In the early nineties, Nintendo researched the great success of the Game Boy and thought: what if you could work on this thing too? Enter the WorkBoy, an accessory that turned Nintendo’s handset into a kind of early PDA. But despite much evidence of the existence of the WorkBoy, it disappeared before it was ever made in the hands of productivity-minded players. Now a prototype has been excavated that gives us a peek into all the address books that could have been.
Over the weekend, Liam Robertson, a historian of video games, posted a video tells of his dive into the history of the WorkBoy and his search for the lost prototype. He found that despite persistent rumors in the vintage gaming community that the WorkBoy was being sold in limited quantities, it never came on the market.
The WorkBoy’s compact peripherals, first introduced in January 1992, are linked to a standard Game Boy with green screens. Users could access 12 apps that include a diary, currency converter, and calendar.
According to Robertson, in May 1992 there was a prototype at the CES electronic showcase. After the fair, the device gained some press coverage with the writing of GameZone: ‘Nintendo’s success was evident through the performance at CES – it had virtually an entire pendant for itself, filled with its own products and those of developers. But few were offered that were radically different – few, except the WorkBoy. The Chicago Tribune was less friendly and called the quirky accessory ‘ridiculous’.
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In the course of his research, Robertson made contact with Eddie Gill, the founder of Source Research and Development, the company that created the WorkBoy for Nintendo. Gill was able to address a number of issues that prevented the WorkBoy from placing it on the market and said it was intended to sell 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 the vaults of Nintendo.
When the device is finally in Robertson’s hands, it does not work because it needs the accompanying cartridge to access the software. As luck would have it, there were a large amount of obscure Nintendo files this summer bearing the name of the Gigaleak, and Robertson was able to miraculously hide the WorkBoy software in the leak.
Although the productivity edge could have been impressive for its time, limited memory and no internet connection meant that its usefulness was quite limited. I must say, I like the phonebook designed to allow a user to stop the Game Boy speaker to the receiver of a landline phone to dial the intended number automatically.
Robertson has been on this WorkBoy quest since 2019, and he did a spectacular job of recovering the story of this lost device. Watch the full video below.