matches their game boxes. I think this may be the original US box:

7936


The thing that gives the gray boxes away as being PAL is that they spell it "Full Colour" and we know in the USA we spell it "Color", not "Colour." And we also know about our "Gray" vs "Grey" lol.

[turboexpress]

I'm pretty sure my Gameboy came in with a Mario game as a pack in. I didn't get tetris. So there you go, that's another different box right there.

[Blitzwing256]

There are two early boxes that are nearly identical, the VERY first us release had actual gameboy screens with the blurry green images, that varient is much much harder to find, the one with the enhanced black lined images is the more common, both come with tetris (first releases always had tetris, the stand alone came out a few months after)

[SparTonberry]

the stand alone came out a few months after)
First release was definitely years later. I got my first Game Boy for Christmas in 1992 (still the Tetris set), and I recall it was the next summer that Nintendo put out ads for the "Game Boy Basic" (seen in the OP) in Nintendo Power as the first release without Tetris.
I recall the official Game Boy Player's Guide (1991) not having a proper Tetris box pic but a pretty badly edited mockup box with an unusually thick line between the GAME BOY logo and the cover art and thinking it was ugly even as a kid.

[Blitzwing256]

I worded that wrong, I meant to say the black lined original box was a few months later.

[Rickstilwell1]

So was I correct about the Game Gear box with Columns?