Despite what I tell my son, I really don't have eyes in the back of my head. But I do have Wi-Fi security cameras with smartphone apps, which allow me to keep tabs on him, as well as my dog, my car, the front door, and the yard. And like me, cameras aren't perfect at all tasks. Picking the right one (or two, or three) depends on what you want to do with it. Outdoor cameras can withstand the elements but may need an electrical outlet or periodic battery recharges. Indoor cameras can keep an eye on things in your home but are limited when it comes to catching package thieves. And doorbell cameras let you pretend to be home when you're not. Here are some of our favorite ways we use security cameras, and how to pick the best camera for your needs. (Note that a few states restrict the use of biometric technology such as facial recognition, a feature in some cameras, so be sure to confirm your local laws before making a purchase.)
Deterring crime
If you're worried about what's going on in your neighborhood and around your property, get an outdoor camera. Look for a camera that can capture lengthy recordings and doesn't leave gaps in between clips—a common pitfall. Clear night vision is also a must, and adjustable motion sensitivity will cut down nuisance smartphone alerts triggered by every passing car. If you don't have an outdoor outlet or a large yard, look for a camera with a rechargeable battery, which makes placement easy—just know that if there's a lot of activity, you will be charging the camera often.
Keeping a watch on pets
Some pets have separation anxiety when their owners are away, and some just like to eat socks, trash, and anything else that isn't encased in concrete. An indoor security camera with a wide viewing angle allows you to watch what Fido and Fluffy are doing while you're away. Most cameras also have two-way audio, which is useful for yelling at them to get off the sofa.
Tracking the kids
Although it may sound Orwellian, indoor cameras can help you monitor your kids by notifying you (via smartphone alerts) whenever the cameras detect motion, such as when the kids are coming and going. Just aim the camera at the door. Cameras with two-way audio allow you to greet them (and remind them about homework and other chores), while cameras with facial recognition can distinguish between family members and the dog walker. Also, consider some type of video-clip storage, unless you plan on watching for alerts 24/7.
Monitoring remote locations
For people who own a vacation or rental home, an outdoor camera can alert you in real time to prowlers, raccoons, or storm damage. An elderly parent's home is also a good place for a camera (with their consent, of course); for that situation, choose an indoor model that supports live viewing and two-way audio, so you can chat with your parent or a caretaker.
Screening guests
Want to know who goes there? A doorbell camera can show you who's on your porch whether you're right behind the door or thousands of miles away. Doorbell cameras can also send alerts when they detect motion or if someone rings the bell, allowing you to answer accordingly—the visitor has no idea if you're home or not. If you're worried about who you might miss if you can't answer the smartphone alert, look for a camera that saves recordings to the cloud so you can access them remotely.
Nabbing porch pirates
A doorbell camera is ideal for keeping tabs on deliveries to your front porch because you can get notified when a package arrives or even converse with the delivery person. Pick a camera that has motion detection (and a way to adjust it to prevent nuisance alerts), since delivery drivers don't always ring the bell. The main drawback to this style of camera is a relatively limited view, since they are intended only for patrolling your front-door area. For a wider viewing angle or coverage of a specific spot like the driveway, the back door, or the side of the house, consider adding an outdoor camera as well.
If you think your home monitoring needs go beyond just a few cameras, read our guide to the best do-it-yourself security systems.
This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions.
I’m starting to get that thing where my iPhone XS screen feels super tiny when I switch back from the Fold to send a text message from my number. Someone recently asked me if I’m going to have trouble giving the device back to Samsung in a few days, and while the answer is a decided “not really,” the march toward even larger screens does feel inevitable — and I do believe folding phones will be an important part of that push.
Of course, I also believe that we’re as close as a generation or two out from this first shot on that foldable feeling pretty big and bulky (some folks who’ve seen the phone have already said as much about it). I’m back at the airport today, and both airline representatives and TSA agents (who see a LOT of phones as people are checking in) seem pretty impressed with it.
I had the phone standing up at a 45 degree angle on the bathroom sink this morning to watch the news as I brushed my teeth. That’s pretty neat. And If I’d had the forethought, I have loaded a couple of movies on it for the flight. It definitely beats the seatback screens on Delta.
In addition to the fingerprints on the outside, the inside gets like crazy dusty after any kind of use. And a lot of that collects in the little reservoir between the screen protector and the outside lip.
The top shot is from yesterday’s A’s game (the dark line along the seam is a shadow). You can use the front facing screen as a view finder while taking photos, but it’s pretty small. The inside, meanwhile, makes you feel like one of those people who use their iPads to take photos in public. Once you get over that, it’s a pretty nice way to view shots, though.
And no, it’s not broken yet. We’re still waiting for official word from Samsung about what happened there. The Fold is on track for an April 26 release here in the States, in spite of everything, and even as a China release appears be delayed.
Despite what I tell my son, I really don't have eyes in the back of my head. But I do have Wi-Fi security cameras with smartphone apps, which allow me to keep tabs on him, as well as my dog, my car, the front door, and the yard. And like me, cameras aren't perfect at all tasks. Picking the right one (or two, or three) depends on what you want to do with it. Outdoor cameras can withstand the elements but may need an electrical outlet or periodic battery recharges. Indoor cameras can keep an eye on things in your home but are limited when it comes to catching package thieves. And doorbell cameras let you pretend to be home when you're not. Here are some of our favorite ways we use security cameras, and how to pick the best camera for your needs. (Note that a few states restrict the use of biometric technology such as facial recognition, a feature in some cameras, so be sure to confirm your local laws before making a purchase.)
Deterring crime
If you're worried about what's going on in your neighborhood and around your property, get an outdoor camera. Look for a camera that can capture lengthy recordings and doesn't leave gaps in between clips—a common pitfall. Clear night vision is also a must, and adjustable motion sensitivity will cut down nuisance smartphone alerts triggered by every passing car. If you don't have an outdoor outlet or a large yard, look for a camera with a rechargeable battery, which makes placement easy—just know that if there's a lot of activity, you will be charging the camera often.
Keeping a watch on pets
Some pets have separation anxiety when their owners are away, and some just like to eat socks, trash, and anything else that isn't encased in concrete. An indoor security camera with a wide viewing angle allows you to watch what Fido and Fluffy are doing while you're away. Most cameras also have two-way audio, which is useful for yelling at them to get off the sofa.
Tracking the kids
Although it may sound Orwellian, indoor cameras can help you monitor your kids by notifying you (via smartphone alerts) whenever the cameras detect motion, such as when the kids are coming and going. Just aim the camera at the door. Cameras with two-way audio allow you to greet them (and remind them about homework and other chores), while cameras with facial recognition can distinguish between family members and the dog walker. Also, consider some type of video-clip storage, unless you plan on watching for alerts 24/7.
Monitoring remote locations
For people who own a vacation or rental home, an outdoor camera can alert you in real time to prowlers, raccoons, or storm damage. An elderly parent's home is also a good place for a camera (with their consent, of course); for that situation, choose an indoor model that supports live viewing and two-way audio, so you can chat with your parent or a caretaker.
Screening guests
Want to know who goes there? A doorbell camera can show you who's on your porch whether you're right behind the door or thousands of miles away. Doorbell cameras can also send alerts when they detect motion or if someone rings the bell, allowing you to answer accordingly—the visitor has no idea if you're home or not. If you're worried about who you might miss if you can't answer the smartphone alert, look for a camera that saves recordings to the cloud so you can access them remotely.
Nabbing porch pirates
A doorbell camera is ideal for keeping tabs on deliveries to your front porch because you can get notified when a package arrives or even converse with the delivery person. Pick a camera that has motion detection (and a way to adjust it to prevent nuisance alerts), since delivery drivers don't always ring the bell. The main drawback to this style of camera is a relatively limited view, since they are intended only for patrolling your front-door area. For a wider viewing angle or coverage of a specific spot like the driveway, the back door, or the side of the house, consider adding an outdoor camera as well.
If you think your home monitoring needs go beyond just a few cameras, read our guide to the best do-it-yourself security systems.
This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions.
The Nintendo Game Boy turns 30 this Sunday, and to celebrate this amazing occasion we'll be running a series of related features this week, right up to the big day.
The Game Boy may be 30 years old this week, but that doesn’t mean the system is dead and gone from a retail perspective; over the past few years we’ve seen an explosion of interest in Gunpei Yokoi’s masterpiece, with people buying up old units and modding them to make them even better than before. Out of this community, we’ve also seen a number of retailers emerge, with one of the most notable – in the UK, at least – being Gameboy Shack.
Operated by Richard Tewkesbury from his base in the UK’s heartland, Gameboy Shack is a business which focuses mainly on reconnecting players with the handheld games of their youth. If you’ve attended one of the many big shows in the UK over the past few years, then there’s a good chance you’ve spotted Richard manning his stand, which is always packed with Game Boy consoles, games and other associated merchandise.
Seeing as he’s just down the road from Nintendo Life HQ, we thought it was only right that we pay him a visit to celebrate the Game Boy’s 30th – and to buy a load of games from him, of course. Below is a transcript of the waffle we had. Enjoy.
What was your first exposure to the Game Boy?
Probably back when it first came out, around 1989. We used to go to Leicester on the bus, me and my friend, every Saturday. We’d go to Dixons [defunct UK high street electronics retailer], and basically play the Nintendo display stand, as well as the Atari Lynx, pretty much until the guy in Dixons kicked us out. Back then, we didn’t have any money, so it was the only way we could play the Game Boy. I must have been about 12 or so years old. My parents wouldn’t buy me a Game Boy, so I had to wash pots and hustle to make that money to buy one. I got really good at washing pots.
What do you think made the Game Boy the market leader, despite the fact that there were more technically advanced machines, like the Lynx?
There were more games out there, which played a big part. It was the most popular system by far when we were at school. Battery power came into as well I think. I was whipping through batteries left, right and centre, so you probably needed £5 or £10 worth of batteries a week – if you’re rocking out an Atari Lynx, you’d need even more! There was only one kid at school who had a Lynx, and only a couple that had the Sega Game Gear. Everyone mainly had Game Boy; so there was the obvious desire to be part of that club so you could share games.
How did you become involved in modding and selling Game Boys?
I started selling at conventions, and I was already doing video games across the board, and my friend Gavin and I basically traded together. The smallest thing I could get in the car was Game Boy, and it pretty much grew from there. It was purely logistics. “I can get 100 games in the car and it only takes up 12 inches of space”, that kind of thing. I only had a car at the time, so we couldn’t get a lot in, full stop. We basically had to get two stores into one vehicle! It’s just grown and grown and grown. There are lots of other video game traders at events, but I’m the only one that does the full range of Game Boys, I suppose.
How have you seen that market grow?
There is a lot of interest in it. There’s a lot of interest from sellers as well, so now the market is getting saturated, I’m afraid to say – which makes it harder for everyone. When I first started out, there were only a couple of games sellers and that was it. And now, you can go to a show and there’s 15 or 20… and now every time we go, there’s another one, and another one, and another one. It’s just part and parcel. The market is growing, there’s room in there for everyone. Personally, I’ve put a lot of effort into making what I do as good as I can possibly do it, and basically giving it that ‘wow factor’. Every console that I sell is refurbished. It’s all taken apart, cleaned up, put back together again. I get them fully working and I usually refresh them; everything’s refreshed when it goes out, so I try and aim for a very good standard of product.
Do you think the market has reached its biggest point? Is there a danger it could shrink?
Sometimes you go to an event, and it all depends on what the event is. There’ll be good ones, and there’ll be very bad ones, and there are new customers at all of them. A lot of people are just those spontaneous people; they want a Game Boy with Tetris, Super Mario, and so on – what they remember from their childhood. Just a quick hit. They’ve got no interest in collecting whatsoever. They just want two to three games, and off they go, and that’s cool. I think there’s plenty of room left in the market yet, when you combine that sector with the serious collectors.
I think there’s plenty of room left in the market yet, when you combine that sector with the serious collectors
How many events do you tend to do a year, and how do you go about picking which ones to attend?
We’ve now gained experience of which shows work best for us. Sometimes it’s down to the preference of what you want to do, and other times its when it happens during the year, and other times it’s simply because I’ve got no money. I basically don’t do any shows between December and March, so that’s the dry spell where you’ve got basically last the winter – and by that point, when you start back, you just take anything that’s going. This weekend there’s an event I don’t want to do, but I’ve got to do it so I can then get extra money to physically get me to the event the weekend after that. Because I have to put so much money into buying stock and getting everything else ready for the event, it’s really a big balancing act; it’s quite horrible at certain points of the year. The two big shows that I do are at the worst point of the year, and if they don’t pay off, then I’m completely screwed really!
Which are the next events that you’ve got coming up?
We’ll be doing Insomnia next weekend. Then we’re doing MCN London. I’ll also be doing my own show – Comic-Con Leicester. I’ll be doing Hyper Japan, London and Film Comic-Con. They’re some of the bigger ones. You try and stick to the larger ones, because there’s more footfall there and you know what’s going on, although I did a random one for a friend in a shopping centre in Hull recently, and that really worked because it was instant footfall – there were people there all day long. But you have good shows, and you have bad shows, and no show is ever guaranteed. Personally, I never take anything for granted. Don’t go in thinking you’re going to make £5000 in a weekend, because you’re not.
Is the mentality just to break even and then see what you can do from there?
Always try and be in the green and cover all your costs. I want to go to an event and enjoy myself – that’s always the main thing. I don’t want to sit there bored out of my mind. I want to be active, interact with some nice people and sell some good stuff. I want people to enjoy what they’re buying, go away with something they’re going to enjoy, and make some money on the side. I have to put hours and hours and hours into getting things ready. That’s the problem. Especially when it’s weekend to weekend, where I’ve only got a couple of days in-between to basically reload again. Over the summer, when there are a lot of shows, that’s when it can get really stressful, and I end up doing 15 to 18 hours a day just to try and get ready for the next show. And then at night time, in-between shows, in the hotel room I’m building Game Boys to sell the next morning. That’s when it really gets bad!
How easy is it to source the stuff that you sell?
I could spend money all day long. I look back at some of the videos when I first started, and I’ve got some pictures of my first stall that I did, and I was selling Game Boys at £10 – now I sell them at £45, and that’s only a few years down the road. That’s where the market’s changed; everything is so expensive now and it keeps on creeping up. Sometimes, I buy multiple copies of game if the price is right, so I can sit on it and find that in a year or two down the line, it’s gone up in value. I spend way too much money on stock, that’s my problem. I always try and keep everything fully-loaded. I can’t stand if the shop is not rammed to the nines; everything needs to be topped up. All the consoles, all the shelves need to full all the time, and if they’re not, I just can’t stand it. If people are like, “Oh, you’ve not got that game”, I’ll go home and I’ll find it, then I’ll get it, and it will be on the shelf next time around.
Do you use network of collectors to source things?
I have pickers that basically pick for me. I use a lot of Facebook and gaming pages. Sometimes, there’s the occasional deal that comes up on eBay. People just come to me with stuff that they want to sell. And then sometimes I just need to get off my arse and go through storage units and actually sort through the stuff I’ve actually got and sell that rather than buy new stuff. It constantly keeps coming in. But it’s a borderline addiction, that’s the problem. My accountant is like, “Stop spending money!”
Which part of it do you love the most?
I do like talking to people. As I said, it all depends on the events. Certain events, the people can be toxic, I will be honest, and at the end of a long day, you just need to have an hour in a quiet room. But connecting with enthusiastic players is a bit part of the appeal.
Sometimes I hate selling – I’ve literally been at the point of handing over the game and I’m thinking “I really don’t want to sell this”, because I really don’t want to let it go
Do you still collect for yourself?
No, my collection now is 90 percent is the stock that I have. I kind of use that as my collection. I have some personal things, don’t get me wrong; I have a Game Boy bubble bath collection, so that’s niche and that’s my thing. I’ve got 26 different bubble bath bottles! But I use my stall as my collection. Sometimes I hate selling – I’ve literally been at the point of handing over the game and I’m thinking “I really don’t want to sell this” because I really don’t want to let it go. And that’s partly because I know I’ll never get another one. It’s wicked when you do find that thing that you never find again, and you do find it. There have been lots of times where I’ve let something go and I was like, “I should never have sold that”. Sometimes, you’ve got to think, “You’ve got bills to pay, you’ve got this that and the other, you’ve got a life, you just need to let it go. You’ve got plenty of other stuff. Ten minutes later you won’t even notice it’s gone”.
You offer a tactile, tangible shopping experience that you don’t really get any more; do you get a buzz out of that?
I like Game Boy collectors that go in and they know what they want, and they get in there. And they come out with a stack of random games and it’s not just Zelda, Pokémon and Tetris. I have said that one day that’s all my stall is going to be. I’ll have nothing on the table apart from a stack of Tetris carts, a stack of Mario carts, a stack of Zelda carts and a stack of Pokémon carts, and that’s it! Some weekends that’s all I’ve done, and that sometimes can be a bit disheartening. I like selling other games, and there are so many good titles on the Game Boy that people just need to get over the hurdle that there are these five games that you essentially need when in fact there are hundreds of other amazing games, too.
What would you say is the most expensive game you’ve ever sold?
About £100. Things like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow on the Game Boy Advance, for instance. I sold that recently, but I’ve got another one in now. That’s the mission. I’ve got to find another miracle game, and I managed to get one. Sometimes, it’s the finding it where there’s a little bit of meat on the bone for you as well because I can go and buy everything if I didn’t care about losing money. It’s finding it at a price point because every year the shows keep getting more expensive and all your costs keep rising and you need to put your prices up. I don’t like putting my prices up. Sometimes I’m not the cheapest person in the world, but again, everything I sell is really good quality. Boxes aren’t smashed up, it’s all good gear and the Game Boy consoles are in perfect condition. You can go and buy a rotter on eBay, take a chance on it, and it’s £10 cheaper, but at least I put the time and effort into it you can be sure you get a nice solid console.
Moving to online, what’s your current online presence, and what’s the ratio between what you do on events and what you do online?
This is my problem. Because I’m only a one-man-band, I’m really stretched with time. And now, with having a baby as well, and everything else that’s going on, my time is just gone. Having to run the Instagram account as well, the problem is, I put something cool out on Instagram, for instance, and then everyone’s instantly, “Oh, can I buy that, can I buy this, can I buy that?” And the problem is I can’t sell it because I have to have that stock to do the event. If I could sell it all on Instagram, and that would be that, but it’s having that balance, because I need the events to pull in the big money. If I go with a rubbish-looking stall because I’ve sold everything online already, then I’ll just blend in with everyone else. The time I’ve got when I’m proactive on my website is between December and February when I’m off. Did you see I did a Game Boy Mystery Box I did at Christmas? I’m going to do another one of those shortly. I could sell those all day long, but it takes me a while to get the extra goodies together to actually do them. Online is awesome when I’ve got the time to do it, but realistically for me, there’s a greater turnover at the shows than there is online.
You’re kind of going in the opposite direction to everybody else, essentially?
Yeah. I’d love to open a proper shop, full stop. If I hadn’t got a baby then I’d be owning a shop right now! I had some money put aside to open a shop this year, and then the baby happened, and then I had to buy bathrooms and house stuff instead! That’s life. I’d love to have a shop, but it scares the hell out of me, that’s the only thing – whether it’d actually work. I’ve got friends that have got shops; Lee at Sore Thumb Retro in York said it’s the best thing he’s ever done. Ever.
I fit Pokémon save batteries, but my big confession is that I’ve never actually played a Pokémon game
You say you don’t have much time now; do you actually have time to play any of the games you sell?
I probably play 20 lines of Tetris when I’m testing things out, or I’ll have a go on the first level of Super Mario Land. I fit Pokémon save batteries, but my big confession is that I’ve never actually played a Pokémon game. I’ve played the first level where you have to basically put your name in and get to the first room – let’s say I’ve played that 2,000 times, basically to test when I’ve put a new battery in. I’m the master of that bit of the game! The other day I went out of the first room, I was like, “What’s actually outside the first room? Oh, some other things.” Then I stopped!
If anyone reading this is interested in getting into the Game Boy, what’s the advice you’d give them on where to begin?
I would start at the beginning. I’d buy an original Game Boy. I think that’s a good stepping stone. I’d go stock, too, not modded – to literally ‘discover’ it. Then build it up. Work your way through each generation, and then at points get a modded one. Don’t start off with a modded console if you’re new to the Game Boy, because sometimes it ruins the experience. People sometimes come back to me, and they’re like, “I can’t even see it” and I’m like, “Well, that’s how it was designed.” Also, start off with the early games, but look into all the other great titles out there. There are plenty of other wicked games out there that people just don’t touch, and they should do. Do a little bit of research, watch some videos online, and you’ll realise there are plenty of amazing Game Boy games out there.
Samsung has reportedly postponed the Chinese launch of its forthcoming Galaxy Fold smartphone, according to SamMobile. The site cites people familiar with the situation that the official reason is due to an issue with the venue, but notes that other activities related to the launch have also been delayed or canceled.
Engadget Chinese editor in Chief Richard Lai also noted on Twitter that planned events in Hong Kong and Shanghai set to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday have been postponed. We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.
Samsung Galaxy Fold launch events in Hong Kong and Shanghai have been postponed. They were originally scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
Word comes not long after a string of reports from tech journalists who found their review devices broken after just a couple of days of use, ranging from issues with the hinge, to broken screens, and protective coverings being accidentally removed from the screen.
Samsung has a lot riding on this first-generation device. The $1,980 phone is the highest-profile foldable phone to hit the market, and reports that the devices are breaking after just a couple of days of use is potentially a huge setback.
While the world held its collective breath this week ahead of Special Counsel Mueller's damning report on the current administration's conduct, the tech industry went ahead and let out all the bad news it had been holding onto for just such a moment. Facebook had another data breach -- shocking, I know -- Car2Go got hit with a massive fraud scheme, the Galaxy Fold is just as janky as you thought it'd be and of course everybody was GoT pirating.
It took the Weather Channel more than 90 minutes to fix its Thursday morning broadcast after the station was hit with a ransomeware attack. The good news is that it looks like the WC was able to initialize its backups and restore signal without having to pony up a bitcoin payment.
There's this show on HBO called "Game of Thrones," maybe you've heard of it. The latest and final season of the series launched last week and, luckily for those of us who have trouble getting HBO legitimately (looking at you, India and China), there were plenty of pirated broadcasts to go around. Wild that these numbers don't even include the number of folks who gamed the system by sharing their logins.
Samsung lent out a bunch of Galaxy Fold prototypes to media outlets this week and wow did that go badly. Multiple outlets report the screens breaking within days (in a few cases, within hours) under light use. If this is the future of foldable phones, we might all be best served going back to flippers like the Motorola Razr.
It wasn't hacking, Car2Go assured the public this week after temporarily suspending its car-sharing service in Chicago. Users information was never in danger of being breached, it was just simple fraud that led to more than 100 vehicles suddenly disappearing from the city's streets. But hey, at least a couple of them have been recovered.
Xenophobes in the UK will have one less online gathering place next week now that Facebook has given several of the Far Right movement's marquee hate groups the Alex Jones treatment. See? Facebook will totally do the right thing -- if given enough years, public pressure and lawsuits.
A newly approved law could see the end of Christchurch-style terrorist content in the European Union. On Wednesday, the European Parliament voted to fine online media companies four percent of their global revenue should they not removed terrorist content within an hour of it being posted. That sounds good in theory but given that Facebook still has discoverable videos of the New Zealand attack a full month after the fact suggests that this isn't a problem that can simply be legislated away.
What? Russia ran a coordinated and systemic disinformation campaign in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Another week another Facebook data breach. Oh, wait, sorry. Another two data breaches. Turns out that not only did FB store Instagram user passwords in plaintext files, it also admitted to "accidentally" scraping the contacts from 1.5 million new users. As always, the company is vewwy vewwy sowwy and will work to make sure it never happens again. For another four days at least.
I can recall the very first time I experienced the awful phenomenon known as FOMO, or “fear of missing out.” It was in middle school. I was obsessed with the WWF at the time and my family had recently traded in our SNES for the “way cooler” PlayStation. That was the center of my gaming world for the next few years and my brother and I made the most of it, trying out an endless array of games from the local rental shop. But for each unforgettable experience I had with the system, there was one I missed out on because we didn’t have a Game Boy.
In fact, I don't remember seeing a Game Boy in the flesh until 1998. None of my friends had one. For the longest time, it was thought of as the “kiddy console” even though my friends and I were very much young kids in those days. I know I had excuses for never asking for one for Christmas: the screen was small, it didn’t have colors, SNES games are better, yadda-yadda-yadda. Excuse after excuse my dumb child-self made that kept him from one of the richest libraries in all of gaming, and in my eighth-grade year of school, those excuses kept me from experiencing Pokémon when it was at the forefront of the gaming zeitgeist.
There was one person at school -- that I knew of -- who was balls-deep in love with the game. I’d see him playing his Game Boy Pocket at lunch, on the bus, in the halls before school. He was enraptured by it and I was jealous. By 1998, the PlayStation had started to grow stale for me. My brother’s insistence of playing nothing but Madden slowly nudged me away from gaming. I wasn’t having the awe-inspiring moments I’d had with the medium in prior generations, so I threw myself into my short-lived wrestling fandom. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a Game Boy for Pokémon -- which by this time was also being considered nothing but a “kiddy product” -- and I would have missed out on nearly everything the system had to offer, if not for the Nintendo 3DS and its wonderful Virtual Console.
Until the release of the Nintendo 3DS, the only two original Game Boy games I had played were Link’s Awakening and Oracle of Seasons. The latter I bought when I first picked up my Game Boy Advance -- immediately becoming well aware of just what I had missed -- while the former found its way into my GBA SP one quiet night in college. By then, I had begun to appreciate the works found in previous console generations as testimonials to the available technology, rather than as simply stepping stones to better and more powerful consoles. But beyond those two titles, nothing from handheld gaming’s past found its way into my collection.
Then I got my 3DS, the original turquoise model just a week or so before the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D because I’d convinced myself to get it before the price drop so I could get those Ambassador Program games. I still haven’t played all of those games but I did play the hell out of Ocarina of Time 3D and Link’s Awakening DX, the first game I bought from the Virtual Console. I was content leaving my VC purchases at that game and maybe the Oracle titles should they ever come to service, but there was one game every publication I read online was telling me to play: Donkey Kong. So I paid the five bucks or however much it cost and downloaded it one day before work. An hour later I had downloaded five more Game Boy titles because in that time, playing that wonderful title, it dawned on me just how wrong my child-self was about the platform.
It just wasn’t about missing the boat on Pokémon. It was about every title, little or big, that could have filled me with glee in those years I was drifting away from gaming. Donkey Kong, Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land, Mole Mania, Shantae, Pokémon Puzzle Challenge, Pokémon Trading Card Game, Toki Tori, Lufia, and more showed me how timeless these 8-bit games were, and how foolish I was as a child to dismiss the platform.
The many NES and SNES games I purchased on my Wii were for the sake of nostalgia, games I remembered enjoying as a kid that I wanted to own again even if I had no concrete plans to actually play them. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color games I’ve bought on my 3DS weren’t tied to my past. Rather, I wanted these games because I knew I had missed something spectacular. So I bought them and I played them and I beat them, even the one I really didn’t like.
I’m not sure why the Virtual Console for 3DS never met its full potential. I don’t know if it’s licensing issues, 3rd-party developers not wanting to participate, or something else that is beyond my knowledge of the workings at Nintendo, but the selection of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games for the service is ridiculously meek. Just 50 Game Boy games were released in the North American Virtual Console store. The Game Boy Color saw just 31 of its games on the service. In comparison, the NES had 64 of its games make it to the handheld. I don’t know what happening in 2012 to slow the rollout, but there is a bevy of classic titles we missed out on. Everything from Final Fantasy Adventure to the Star Fox-precursor X to Kid Dracula skipped it.
The 3DS Virtual Console hasn’t seen a new title since last year’s release of Pokémon Crystal and, as it enters its twilight, I doubt any other lost classics will make it to the system. A rumored -- though I think it’s more wishful thinking than anything -- Game Boy Mini hasn’t materialized yet, leaving the Nintendo Switch Online service as the best shot going forward for this treasure trove of titles. There is a lot to be desired of the subscription service, but the call for “more games” rings most loud above all else. If this service is to be Nintendo’s Netflix-for-classic-games, as it should be, then the company needs to expand its selection far wider and far more quickly than it is doing now.
Again, I don’t know the ins-and-outs of how the business side of Switch Online works. It could be more complicated than I give it credit for, as I’m sure most aspects of this industry are. What I do know is having these titles available to players opens a world of discovery to younger Switch owners who may have never experienced the pure joy that is Balloon Kid.
