Nintendo Gameboy Micro USED – Handheld

Nintendo Gameboy Micro USED – Handheld.  

Game Boy Micro (ゲームボーイミクロ Gēmu Bōi mikuro is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in September 2005. The system is the very last console for the original Game Boy line. It is essentially a much smaller Game Boy Advance, albeit without backwards-compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.

Nintendo essentially invented the handheld-gaming market back in 1989 with the original Game Boy, a clunky black-and-white portable that rocketed to success, thanks largely to the availability of the addictive Tetris game. The company continued to refine the portable concept, going color in 1998, then sizing things down to the more compact Game Boy Advance in 2001. Two years later, the company released the SP model, which, with an improved screen, a smaller size, a clamshell design, and rechargeable battery, was hailed as a nearly perfect portable device by many gamers.

The Nintendo Game Boy Micro–or GBM, as it has already been dubbed by the Nintendo faithful–lives up to its name. It’s a minuscule 4 inches wide, 2 tall, and 0.7 deep–that’s roughly the size of an iPod Mini or a small cell phone but bigger all around than Apple’s “impossibly small” iPod Nano. The horizontal design is a departure from the squarish clamshell of the SP; in fact, the Micro looks more like a downscaled version of the old Game Boy Advance. To the right of the 2-inch-diagonal screen is a four-way control pad, while the two main A/B control buttons are to the left. Two shoulder buttons along the top edge round out the main controls. The Select and Start buttons are below the screen on an angled border.

The Game Boy Micro retains some of the functionality of the Game Boy Advance SP, but with an updated form factor. It is unable to play original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games due to design changes. Even though it still has the required Z80 processor and graphics hardware necessary to run the old games, it is missing other circuitry necessary to be compatible with the old Game Boy cartridges. It is officially incompatible with the Nintendo e-Reader and some other peripherals due to design issues. It is smaller than previous Game Boy systems. Additionally, it features a backlit screen with the ability to adjust the brightness so as to adapt to lighting. The shape itself is kept to a more simple oblong—similar to the style of the Nintendo Entertainment System controller.  The Nintendo Game Boy Micro ships in three colors: black, silver, and a special 20th anniversary edition of Nintendo’s Famicom system (the Japanese version of the NES). But those are just the unit’s body color–the front is actually a swappable faceplate, à la the Xbox 360. The two original colors came with three swappable faceplates, while the special edition had just one.

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