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I spent an entire summer playing Atari. An entire month beating Pac-Man. I leave my kids alone.
A big difference between then and now is the portable nature and ubiquity of the devices.
Back then you didn't take your NES to bed and keep playing it, or play Sega on the toilet, or Atari at the dinner table.
The devices are in every space of our lives now.
The GameBoy is from 1989 and could do all of those things.
Yeah I had one and the battery life was not great, so you could not use it in all of those places unless you were rich and had an endless supply of AA batteries. I had the original B&W Gameboy and the added magnifier / light combo that took even more batteries.
It was good for a couple hours on one set of 4 AA batteries if I recall correctly. We did have rechargables back then but they were Ni-Cad and they sucked, took forever to recharge.
You're right that it needed a light source, but the battery life was actually pretty decent if you didn't have cheap batteries - around 15 hours, which is a hell of a lot better than a Switch.
Maybe you are forgetting about the Sega Genesis Nomad and the fact that the gameboy was effectively a handheld NES?
TBF were talking about the 90s but still
Yeah I had the original B&W Gameboy and the battery life was not great, so you could not use it in all of those places unless you were rich and had an endless supply of AA batteries.
It was good for a couple hours on one set of 4 AA batteries if I recall correctly. We did have rechargables back then but they were Ni-Cad and they sucked, took forever to recharge.
But game boy has its own games. TurboGrafx-16 and TurboExpress (colored handheld) used the exact same games. Battery life did suck.
I think its a bit different with the internet on all devices now, games and tv and stuff like that is fine after the age of 3 or so but those micro-transaction addictive games and social media is something else you have to keep an eye on