Reflective LCDs would have been equally blurry, in full color, and still tolerated optional tennis-ball-green frontlights for playing under the covers.

The real surprise came a decade later when everybody except Nintendo missed that active TFTs made color a decent option.

Oh god, Ni-Cd. Six hours of charging for fifteen minutes of use.

Color wasn’t to blame. It was the cold-cathode backlight.

From 1990 to 2000, AA capacity in watt-hours basically doubled. Which did mean anything you had could have modern batteries, since you’d just… buy new batteries.

This is mostly how the DMG Game Boy needed 4 AAs and the Game Boy Pocket got away with 2 AAAs.