This is your Game Boy after a tour of duty in Iraq

It's official: the Game Boy is the most durable machine ever conceived by human minds. Built to withstand a nuclear holocaust, the mighty grey wonder is made, not from plastic, but hardened plutonium reinforced with the cracked skulls of Roman barbarians. 

Anyone who's a member of the Game Boy generation like I am has a story to tell about the horrible treatment their little green-screened buddy endured. I, for one, distinctly remember diving into the Chesapeake Bay with my brand-new Game Boy in my swimming trunks. A friend of mine left his  on a bench near my middle school's playing ground for a week before it turned up in the Lost & Found. (Both our Game Boys survived their respective ordeals, by the way.)

But the undeniable winner of the "Takes A Lickin' & Keeps On Tickin'" award is this original Game Boy, a veteran of the Gulf War:

This disfigured, melted, charred Franken-Boy was the property of a soldier whose barracks were bombed in Iraq in 1991. Amazingly, the Game Boy survived functionally intact, even though its plastic body was partially exploded. It was shipped back to its owner after his tour of duty, and serves as a testament to the power and durability of Japanese industrial design. Now, its home is at the Nintendo World store in New York City, where it has been happily playing Tetris ever since.

Now, surviving a war zone is pretty remarkable, but personally, I won't be impressed until it survives an episode of Will It Blend?. But that's just me.