Game Boy

The Game Boy DMG-01 — "Dot Matrix Game", as the boot screen declares — was technically inferior to the Game Gear and Lynx on almost every measurable spec. It won anyway: cheaper, ran for hours on four AA batteries, and survived punishment that would have destroyed any rival handheld. The legend of a Game Boy that survived a bombing in Iraq (on display at the National Museum of Play in Rochester) is real. The Super Game Boy SNES adapter added colour palettes and custom borders, with some games carrying specific support — Donkey Kong and Space Invaders among them. Japan got the Game Boy Light in 1998, an electroluminescent backlit variant that never left the country.