Feed21/7/26 - My Banana Yellow Gameboy ClassicWhen I was 12, in 1996, there was a promotion in Australia for the relatively new line of Gameboys with coloured cases, and the new Donkey Kong Land game for it. It was a colouring competition - a bunch of cereals came with a picture on the back of the box you were to colour in and send off. It showed our favourite video game gorilla and holding a barrel, and his little brother Diddy leaning against him looking 90s cool with that backwards cap of his. The best, I dunno, 10, 20, 50, 100, entries won a Gameboy and a copy of Donkey Kong Land.My step brother and I really wanted a gameboy. We got ourselves a box of cereal. I don't remember what it was called, and I don't think they make it anymore - it was basically these miniature round weet-bix with dried fruit chunks stuck in them. I sorta miss this cereal - it was pretty tasty. Anyway, my problem with this sort of thing is that I'm colourblind - I really struggle to tell the difference between certain greens and browns amongst other colours, which, if you take a moment to look at ol' DK could cause some problems unless you intend him to look very ill. Luckily my step-brother does not suffer from the same affliction, so we teamed up in our shared desire for this incredible status symbol of the mid 90s - he handed me the textas, and I carefully coloured in. For some weird reason two of the planks on the barrel Donkey Kong was holding were pre-coloured, with this deep brown ink that none of our textas matched. But all the other kids we were compteting against across the country were up against the same problem, so I guess we were on the same playing field. Still, we were not confident. When does anybody ever actually win these things? Well, colour me Donkey-Kong I ended up playing the gameboy pretty hard for a few weeks. We even got a rechargable battery pack and one of those stupid third party magnifiers with inbuilt light. My step brother never really used it much. I don't know why, but we never got any other games for it - I basically played through DKL, then put it away to never touch it again for about 25 years. Despite never really playing it again, and much better and cooler handheld consoles coming and going, this gameboy came with me through multiple moves, until I finally dragged it out again a few years ago. The screen is terrible - unless you get it at exactly the right angle in bright sunlight, it is impossible to get satisfactory contrast, and the ghosting is a joke. But man this thing is just pure joy! Firstly, a nearly-new condition Gameboy Classis is something of a unicorn, and pretty special for just that reason. But also, if I lift the battery cover and put my nose right up to the hole where the cover clips in, I can still slightly smell that unique plastic smell this thing used to exude when it was new, which just smacks me like a sledgehammer with nostalgia. Somewhere along the line the Donkey Kong Land cartridge went missing (one of the reasons I never used it in the intervening years), but I went on ebay and picked out a few games that I thought I would have a bit of fun with. For the record, Link's Awakening absolutely rips. I sort of feel sorry for the Gameboy Classic - not just my personal unit, but the whole line. With the Gameboy Colour and Gameboy advance both being backwards compatible, the original kind of doesn't get the love it deserves given how revolutionary it was. Most people just reach for one of those consoles. I like that it is big and chunky and heavy and that the screen is terrible. There's something zen about all of that - the world seems like a much simpler and joyous place when playing, all the more because of the extra effort you need to put in to immerse yourself in it. It does a better job of cutting away all the distraction and overwhelm of the world than the best meditation app or dumbphone. When you're staring at that washed-out postage-stamp sized screen, all that exists in that moment is Koholint island. 
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