Rockefeller Plaza
Most of us grew up playing the Nintendo Game Boy, but it’s a lesser-known fact that Nintendo also created a small digital camera called the Game Boy Camera, a gadget so tiny that it once held the Guinness World Record for the smallest digital camera.
Released in September 1998, it was meant to be an official accessory to the Game Boy, and had a limited 4-color palette and a resolution of 256x224 pixels, diminutive by today’s standards.
Despite its unimpressive capabilities, photographer David Friedman saw fit to capture the street life of New York City with his Game Boy Camera back in 2000.
He saved the photographs on his computer but it wasn’t until recently that he finally got around to uploading them to his website Ironic Sans.
The greyscale images of landmarks and subway passengers have a charmingly nostalgic vibe, a refreshing change from the faux vintage and filter-saturated pictures on Instagram.
With their pixelated appearance and a stretch of the imagination, they almost look like scenes from a Nintendo game.
Though the Game Boy Camera has long been relegated to the role of technological relic, these snapshots of an earlier, simpler time are a reminder of its short-lived but fun quirks.
Check out some of Friedman’s photographs below and view the entire set here.
New York Public Library
A Giacometti statue at MOMA
A park bench
Toy taxis being sold on the streets
A subway passenger
[via PetaPixel, Gizmodo and The Creators Project, images via Ironic Sans]