Its best-selling game is Pokémon Gold and Silver, which shipped 23 million units worldwide. The Game Boy and the Game Boy Color combined have sold 118.69 million units worldwide making them the fourth- best-selling system of all time. The GBC is part of the fifth generation of video game consoles. The American English spelling of the system's name, Game Boy Color, remains consistent throughout the world.

As with the original Game Boy, it has a custom 8-bit processor made by Sharp that is considered a hybrid between the Intel 8080 and the Zilog Z80. It is slightly thicker and taller and features a slightly smaller screen than Game Boy Pocket, its immediate predecessor. The handheld features a color screen rather than monochrome, but it is not backlit. Critics like IGN consider it more akin to a hardware revision than a next generation product. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of its product line. The Game Boy Color (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on Octo and to international markets that November. Pokémon Gold and Silver, approximately 23 million units