2023-07-01 12:36:00
In 1991, the Gulf War raged and Nursing Sister Stephan Coggins was sent to Iraq to serve in the army. He takes his faithful Game Boy (first version) with a few cartridges in his package to pass the time when he is not on duty. But what had to happen happened: the barracks of Stephan Coggins is the target of an Iraqi Scud. The nurse finds his portable console in the rubble and sends it to Nintendo with a note for the teams specifying that the device and some game cartridges are the only victims of the bombardment, hoping that the technicians will be able to do something. The front of the Game Boy is entirely charred, the plastic buttons as well as the directional cross have melted; it is impossible to use them, and therefore to play with the device. However, the screen and motherboard are mostly intact, as Nintendo engineers found when they fired up the Game Boy with a cartridge. Tetris inserted.
“When we received Stephan’s Game Boy from the Middle East, we immediately thought there was nothing we might do. The back of the console was fine, but the front was charred and blistered by heat. We still inserted the game cartridge in it Tetris, plugged in a Battery Pak [NDLR : le Battery Pak est un accessoire pour le Game Boy à brancher sur le côté de la console pour remplacer les piles] and turned on the device. We then heard the famous tiding! It was amazing!”
Nintendo has since given away a Game Boy and a game Tetris to Stephan Coggins for his dedication during Operation Desert Storm. As for the famous surviving Game Boy, it was displayed for 30 years in the Nintendo store in New York, spinning Tetris and proving, at the same time, the durability of the consoles designed by Big N. Would a Switch have survived the same treatment? Nothing is less sure…
The end of an era ?
However, for the past few days, the Gulf War Game Boy has been missing. According to an employee of the store where he was one of the centerpieces, he was sent to Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington. We don’t yet know why this iconic Game Boy was removed from its showcase (technical problem? Whim of the company’s big shots?). We hope in any case that he will find his place there one day, as he has become an emblematic figure of the world’s video game heritage.
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