I never had an original GAMEBOY back in the day.

[celerystalker]

I never had one as a kid, either. I had friends who did, and played the demo units at stores, but didn't own one until probably 1997 or so when I got one at a garage sale, and even then I didn't play it a ton. I eventually gave it to my mom, as she loves playing puzzle games on handhelds, and grabbed a GBA and later Game Boy player for Gamecube. I've found a handful of games to enjoy over the years, but it's never one I've felt compelled to really dive into. When the Color model came out, I went Neo Geo Pocket Color instead, and I'm glad I did. It was the first handheld I really played a ton, and even just today my oldest boy was playing Bio Motor Unitron on it!

There were a couple of Game Boy games that really made me happy, though. The port of Milon's Secret Castle adding in a password function was huge, and let me play it over multipe sessions back before save states, which I was then able to take and beat the NES original. Gargoyle's Quest also is a jam for me. I dig that series a lot, and the first is a GB exclusive!

[YoshiM]

I remember owning a Game Boy.....but the funny thing is my memories of said ownership are really fuzzy. I believe I had a Pocket but what my memory shows me along with the reality of release time makes it impossible. I remember having Mega Man II and at one point Mortal Kombat but my memory has me playing it at a job that I was no longer at when the device came out. So either it was a pretty potent dream or I've totally forgotten WHEN and WHERE I played the dang thing! I just remember sitting at work playing Mortal Kombat and hating it. I traded it in at a local game store for....something.

The next Game Boy device I did get was the arctic Advance, which I still own. Which I don't play GB games on or actually ANY GB games on any GB compatible device.

Memory is a funny thing.....

[Aussie2B]

Pretty crummy sales clerk to talk someone out of a sale.

I got an original Game Boy new, but I missed out on the first few years. I'm guessing it was probably 1994. I played the pack-in Tetris awhile, but I'm pretty certain the first separate game I got was Wario Blast, which was a late '94 release. I played the system a ton, but once I got a Game Boy Color, I never looked back, hardware-wise. Well, I did eventually end up with with a couple Pockets that I liked using too in the early '00s. I never cared for playing GB/GBC games on my original GBA, but I did play through a bunch of games while borrowing my brother-in-law's front-lit SP. When the backlit SP came out, I knew that was the model for me, and to this day, I use my backlit SP for virtually all GB/GBC/GBA games. All my older Game Boys are basically just collectibles to me now, though my husband likes using a GBC and original GBA that he modded to have backlit screens.

As for the original Game Boy library, still love it and still play more and more. Ever since I got my original Game Boy, I've always loved handheld gaming just as much as home console gaming, and the percentage of my gaming that's on handhelds has only been going up and up as I find it a lot easier to squeeze it into my busy life than carving out time to sit in front of a TV.

[SparTonberry]

The problem I have with playing GB/GBC games on the backlit SP is that the GBC palettes (including the presets for monochrome games and especially the default for third-party games) is almost uncomfortably bright when viewed at full brightness. They were designed for the dingy LCDs of the earlier color screens.) So even when my backlit SP (that I bought used from GameStop in the mid 2000s) and frontlit SP (my original that I received as a birthday gift) still had proper battery functionality, I preferred to still play with both for that reason. The newer one for GBA games and the older one for GB/GBC.