This was such a dark time for portables. I mean, we're still five years away from Pokemon showing up. There is just nothing going on here.

PAGE 10: "This box is about to burst wide open! Because Sonic the Hedgehog is inside on Game Gear!" Better make sure to mention the GG's most important accessory, the goddamned AC adapter.

I'm not sure whose artwork is creepier... Early Big-Head Sonic or Early Fat-Body Yoshi.

PAGE 11: The Game Boy was the only system I owned in 1993, so this was the only page that mattered to me. This pink page.

Some great math at work here. The Game Boy is $50 and Tetris by itself is $20. Yet if you buy the Game Boy + Tetris bundle, it's $80. Curse you, Nintendo!

EB refers to the d-pad as the "cross key joystick." How cute.

I'm sure we all owned the Handy Boy, so let's not even bother to bust on it. Except that it was made by a company called "STD," according to this.

I've never seen a screenshot of Top Rank Tennis, but you want to bet that the box art is in no way indicative of the anime-styled visuals that are likely on the cart?

PAGE 12: Wow, so what in the hell is that. Had it not been for Nintendo's Virtual Console, I would have completely forgotten that the TurboGrafx 16 even existed. As it was, I only remembered it from a plethora of ads in comic books of the day.

So this super advanced TurboGrafx is a complete surprise. I'd suspect that this just created brand confusion - TurboDuo games vs. TG-16 games - but nobody bought these things anyway. At $300, it's easily the most expensive console around in '93, which I'm sure had EVERYTHING to do with its failure.

Funny story: the TG-16 only had one controller port. If you wanted multiplayer games, you had to buy a multi-tap for it. AWESOME.

But ho, what's this? I think we have a Love Connection...