Between April and July 1989, the original Game Boy hit store shelves with an official price of $89.99, and it didn't take long to conquer the portable entertainment market. Besides a large number of games, there were plenty of companies dedicated to creating accessories that sought to improve the console experience, but the WorkBoy promised something different: turning the Game Boy into a productive tool, with a profile closer to that of a computer. The device vanished within months of its official launch, and the community thought no prototype remained…
Game Boy: Beyond the Console?
For millions of people around the world, the Game Boy console was the first in their lives, the one they grew up with and had fun with. The stories of many players challenging the darkness of their rooms with a flashlight or in the back of a car accumulating long travel hours abound online, absolutely loaded with nostalgia and good memories.
But the Game Boy managed to surpass all limits, and there's no denying its transformative potential. Cameras, printers, magnifying lenses, built-in lights, extended batteries, speakers, adapter cartridges, sonar, protective shells… the list was immense. The strangest accessories are simply irresistible to collectors, but if there's one that stands above the rest, it's the WorkBoy. At first glance, it looks like a mini keyboard for the Game Boy. In essence, it was much more than that.
WorkBoy: The Game Boy as Digital Assistant
Historian Liam Robertson published a mini-documentary on the DidYouKnowGaming? channel that explores the origins and disappearance of the WorkBoy. The accessory, designed by Source Research and Development and produced by Fabtek Inc., aimed to turn the Game Boy into a sort of PDA with calendar, agenda, calculator, finances, alarm, geography, language translation, unit conversion, and much more.
The plan was to offer an alternative to parents who saw the Game Boy as a simple entertainment device. The cost of a PC for productivity tasks could reach outrageous levels in the early and mid-'90s (say, 3,000 dollars), so with the WorkBoy it would be possible to turn the console into a "semi-computer" and extract additional value from the original investment. The WorkBoy's debut was scheduled for late 1992 or early 1993 with a maximum price of $89. However, after extensive promotion on television and specialized magazines… it vanished.
The video describes Robertson's efforts to track down the original architect of the WorkBoy and founder of Source, Eddie Gill. It was Gill himself who suggested the existence of only two WorkBoy prototypes on the entire planet, one of them stored in Nintendo's infinite vaults. The key was tracking down the other prototype, which led him to Frank Ballouz, founder of Fabtek, with extensive experience in the arcade market. Ballouz agreed to an interview, and almost casually, confirmed what Robertson wanted to know: The prototype was in his possession.
WorkBoy: The Complete Puzzle
As if that weren't enough, Ballouz sent the WorkBoy prototype to Robertson so he could test it on his console, but the puzzle wasn't complete: the keyboard needed a special cartridge to work. Ballouz didn't have it, and Gill didn't either, but the "solution" came through the massive data leak that Nintendo suffered throughout 2020. Within that megapack there was exclusive development material and prototypes that had never seen the light… including the firmware compatible with the WorkBoy.
28 years and a flash cartridge later, the WorkBoy began to work exactly as its creators had envisioned. But the underlying doubt remained: Why was it canceled so close to its debut? The first difficulty was that Nintendo had decided to lower the price of its Game Boy, leaving the WorkBoy in a tricky position: nobody would pay much attention if it was more expensive than the console itself. The second happened in Japan, with the explosion of a DRAM memory factory. Component prices skyrocketed, and any idea of making the WorkBoy more competitive proved impossible.
In Summary
Isolated photographs in old magazines, the desire of fans, the determination of a historian, the collaboration of the original parties, and a massive data leak helped solve the mystery of the WorkBoy 28 years later. The Game Boy universe has just been shaken, and we'll surely see extra information about the device very soon. Want to know another weird Game Boy accessory? Read all about the Pedisedate, a device designed to drug children.
