Pokémon Mini

Hey guys, I know I haven't exactly been active as of late, but I've had alot of things to do,
a new Youtube video, revision, and I've been getting out alot more recently, I just haven't had the
time nor energy to get this blog done.
So I decided, instead of one, how about three posts?
I'll start this with the Pokémon Mini.

Not alot of Franchises get their own console dedicated to them but Pokémon did!
The Pokemon Mini, despite it's looks, is not a virtual pet game or a console with only one game built into it.
It's actually an actual handheld console with interchangeable cartridges just like the Game Boy that came out in 2001.

Showing the comparison between Pokémon Mini and GBA cartridges,

It plays pretty simple, monochrome games similar to the look of the original Game Boy games.
This console is quite impressive because of it's hardware features,
the Pokémon Mini included a real-time internal clock, a vibration function, a shock detector for very basic motion control and an infra-red transmitter to play with up to 5 other players.
These some of these features were actually a first for handhelds and really impressive for a console of it's time, especially since this console only measured about 7.5cm to 5.8cm, about the size of a Game Boy Cartirdge!



This console pretty much went under the radar for many people and it wasn't a huge hit,
and that could be for a few reasons. Firstly, the price...
At launch the Pokémon Mini was going at £40 for the console with a game included,
now for a console of this size and the short nature of the games I think that £40 is a bit too much to ask,
and you're still expected to pay out £20 for each game!

A Pokémon Mini playing Pikachu's Rocket Start

The other reason that I think the console didn't do as well as it should've was the game library.
The total number of games released for the system was a measly 10! And that number was even smaller for Europe, who only got 5 games!
Some people did reverse engineer the system to allow the games to be played on other platforms,
some people even made their own games that were capable of being played on the console itself!

The Pokémon Mini is quite a cool and quirky console and, not having one myself, I hope to find one soon

Toku-R

Nintendo Game Boy

This Generation would look at Nintendo and say that their handhold is the Nintendo DS,
they wouldn't be wrong but way back before I was born there was the Nintendo Game and Watch, the original Nintendo Hand-held. This, however, I did not have as it was way before my time, the first Nintendo hand-held console I ever got was the successor to the Game and Watch.
The Nintendo Game Boy, Developed by Gunpei Yokoi

The Nintendo Game Boy showing Tetris

This chunky console was about the same same as the original Nintendo DS and quite a bit thicker and the cartridges were roughly 4 times the size of a normal DS cartridge. It came out over here in Europe in 1990 and since then has sold 118.69 units worldwide and if you thought that the DS had lots of version and upgrades... you're wrong!
 The Game Boy actually went on to have a total of 7 different models and over 80 different colours and styles between them!
You had the:
Game Boy - The Original
Game Boy Pocket - Which was a smaller edition
Game Boy Light - An edition that had a backlight for the screen
And then you had the Game Boy Colour which came which new games that were in full colour.
The next upgrade was the jump from 8-bit to 32-bit with the Game Boy Advance which was capable of giving you Graphics akin to the SNES but portable!

Upgrades to the Game Boy Advance were:
Game Boy Advance SP - Which was a stylish Flip-top edition of the GBA
and the Game Boy Micro which was a MUCH smaller edition with a clearer and brighter screen.

As you can tell the Game Boy was massively popular and sold MILLIONS of each of the different versions of it, it was the console that started and lead portable gaming into where it is now

Toku-R