It's 1989 and a lot of things are going on in the world.

President Ronald Reagan said goodbye and President George H.W. Bush said hello. Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl win and the World Series between Oakland and San Francisco became the most memorable in history with an earthquake during Game 3Taylor Swift was born that year, and Lucille Ball died.

But none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was...the Nintendo GameBoy.

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For the kids now, GameBoy will seem quaint (which is, perhaps, a nice way of saying stupid and old-fashioned). Compared to what video games kids have now, GameBoy is the Model T compared to their Rolls Royce. It's the horse-and-buggy compared to their Lear Jet.

But in 1989 it was the bomb and every kid had to have it!

Nintendo released it in Japan in April of that year and it did....huge business. So in July it hit North America and it did, well, huger (I know, I know, huger isn't a real word but you get the idea).

On its first day in the United States, 40,000 were sold. That was just the first day. Ultimately GameBoy and GameBoy Color did over 118 million worldwide.

And one of those went to a little boy and little girl who were growing up in Burke, South Dakota. (Actually, if memory serves, more the boy than the girl).

Now, the GameBoy was the coolest thing on the planet already, but what made it super cool was that it came with the coolest game on the planet.

Tetris anyone?

I don't know how much time that little boy named Jeremy spent on that GameBoy, but I do know his Dad spent time on it when he fell asleep (the secrets out now!).

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Gallery Credit: Stacker

 

 

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