Game Boy Color

The Game Boy Color is Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy released in 1998. It features a color screen, which was and is slightly thicker and taller than the Game Boy Pocket. As with the original Game Boy, it has an 8-bit processor, but is smaller than the original system.

There is only one Kirby game for the Game Boy Color, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, which released in 2000. There are also two canceled Kirby games: an enhanced "DX" port of Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Kirby Family, the latter being a sewing game that would have utilized a unique sewing machine accessory titled the Jaguar JN-100.

History
The Game Boy Color was created due to the fact that the Game Boy and its spin offs were considered insufficient by Nintendo. It was also due to game developers wishing for a more sophisticated hand-held. The resulting product was backwards compatible. This gave the system a large library from the offset, and started a trend that would be continued throughout the life of the Game Boy series.

Specifications
The processor, which is a Z80 workalike made by Sharp with a few extra (bit manipulation) instructions, has a clock speed of approx. 8 MHz, twice as fast as that of the original Game Boy. The Game Boy Color also has four times as much memory as the original (32 kilobytes system RAM, 16 kilobytes video RAM). The screen resolution was the same as the original Game Boy, which is 160x144 pixels.

The Game Boy Color also featured an infrared communications port for wireless linking. However, the feature was only supported in a few games, and the infrared port was dropped for the Game Boy Advance and later releases. The console was capable of showing up to 56 different colors simultaneously on screen from its palette of 32,768, and could add basic four-color shading to games that had been developed for the original Game Boy. It could also give the sprites and backgrounds separate colors, for a total of more than four colors. This, however, resulted in graphic artifacts in certain games. For example, sometimes a sprite that was supposed to meld into the background would be colored separately, making it easily noticeable.

Cartridges
Games that are dual-compatible with original Game Boy units have a black cartridge. Games designed specifically for the Game Boy Color have a clear case and are incompatible with original Game Boy units; trying to play a clear Game Boy Color cartridge on an original Game Boy only displays a message stating that it is incompatible.

Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is not compatible with original Game Boy units, and it is unique from other Game Boy Color games in that its cartridge has a transparent pink case and that the game requires tilting the system using the built-in tilt-sensor.

Sales
The Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined have sold 118.69 million units worldwide, with 32.47 million units in Japan, 44.06 million in the Americas, and 42.16 million in other regions.