You can see the Game Boy’s roots in the Game & Watch series on clear display in Nintendo’s first generation of releases for the system, and nowhere more than Alleyway. A dated take on the block-breaking genre even at the time of its 1989 debut – the far more sophisticated Arkanoid predates it by a good three years – Alleyway feels like a midpoint between Game & Watch and “real” portable video games. This isn’t to say it’s a poor game or badly made; merely unambitious.
