How Much Did the Game Boy Color Cost in 1998?
By the Price Time Machine team · Updated
The Game Boy Color launch price was $79.95 when it launched in North America on November 18, 1998. Adjusted for inflation, that is about $164.26 in September 2026 money, roughly 2.1 times the original price.
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Game Boy Color at a glance
- US launch price
- $79.95
- In today’s money
- ≈ $164.26November 1998 to September 2026 (CPI-U, BLS)
- US release date
- November 18, 1998
- Where it was designed
- Kyoto, JapanDesigned by Nintendo in Kyoto, Japan.
- Category
- Gaming & tech
- Price source
- en.wikipedia.org
Today’s price is the US launch price adjusted for US inflation with the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, comparing the launch month with the latest published month. It updates automatically as new figures come out.
What $79.95 bought
For $79.95 you got the first Game Boy with a colour screen: a 2.3-inch colour LCD that could show up to 56 colours at once from a palette of 32,768. It had a processor running at up to twice the speed of the original Game Boy and four times the memory, and it still played every original Game Boy game.
The Game Boy Color launch price in today’s money
Inflation means a dollar buys less today than it did in 1998. Using the US Consumer Price Index, the original Game Boy Color launch price of $79.95 works out at about $164.26 in September 2026 money, around 2.1 times the original figure. That is what the same amount of spending power would cost now, not what the Game Boy Color sells for second-hand.
When was the Game Boy Color released?
- Announced: March 1998
- Japan: October 21, 1998
- North America: November 18, 1998
- Europe: November 23, 1998
- Australasia: November 27, 1998
Where was the Game Boy Color developed?
Nintendo developed it in Kyoto, Japan. A team led by Satoru Okada, who had worked on the original Game Boy, had experimented with colour screens since the early 1990s. An early prototype, codenamed “Project Atlantis”, used a powerful 32-bit chip, but Nintendo chose a faster version of the original Game Boy’s 8-bit processor so it could launch sooner and keep playing older games.
Game Boy Color facts you might not know
- Its best-selling games were Pokémon Gold and Silver, which shipped 23 million copies.
- It was on sale for only about two and a half years before the Game Boy Advance replaced it in 2001.
- Together, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color sold 118.69 million units, making them the fourth best-selling system of all time.
- Programmers later found a trick, “high colour mode”, that showed more than 2,000 colours on screen at once.
Frequently asked questions
How much was the Game Boy Color in 1998?
The Game Boy Color cost $79.95 in North America when it launched on November 18, 1998.
How much is $79.95 from 1998 worth today?
Adjusted for US inflation, the Game Boy Color’s launch price is about $164.26 in September 2026 money.
Can the Game Boy Color play original Game Boy games?
Yes. It is backward compatible with games made for the original Game Boy.
Want to compare the Game Boy Color launch price with other launch prices? See what the Nintendo 3DS launch cost, browse more famous launch prices, or play this question in Price Time Machine.
Sources
Launch prices and dates are checked against the sources below. Today’s price is calculated from official US inflation data and updates automatically when new figures are published.
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