ValuGamer

This has to be one of the most inappropriate software titles ever. Combined with the letters “PDA” and a pantsless rodent, the “Touch Boy” sounds like a real winner. The truth is that it’s a fairly innocent piece of unlicensed software… if that even makes sense. Yep, it’s a PDA for the Game Boy Color!

At the turn of the century, as self-contained PDAs were becoming more ubiquitous, several PDA-like accessories popped up for portable game systems. Both the Game Boy and Tiger’s Game.com had modem cartridges that allowed users to send and receive e-mail. The Game Boy modem came in the form of InterAct’s Shark MX, which was an unlicensed PDA cartridge with a built-in 2400bps modem. That is pretty slow but it was purely meant for sending and receiving text e-mails. Game.com had a similar device but it was actually a first party peripheral.

Mission: Impossible for the Game Boy Color not only contained an address book but also a two-way messaging system and programmable remote control using the system’s infrared port. This was one of the few games to support the IR port and it is a great demonstration as to why that is the case. After cloning a remote control you had to be directly in front of the device and within about 4′ for it to work. I was able to use my GBC to control a WebTV from a limited distance. Cool!

The GBC PDA pictured in this article is fairly straightforward in design and functionality. The interface operates very much like a cell phone and text input is accomplished using the left/right/select system used for arcade high score entry. I do not have a photo of the cartridge at the moment but I will post one here soon. It is a warped, gray hunk of plastic without a label — it was peeling off when I opened the box so I just removed it.