Nintendo’s Gameboy holds a special place in my heart. While I had a computer from a young age, the Gameboy was my first console, my first dedicated games machine. I got it for a birthday one year and I had Donkey Kong Land, Titus the Fox and Pokemon Blue. I spent countless hours with it, and yet, I didn’t know just how vast the library of this funny little handheld was. I still think a lot of people don’t.
I’ve talked about at least one Gameboy oddity in a previous Obscure Pixels, but that was just scratching the surface. So today we’re going to take a bit of a closer look at some of the weirder bits and pieces the Gameboy had to offer.
Infogenius Productivity Pak: Spellchecker and Calculator
Remember sitting in the back of the class with your Gameboy and getting in trouble for it continuously? Well with this handy tool you can turn around and say you were using it for work! Or something. The Spellchecker and Calculator is… Well. A spellchecker and calculator.
Remember how long it would take you, using the directional keypad, to input three whole characters for your high score? Imagine that, but now you have to put out entire words. Although, thankfully, the interface offers up a proper keyboard to select from, but it’s still the Gameboy, which means it’s still a slow and tedious process.
Essentially, you’d type out a word or something vaguely resembling a word, and the spellchecker would take a moment before throwing a list of words back at you with the correct spelling. I’m sure it would have benefited a younger me, who couldn’t spell. Or a current me, who still can’t spell and relies entirely on the inbuilt browser spellchecker.
King James Bible For Use On Gameboy
This is absolutely the kind of thing you’d get from a relative one Christmas and you’d just kind of force a grin, mumble a thank you, try it once and then just put on the shelf for the rest of time.
With amazing features like a search function to find those favourite bible passages, as well as just, generally, the entire bible on the cartridge, what’s not to love?
But just when you thought you’d seen everything this amazing cart has to offer, you’ve read the entire tiny digital bible, there’s minigames! That’s right! You can enjoy a selection of games, like guessing words and saving sheep or. Something. I honestly have no idea what’s going on.
I feel like it’s important to mention that this was a Wisdom Tree game, and never actually officially licensed by Nitnendo.
PediSedate
I want to start by saying that I think video games as a tool to help anxious kids in medical situations is absolutely brilliant. I think it’s amazing and I have a lot of positive things to say on the healing power of video games.
This, however, looks like it came out of a Kidz Bop version of Saw.
It’s designed to deliver nitrous oxide to kids through the mouthpiece, while the Gameboy element helps distract them and keep them calm before a surgery. But honestly, if you put a big piece of headgear like that on me when I already knew I was going to have some kind of medical stuff done, I’d probably just freak out more.
The weirdest part? This wasn’t released when the Gameboy was at the height of its popularity. This was released in the 2000s, long after the Gameboy wasn’t a thing and, in fact, the DS was the popular handheld of the time. So on all fronts, this is just kind of a weird accessory to have.
Singer ‘Izek’ Sewing Machine
It’s a problem we’ve all had, I’m sure. We want to stitch an intricate pattern onto a cardigan we’re lovingly crafting for the colder months, but we want to use our Gameboy to do it! Well Singer heard this incredibly common plea for help and released the Izek sewing machine.
Honestly it’s actually a lot more interesting than it sounds.
The machine came with a special cord to link your Gameboy up to the machine, and a cartridge you could put in your Gameboy which would let you select patterns, either premade, or giving you the ability to make one yourself. It could do everything from letters through to shapes, so you could make that goofy Super Mario sprite based piece you always wanted.
