The Nintendo Game Boy is a masterpiece of engineering, brought to us primarily by Gunpei Yokoi. Released in 1989, the Game Boy brought the quality of NES games outside of the home. This began the slow demise of car games like "imagining a little man running alongside the car and jumping over ditches, fences, and rivers", SlugBug, and "shutting up so we can go to Wendy's". Nintendo's use of legacy technology resulted in a substantial decrease in power consumption, which resulted in significant lifetime savings for owners needing to buy fewer batteries over the lifetime of their systems.

While some complained of the monochromatic, high latency display, many developers appropriately accounted for these limitations to minimize issues like "ghosting", where pixels do not change their values quickly enough to prevent visual smearing. This is why computer operating systems often have a "mouse trails" option for high-latency, passive matrix LCD panels, allowing users to more easily track the moving mouse pointer. For the record, that smudge is Mario.

In almost direct defiance of video games as a whole, the Game Boy tends to operate best outdoors, but not necessarily in direct sunlight. Artificial lighting can prove to be a bit annoying, as you have to wrestle with the perfect viewing angle, without getting a reflection of the light source on the screen shield, and without your head blocking the light from behind you. It is ill-advised to put extra holes through your head for illumination purposes. Just ask that fellow Odin about trading a whole eyeball for smarts.

While the Game Boy is composed primarily of Nintendium, this mystical element of extreme durability can still be damaged when exposed to Idiotrium. That is to say, stupid people. Be careful not to fall into the trap of unchecked optimism. If you cannot trust somebody to borrow your Game Boy, don't even let them know that you have one. With that out of the way, the second best way to take care of your system (behind simple caution) is with a protective case. Preferably one that doesn't interfere with actually using the system, lest you remove it out of annoyance, and have someone bump into you while loosely holding it. Should the screen cover be damaged, it can be replaced without much difficulty, though a small rotary tool with a buffing wheel may be able to remove light scuffing. Just use a light touch and low speed. Don't want to burn a hole through it.