The date is July 1989, and the Game Boy console finally gets its first-ever third party title. Kind of. Regardless of its parentage, though, we finally have a Game Boy game not published by Nintendo -- and just in time for the system's U.S. launch in August, too.

Well, it's Tetris. The big one. Even bigger than Super Mario Land, I'm afraid. You know it, you love it. It's a monster.

The Game Boy's first post-launch release is... oh. It's a new version of NES Tennis, which (like NES Baseball) was released five years before the Game Boy version. In the '80s, five years was basically an eternity in game time.

But hark! This is no mere port. Tennis for Game Boy represents a pretty substantial improvement over the source material. It's still annoyingly tough, though.

The last of Nintendo's four Japanese launch titles for Game Boy, this is the one you've probably never played, because (1) it was never released outside Japan and (2) it focuses on a pastime specific to Japan. Yes, it's Yakuman! I have no idea how to play this game, but this means that as I work my way through Game Boy's mahjong library, you can enjoy me slowly developing some degree of competence in real-time. So please forgive the clumsiness of this episode.

Revisit the heavy hitter of the Game Boy's Japanese launch lineup: Super Mario Land. Unlike its day-one peers, Mario's first Game Boy adventure felt like a legit game rather than a primitive throwback. Look at the good, the bad, and why the good outweighs the bad for this portable classic.

A look at the second of Nintendo's four launch day releases for the Japanese debut of Game Boy: Baseball. It's not a particularly great game, but given the utter lack of contemporary competition all it really needed to do to succeed was exist. And it did. It totally existed.

Travel back to the Game Boy's Japanese launch in 1989 with this retrospective on one of its first four games: The simple Breakout clone, Alleyway. The first video retrospective (of, one hopes, many to come) from gameboyworld.com.

(This being the first of these, please pardon the rough edges!)