GAME BOY

Student Project
HARDSURFACE - MODULE 1

This project was my first contact with the 3D world. I had to produce a copy of a retro game console and I chose the Game Boy. It was my favourite device during my childhood and I remember spending hours playing it. I was thrilled at the idea of reproducing it in 3D. At this stage I began to understand the hard surface modeling and lights in a scene for rendering.

_{I used Autodesk Maya for modeling, Substance Painter for shading and Adobe Photoshop for post-production and composition. Rendering was done with Solidagne Arnold.}

ゲームボーイ1989

The Game Boy (Japanese: ゲームボーイ "Gēmu Bōi") is an 8-bit handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The first handheld in the Game Boy family, it was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, then North America, three months later, and lastly in Europe, over a year later. It was designed by the same team that developed the Game & Watch and several Nintendo Entertainment System games: Satoru Okada, Gumpei Yokoi, and Nintendo Research 6 Development 1.

The console features a dull green dot-matrix screen with adjustable contrast dial, five control buttons (a directional pad, two game buttons, and "start" and "select"), a single speaker with adjustable volume dial, and, like its rivals, uses cartridges as physical media for games. The color scheme is made from two tones of grey with accents of black, blue, and dark magenta. All the corners of the portrait-oriented rectangular unit are softly rounded, save for the bottom right, which is curved. At launch, it was sold either as a standalone unit, or bundled with one of several games, namely Super Mario Land or Tetris.

_{The Game Boy was

90 mm (3.5 in) x 148 mm (5.8 in) x 32 mm (1.3 in).}

There is a volume control dial on the right side of the device and a similar dial on the left side to adjust the contrast. At the top of the Game Boy, a sliding on-off switch and the slot for the Game Boy cartridges are located. The on-off switch includes a physical lockout to prevent users from either inserting or removing a cartridge while the unit is switched on.

The Game Boy also contains optional input and/or output connectors. On the left side of the system is an external 3.5 mm × 1.35 mm DC power supply jack that allows users to use an external rechargeable battery pack or (sold separately) instead of four AA batteries. The Game Boy requires 6 V DC of at least 150 mA. A 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack is located on the bottom side of the unit which allows users to listen to the audio with the bundled headphones or external speakers.

The right-side of the device offers a port which allows a user to connect to another Game Boy system via a link cable, provided both users are playing the same game. The port can also be used to connect a Game Boy Printer. The link cable was originally designed for players to play head-to-head two-player games such as in Tetris. However, game developer Satoshi Tajiri later used the link cable technology as a method of communication and networking in the popular Pokémon video game series.

PLAY IT LOUD!

On March 20, 1995, Nintendo released several Game Boy models with colored cases, advertising them in the "Play It Loud!" campaign, known in Japan as Game Boy Bros.

Specifications for this unit remain exactly the same as the original Game Boy, including the monochromatic screen. This new line of colored Game Boys set a precedent for later Nintendo handhelds; every one of them since has been available in more than one color. Play It Loud! units were manufactured in red, green, black, yellow, white, blue, and clear (transparent) or sometimes called X-Ray in the UK. Most common are the yellow, red, clear and black. Green is fairly scarce but blue and white are the rarest. Blue was a Europe and Japan only release, white was a Japanese majority release with UK Toys R Us stores also getting it as an exclusive edition to them. The white remains the rarest of all the Play it Loud colors.

The Game Boy celebrates its 30th anniversary in Europe this year.
This is a proposal of a console re-edition announcement to celebrate it featuring a new backlight screen!

REFERENCES

SOFTWARE USED

jesusparras
June 2020