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They’re all here! Japanese collector completes set of all 1,244 Game Boy games【Photos】

Casey Baseel Sep 11, 2021
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If you could buy it in a store, he’s got it.

Nintendo’s Game Boy was the first full-fledged portable video game system to hit the market, and after it did it stuck around for a long time. Released in Japan in 1989 and with its lifespan extended by the semi-compatible Game Boy Color variant, it wasn’t until 2001 that the release of the Game Boy Advance made the original Game Boy truly obsolete.

That means there’s over a decade’s worth of games for the system, and those weren’t lean years either. Its contemporary cadre of competitors didn’t make much of a splash, meaning the vast majority of handheld game development in that period was for the Game Boy. So assembling a complete collection of each and every Game Boy game ever commercially released in Japan is a big project, but it’s one that Japanese Twitter user @marumi_1985 has just finished, with a total of 1,244 games.

▼ He’s got a pretty awesome array of Game Boy hardware, too.

You might remember @marumi_1985 from last spring, when we first talked about his quest. The final steps of a journey are often the hardest, though, and at that time he was still trying to track down eight elusive titles. Over the summer he was able to get his hands on all of them, and on Wednesday he announced that his complete collection was finally, well, complete.

▼ Two of the final eight games can be seen in the third row from the top here: 2001 role-playing game The Black Onyx (third from left) and 1992 shooter Earth Liberation Army Zas (fourth from left).

@marumi_1985 wasn’t just tweeting to show off his collection, though but also to say thank you for everyone who helped him out with his retro game ambition. “I started serious collecting in September of 2019, so this took two years,” he tweets. “This is really something I was only able to do because of the support of so many people. If it wasn’t for [the help I received through] Twitter, this probably would have taken me five years to do.”

▼ The games are lined up in the Japanese language’s equivalent of alphabetical order, because when you’ve got over 1,000 games on your shelf, you don’t want to have to go searching for the one you want to play at random.

市販のゲームボーイソフト全1244タイトル(非売品・ハード扱いを除く)をコンプリートしました！

2019年9月から本格的な収集を開始し、丸2年。本当に多くの人に支えられ、無事に集めきることができました。ツイッターがなければ後5年はかかっていたでしょう。

本当にありがとうございました！！ pic.twitter.com/xjeTScUkj3

— ショウタ (@marumi_1985) September 8, 2021

As you might expect, someone with this much devotion to the Game Boy has a fondness for Nintendo in general, and @marumi_1985 says he’s been ramping up his Wii software hunting. However, his next project is likely to be putting together a full set of every Famicom (NES) game, something he’s already about 600 titles into. We look forward to seeing it once it’s done, as well as the new shelves @marumi_1985 is definitely going to have to buy.

Source: Twitter/@marumi_1985 via Jin
Images: Twitter/@marumi_1985
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s still upset about that Fist of the North Star Game Boy game.