Game Boy

Type: Handheld
Publisher: Nintendo
Firstly released in: Japan
First release: 1988
Release and compatibility details: Released in 1988 (Japan) and 1989 (USA).

Success and unsuccess:

Most popular years: 1990-1993
Most popular countries: Japan, US, Europe
Amount of games in database: 1806 (list)
Amount of music records in database: 120 (list)
Amount of downloadable MOD tunes: 12 (list)
Amount of downloadable MIDI tunes: 55 (list)
Importance on the market in the most popular years: Very high

Characteristics:

Though in late 80s have been color portable handhelds on the market, the final winner was the monochrome console called "Game Boy" from Nintendo. The reason was not only big strength of Nintendo company, but also better display, and because of monochrome display much longer battery life.

The console was 8-bit, and the Z80 processor set the quality of games somewhere in the ZX Spectrum era.

CPU: 8-bit Z80 at 2.2 MHz
RAM: 16kB
Sound: 4 channels
Resolution: 160 x 144
Colors: 4 shades of gray
Sprites: 8 sprites (8 x 8)

More info: http://www.gamerland.com/systems/cgi-bin/showsystem.cgi?id=49

Games and music info:

Most common media for storing games: Cartridge
Average packed game size: 100 kB
Music formats: GBS

Emulation info:

Look into the GameBoy Color section, all the GBC emulators support also GameBoy games, some of them can add custom color palette to monochrome games to be able to display them in color!

This emulation info was written on 20.January 2003. (This time is very important, because emulation info very depends on the time it was written - emulators can improve a lot after this time..).