I never had a Gameboy or Gameboy Color growing up, but I’ve recently acquired one, used of course. When looking around for one they all seem to have scuffs/scratches to the screen. I remember when I was a kid some of my classmates would shove their GBC’s in their pocket during recess and then process to fall off jungle gyms and run around, fall, all other crap we did as kids, stuff that could not have been good for the screens. But we were kids and the thing still worked, so it was okay. Were the screens always this scratched/scuffed and as kids we just didn’t care? Just something I was wondering that triggered some playground memories.
Pics of mine and carrying case to try and keep it safe:
My GB Pocket & Color got so bad I removed the outer lens and ran them bare. As I recall yes everyone’s was quite bad. Getting all original systems without this kind of mess is actually pretty hard – I ended up finding a Midnight Blue (clear purple) GBC with a screen protector applied to work around it, and my more recent Daiei Hawks GBC was somehow near mint.
There is plastic cream that you can rub scratches out with. It’s a very mild abbrasive, and I’ve used it to remove scratches from old digital watches and other things.
There was also a scratch on my 21" EDTV and I used a magic sponge (another mild abrasive) to remove that. The “anti-scratch coating” on displays stops minor cratches completely and the magic sponge smooths the edges of the deep scratch. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but they both worked for me!
Even my NOS NGPC that I got about 10 years ago got small hairline scratches despite me babying it as an adult collector. Those plastic screens get scratches if you just look at them weird.
I think I used a soft microfiber cloth on it to remove dust one too many times.
I always babied by devices and most stayed perfect.
My original Game Boy got a light scratch I was paranoid about. One day at a game store I saw replacement screen lenses and I almost cried that I could have it back to perfect again haha.
In the GBC days, my mother obviously knew I’d make a mess of it, so put a laminated cover on top of the screen because she knew what would happen otherwise.
Was lucky enough to have a case for my GBA, while other handhelds like GBA SP was clamshell. When the PSP released in Europe, the only option was the Value Pack which also came with a slip case.
It’s Game Boy Micro whose faceplates seem to scratch from just being stared at. Even though Nintendo bundled it with a nice stringbag, they’ll still pick up microabrasions which would show in direct sunlight. I remember pulling off the faceplate as a kid, when playing Boktai 2 outside, since the transflective screen was actually pretty good in direct sunlight!
