30 years ago today, the Game Boy Pocket arrived to show up its '80s DMG sibling. While Ninty's OG brick started the handheld fire way before July 21, 1996, the slimmer, refined portable doubled down on everything that made the original so great while resetting the bar for what a good portable experience feels like to this very day.
Alright, I'll admit that the lack of backlight makes the Game Boy Pocket feel super primitive compared to the best retro handhelds today. Nintendo was seemingly allergic to lighting (outside of its Japan-exclusive Game Boy Light experiment) until the 2000s, when it released the GBA SP, but that doesn't mean it simply slimmed down the DMG.
