Nintendo almost designed the world’s first smartphone

Nintendo may have been the first to bring a smartphone to market. Unfortunately, the PageBoy project did not materialize.

The concept of the smartphone has existed long before Apple started its iPhone project, and today such devices have become commonplace. If you remember correctly, some people were already using personal assistants (PDAs), devices that could easily be considered the forerunners of smartphones, but it looks like Nintendo may have taken everyone by surprise and was the first in the world to bring such devices to market. smartphone”.

Nintendo may have been the first to launch a smartphone

According to Liam Robertson, video game historian, researcher, and journalist, in a 1990s ad, Big N revealed that he was working on an accessory for the Game Boy Color. This accessory was called the PageBoy and, when used with the Game Boy Color, gave the portable console some of the functionality of our current smartphones.

We’re talking more specifically about Internet connectivity here, which offered users the ability to read news, magazines, get weather forecasts, watch live TV, and even connect and message other PageBoy owners. The underlying technology was very similar to what the paging systems offered then, hence the name of the accessory – PageBoy.

Unfortunately, the PageBoy project did not materialize.

That being said, as promising as this accessory was, Nintendo did not decide to go any further before commercializing it, believing, still according to Liam Robertson, that the communications technology behind the PageBoy was out of place and only fully functional in certain parts.. world. Nintendo wanted a device that could work anywhere in the world, not just in a small number of countries, so the project was cancelled.

If it could go all the way, Big N would be one of the first, if not the first, to bring what is now called a smartphone to the market.