Nintendo's Game Boy turns 30

Thirty years ago, Japanese company Nintendo released the Game Boy - a handheld device that would pave the way for the current $63.2 billion gaming industry.

Gamer World News Entertainment host Tian Wang told FOX Business' Stuart Varney that the Game Boy was "significant in so many different ways," opening up the world to handheld gaming and becoming a major revenue stream for the video gaming company.

“The Game Boy was also incredible because the original 8-bit versions sold about 119 million copies,” Wang explained on Monday. “That makes it the third best-selling console of all time - next to PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS. And it ended up becoming a cultural icon.”

Nintendo improved upon the Game Boy's design with the Game Boy Color in 1998, the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003. In 2004, Nintendo dropped the words “Game Boy” from its line of handheld devices for its double-screen model, the Nintendo DS.

Wang joked that part of the original Game Boy's appeal stems from “Tetris,” the famous puzzle game designed in the Soviet Union.

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“It had an incredible game that was packaged with it - Tetris, which was arguably the greatest cyber-weapon that Russia has ever deployed against the world," he said. “Costs millions of lost productivity hours that continue to this day, and it helped make the Game Boy incredibly popular because it made developers want to make more games for it.”

Nintendo’s Game Boy was released on April 21, 1989.