Bundled with the console in the West and inseparable from it ever since. Alexey Pajitnov's puzzle game was perfectly matched to a portable format, and it sold the Game Boy to an audience far beyond children.
2
Pokémon Red and Blue (1996)
Arrived when the Game Boy was widely considered obsolete and single-handedly revived it, building an entire global franchise out of the link cable Nintendo had bundled years earlier.
3
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (1993)
A full Zelda adventure on a monochrome handheld, and a stranger, sadder, more surreal one than the console entries — its island and its ending remain among the series' most affecting.
4
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992)
Larger sprites, an overworld map, and the debut of Wario. A confident, inventive platformer that stepped out of the shadow of its rushed predecessor.
5
Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991)
Translating Metroid's vast, disorienting exploration onto a tiny screen with no map should have failed. Instead it delivered a claustrophobic, oppressive descent that the series still draws on.
6
Kirby's Dream Land (1992)
Masahiro Sakurai's debut, designed so that anyone could pick it up and enjoy it. Deceptively simple, endlessly charming, and the foundation of a Nintendo mainstay.
7
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (1994)
Handed the series to its villain and rebuilt the platformer around him — Wario cannot die easily, he bulldozes, and the game rewards greed rather than grace.
8
Donkey Kong (1994)
Begins as a faithful port of the 1981 arcade game and then explodes into nearly a hundred inventive puzzle-platform levels. One of the great bait-and-switches in game design.
9
Final Fantasy Legend / SaGa (1989)
The first handheld RPG, proving that a genre built on sprawl and statistics could work on a portable — and opening the door for the Pokémon phenomenon to follow.
10
Tetris Attack / Pokémon Puzzle (1996)
A near-perfect competitive puzzle game whose chain-and-combo system gave the Game Boy one of the deepest score-attack experiences on any platform.