Game Boy Goes Indiglo

For avid games on the go, it took a remarkably long time for Nintendo to offer a Game Boy with a backlight It was this shortcoming that competitors like Game Gear and Lynx tried to exploit, but failed because the battery hungry tech just wasn't ready yet. From the Game Boy's smeary LCD introduction in 1989, it wasn't until 2003's Game Boy Advance SP that gamers could get rid of the many hacky third party screen lights that had littered the market.  That's not to say that Nintendo hadn't tried before...

In 1997 they introduced the Game Boy Light only in Japan. It had the same dimensions as the black and white Game Boy Pocket, but was equipped with an Indiglo backlight.The Pocket featured a crisper black and white screen than the pea green original, but with the Indiglo light it was a return to games with a seafoam palette.

The Indiglo worked remarkably well with the Light's upgraded power supply - two AA's instead of the Pocket's pair of AAA's. You could easily get 12 hours of play with the light on. Since this was never released outside of Japan, for a long time this was the rarest iteration of the Game Boy. It is also popular among Game Boy musicians as it combines the classic's analog audio circuitry with a display you can see in a murky performance space - when you're not playing Metroid II between sets, that is.

related:

Lynx - 1989's first color backlit portable by Atari
Game Gear - Sega's attempt at backlit color
Modern color portable with tons of retro game emulators
Atari 2600 portable that we still hope comes out someday soon!