In the early ’90s, Nintendo looked at the massive success of the Game Boy and wondered if you could work on that as well. Enter WorkBoy, an accessory that turned the Nintendo handheld system into an early PDA. But despite much evidence of WorkBoy’s existence, it disappeared before it ever got into the hands of productivity-conscious players. Now, a prototype has been unearthed, giving us a look at all the agendas that could have been.
In weekend, Liam Robertson, a video game historian, posted a video recounting his immersion in the history of WorkBoy and the search for the lost prototype. He found that despite persistent rumors from the vintage gaming community that WorkBoy was sold in limited quantities, it never reached the market.
Trademark for the first time in January 1992, the compact peripheral of the WorkBoy keyboard connected to a standard Game Boy with a green screen. Users were able to access 12 applications that included a daybook, a currency converter and a calendar.
According to Robertson, a prototype was unveiled at CES in May 1992. Following the exhibition, the device received some press coverage with GameZone writing, “Nintendo’s success was visible through its display at CES – it had virtually an entire hanger for himself, full of his own products and those of developers. But there was little offer that was radically different – that is, little, except for WorkBoy. ” The Chicago Tribune was less kind and called the idiosyncratic accessory “ridiculous.”
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During his research, Robertson contacted Eddie Gill, founder of Source Research and Development, the company that created WorkBoy for Nintendo. Gill was able to address some of the issues that prevented WorkBoy from reaching the market and said it was intended to retail for between $ 79 and $ 89. Gill did not have a unit in his possession, but he pointed Robertson to Frank Ballouz, the founder of the device’s manufacturer, Fabtek, and the owner of what is believed to be the only WorkBoy not locked in Nintendo safes.
When Robertson finally got his hands on the device, it didn’t work because he needed the accompanying cartridge to access the software. Fortunately, this summer there was a huge pile of obscure Nintendo files that was nicknamed Gigaleak, and Robertson miraculously managed to find the hidden WorkBoy software.
While the productivity peripheral could have been impressive for its time, the limited memory and lack of internet connectivity means that its usefulness is quite limited. I have to say that I like the phone book designed to allow the user to hold the Game Boy speaker to the handset of a landline phone to automatically dial the desired number.
Robertson participated in this WorkBoy mission in 2019, and did a spectacular job retrieving the story of this lost device. See the full video below.