The Game Boy is one of Nintendo's greatest hits, selling over a hundred million units (of various versions) over the years. It's simple, rugged, and very versatile with an immense library of games available. The design is very clever and minimalistic, based on a Z80-derived processor with 8 kB of RAM connected to an LCD and sound system.

Of course it would be an act of sacrilege to dissect a working Game Boy, so I'm not going to. This particular one however, has passed on. This Game Boy is no more. It's expired and gone to meet its maker.... etc. In the name of science I'm going to explore its inner workings (though much work has been done by others already, like reverse-engineering its schematic).

The brains of the Game Boy are located on this circuit board. It houses the CPU (the big chip), two chips with RAM (the rectangular ones), the cartridge connector (huge black thing) and a lot of smaller things.

These are the chips from the circuit board. At the top we see the main CPU, on the left is the audio amplifier, and the chip on the right is one of the RAM chips. Nintendo's product code for the Game Boy is 'DMG', so that's why you see that written all over the chips (and the circuit board as well).

Two more chips are found on a second circuit board that drives the LCD. This article will therefore show the internals of five different chips!