Nintendo's trailblazing Game Boy marks its 25th anniversary Monday with the portable device's legacy living on in cutting-edge smartphone games and among legions of nostalgic video game fans.

The Japanese firm released its 8-bit Game Boy on April 21, 1989 - the same year Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall fell.

Billed as a "handy game machine," few knew it would turn the console-based industry on its head, starting a revolution that did for portable gaming what Sony's Walkman had done for mobile music.

It also helped turn Super Mario and Donkey Kong into global franchises, allowing users to change their favorite games on the go just by inserting small cartridges into the device.

Kyoto-based Nintendo, which started life as a games card maker that morphed into a global video game giant, did not invent portable gaming.

But Game Boy's discount price and popular software blew away the competition at the time and pushed mobile gaming into the mainstream.

"At one point, portable gaming was synonymous with the Game Boy," said Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based games industry consultant.

"It laid the foundation for what we call portable gaming today, regardless of whether it is console or smartphone games, because the basic concept is the same... That's the legacy of Game Boy."

The device also allowed users to connect with another gamer through a link cable, setting off the beginnings of online gaming networks that now number in the millions of users.
Newspaper headline: Nintendo's trailblazing portable Game Boy device marks 25th anniversary