Nintendo has got a very busy year ahead of it. Alongside a continued push to sell more Switch consoles and 3DS handhelds, the Japanese company is trying to keep up with demand for the SNES Classic. Then, next summer the NES Classic is set to be re-released putting renewed pressure on Nintendo's production lines. But what comes after that?
As AnimeNewsNetwork reports, a trademark filing by Nintendo back on September 15 suggests that after the NES Classic we'll be getting a Game Boy Classic.
The trademark in question was discovered by the Twitter account @trademark_bot. It describes a "program for home video game machine" and includes an image of the first Game Boy originally released way back in 1989. Why file this trademark now if not to prepare for a new system?
If this is the first sign of a Game Boy Classic, then we shouldn't expect it to appear until 2019. With the NES Classic re-release happening in Summer 2018 there is really no reason for Nintendo to add another retro system into the mix next year.
As with the other Classic consoles, we should also expect this Game Boy to be smaller than the original and to include between 20-30 games. There were 1,049 games released for the handheld, so Nintendo shouldn't have any trouble choosing a couple of dozen.
I think we can safely assume all six launch titles for the system will be included. They are Alleyway, Baseball, Super Mario Land, Tennis, Tetris, and (in Japan) Yakuman. We also can't forget the first Pokemon games, Dr. Mario, Kirby's Dream land, Link's Awakening, Donkey Kong, Golf, and Metroid.