It was 1996 in Japan and 1998 in North America (and a year later in Europe) when the ageing Game Boy got an unexpected shot in the arm thanks to a little game named Pokémon. Nintendo's granddaddy of handheld gaming suddenly had a new lease of life, but in the West the release of the game was followed just weeks later by the arrival of a new console — the Game Boy Color — and it was on that wonderful system that many of us caught our very first Pocket Monster.
A colour update to the original DMG-001 — which had previously been revised in the smaller form of Game Boy Pocket — was a long time coming, but after nine years Game Boy Color finally gave handheld Nintendo gamers the proper upgrade they'd been waiting for.
GBC launched, appropriately, in a range of eye-catching colours and was fully backwards compatible with the existing Game Boy library. Many dual 'black cart' games would also play perfectly well on the original monochrome console, although the sexier Color-exclusive games came on clear cartridges which let you glimpse the board inside. The GBC soon built up its own great software library before the Game Boy Advance came along in 2001. Three years is a relatively short life span, especially compared to its predecessor, but we're big fans of this gorgeous system and its impressive, oft-forgotten library.
We've previously assembled Top 50 rankings for every other Nintendo console, each and every one based on User Ratings submitted by readers, and this list of the Best Game Boy Color games ever is the last to go live. Thank you all for contributing, to this list and all the others.
Remember, though, that just like the others, this ranking is not set in stone. The list will continue to evolve automatically based on user scores submitted to the Nintendo Life game database. If you missed out on 'voting', you can still do so right now by simply scrolling down and rating them, or hunting down a game that's missing via the search bar below. Games require a minimum of 10 ratings to become eligible, but once that threshold is reached (and if it scores highly enough) it will appear below.
Ready to take a look? Grab yourself a fresh pair of AAs, sit back, and relax as we take you on a tour of the 50 best Game Boy Color games of all time...
Note. In order for games to become eligible, they need a minimum of 10 User Ratings in total.