Image credit – Nintendo Life
What companies put up for sale can sometimes be very different from what they had initially imagined. If you were to read the history on computers and smartphones, you’ll know that no company or individual had set out to design a product that resembles the product that is actually being sold.
What happens is that they have ideas that evolve over time and refined to become the product we know and use today. This is why it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn that at one point in time, Nintendo had designed a successor to the Game Boy handheld console that apparently packed the power of the N64 console under its hood.
This report comes from German website Nintendo Online (via Nintendo Life) who claims that the device was given the codename Project Atlantis. Development reportedly begun in 1995 and it was expected to be released in 1996. It was rumored to be a 32-bit system (which was a big deal back then) and could play 3D games similar to what the N64 could handle.
However ultimately Nintendo decided that the general performance, size, and stamina of the device was not good enough to warrant making it into final production, and hence the project was scrapped. Ultimately what we got was the Game Boy Color which we supposed eventually paved the way for other Nintendo handhelds like the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Micro, and eventually the Nintendo DS lineup. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but we suppose all things do happen for a reason.