Original 1989 Gameboy Packaging Differences

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Questengine

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#1  Edited By Questengine

Check the 2 pics here. Notice the different photo of the children playing their gameboys. Is there any understanding that one of these boxes was earlier or later than the other? I suspect that the blue shirt boy is the older one, because that's the one I have and I got my GB very early, but is there any evidence? Thanks for any help!

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Jesus_Phish

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My guess is that you're right, the box with the boy in the blue shirt is the older one. If you look at what's included in that box, it says on the left it's just the gameboy, tetris and four batteries. While the other box doesn't say it includes either the headphones or the cable, their presence on the box makes me think that the one with the red shirt boy is a different SKU which likely came later.

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vg132

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#3  Edited By vg132

It's boxes from two different markets, the first box is for the Euro market and the second one is for the US market.

You can see this by looking at the CE marking on the firs box and the shape of the Nintendo seal of quality, round in europe and oval in the US.

I got my Euro Game Boy with the headphones back in 1993 so it may also be a age difference between the boxes.

/Viktor

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Questengine

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That makes good sense. But I see many more of the orange shirt versions on ebay than the blue shirt versions. It may be that indeed the boxes in these photos are from different regions, but they ALSO represent different packaging revisions. Of course they'd change the text between regions, but they I don't know why they'd go to the trouble to change a tiny image.

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youeightit

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Left has that space age 80s look, right has the "I'm a kid and kids rule" look of the early-mid 90s.

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Hamst3r

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I'm no UPC expert, but with my limited knowledge and a bit of looking around, I'm pretty sure the one with 44001 in its UPC code is German and from 1993, and the one with 71001 is from the USA and from 1989.

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bigsocrates

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@hamst3r said:

I'm no UPC expert, but with my limited knowledge and a bit of looking around, I'm pretty sure the one with 44001 in its UPC code is German and from 1993, and the one with 71001 is from the USA and from 1989.

That would be fascinating just from the perspective of English language packaging being sold in Germany in 1993. Was that really the case? I could imagine Nintendo not localizing for a tiny market (Like Finland or whatever) because of the costs, but Germany? If true, that's pretty surprising to me! The box with CE in it does say Deutschland so that appears to be the case. Whoa!

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Hamst3r

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#8  Edited By Hamst3r

@bigsocrates: Yeah, dunno, just going off what the numbers say.

Here's one from 1994 with German on it:

No Caption Provided

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Questengine

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#9  Edited By Questengine

@hamst3r, I saw that one too when I did my image search, but I didn't pick it because it clearly was from another territory. I didn't go so far as to compare UPC's though.

You know, the way people get crazy over 3-screw vs 5-screw NES carts, you think someone would have gotten to the bottom of this already.

Thanks everyone for having a look.

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crithon

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uhhhhh..... I'm gonna have to dig it out from under the house crawl space in plastic containers, I still own mine but unfortunately I'm too drunk to do that at the moment. I want to say the second one has that attitude era a lot of Nintendo Powers had when they marketed kids playing the consoles. The first one looks a lot like first batch of nintendo products.

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#11  Edited By Kidavenger

I got my gameboy when they first came out in 89 and it came with those headphones and the link cable.

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#12  Edited By Koreym

Hey not trying to high jack your thread, but I'm wondering about the same thing. I have one that ends in CAN-3, orange shirt kid. I've come down to its a late version... One notable thing is a cardboard liner not Styrofoam. Now with this assumed later version was the Tetris manual black? Or was it the purple one? Box and manuals all say CAN-3, but I'm told it should be black, but maybe not for the packaging changes and since its a Canada model? Any ideas?

By from my couple hours searching I've found I'm 93 they changed packing. And 93 the upgraded Tetris too, which my box set had the second version. (-2)