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Game Boy u/dpad_dan ·

Why are some original Game Boy cartridges red, blue, or yellow instead of the standard grey?

I bought a copy of Pokemon Red online, and it arrived in a bright red plastic cartridge instead of the usual grey one. At first, I was worried it might be a bootleg or fake copy. Why did Nintendo make some of these games in different colors, and is there any performance difference?
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3 comments

  • u/romhackrhonda ·
    Nintendo and other game publishers frequently used custom-colored plastic cartridges to help their games stand out in retail displays. For example, Donkey Kong Land was released in a bright banana-yellow cartridge, and various Spider-Man games were pressed in red plastic. It was a highly effective marketing technique to catch a buyer's eye on store shelves.
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  • u/onemorelife ·
    Colored cartridges perform identically to their standard grey counterparts since the internal PCB and ROM chips are exactly the same. Some regions, like Japan, had even more variations with unique cartridge shapes and colors for games like Tamagotchi. The colored plastic is purely cosmetic and does not affect gameplay or compatibility with the console.
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  • u/mode7mike ·
    The colored cartridges were a marketing and design choice, primarily used for high-profile releases to make them stand out on store shelves. The most famous examples are the Pokemon series, where Pokemon Red was red, Pokemon Blue was blue, and Pokemon Yellow was yellow. They run exactly the same as any standard grey Game Boy cartridge; the colored plastic is purely cosmetic.
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