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:





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



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:



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.