Gaming History: Handhelds

These days we're spoilt for choice when it comes to handheld consoles; the 3DS and Playstation Vita offer two different approaches to dedicated console based handheld gaming while gaming on mobile devices and tablets is also becoming more widespread with apps, games and ports offered from a wide variety of sources. Looking back though, it's been an interesting ride to get to where we are today, with many handheld consoles attempting to captivate consumers and offer a unique gaming experience.

Though there were some devices which could technically offer a handheld or portable gaming experience before 1979, the first true handheld gaming console was the Milton Bradley Microvision, offering interchangeable game cartridges, 16 bytes of RAM, and a resolution of 16x16. 12 games were released for the Microvision, each of which came with its own facia for the unit, displaying the button functions and title of the game. Not a lot of these are around and in working condition today due to construction faults and 35 years of wear and tear.

(Milton Bradley Microvision - 1979)

Inspired by a businessman on a train who was playing with an LCD calculator, Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi came up with the idea of Game & Watch handhelds. Although these only played one game at a time, they were an important step towards the Game Boy, and 60 in total were released, beginning in 1980. The devices themselves consisted of an LCD screen, various buttons (most had a d-pad after 1982's Donkey Kong) and a watch/alarm function. The Game & Watch series proved to be incredibly popular in Japan.

In 1982 the first solar powered gaming device was released in the form of the Bandai LCD Solarpower. With only 10 games released it wasn't hugely sucessful, however it did feature cartridges with 2 stacked LCD panels atop one another for a 3D effect later in its lifespan. The first dedicated 3D home video hardware system was released a year later as the Tomytronic. This used a similar design to achieve its 3D effect, lighting the 2 LCD panels from a window on top of the device. Many later handhelds would dabble in 3D technology with varying degrees of success.

(Zelda Game & Watch - 1989)

Perhaps the best known handheld gaming system of all time, the Nintendo Game Boy was released in April 1989 in Japan, bundled with Tetris. Although it only featured 4 shades of grey for its colour palette and needed 4 AA batteries to run, the device achieved huge success due to its strong lineup of games which included Super Mario Land and Pokemon Red/Blue as well as various redesigns and colour choices for consumers.

The Game Boy's main competitors were the Atari Lynx, (released just one month later featuring a colour LCD screen, and the ability to link up to 18 units via a network system for some games), and the Sega Game Gear (released over a year later than the Game Boy and featuring hardware similar to that of the Master System). Neither of these systems saw anywhere near the level of the success of the Game Boy, possibly due to their far larger size, poor battery life and weaker game libraries. There was also a notable 4th place finisher in the 4th generation handheld race; the NEC TurboExpress, which was essentially a handheld TurboGrafx16. Its high price point, hardware issues with capacitors and screen hindered sales to just 1.5 million in total.

(Atari Lynx - 1989)

In 1995 Sega released the Nomad in North America. The console would accept existing Genesis cartridges and function as a handheld version of the home console. Unfortunately there was no support for many of the Genesis peripherals, the system was poorly marketed and only released in North America. Due to this, it sold poorly and with the release of the Pokemon games in the same year, it failed to gain much attention from consumers.

The next entry in the fifth generation of handheld console was the Tiger game.com in 1997. Featuring PDA style features and targeted at an audience of older gamers, it failed to excite consumers and was overshadowed by the release of the Game Boy Colour in 1998 which could display up to 56 colours simultaneously from its palette of 32,768, surpassing the capabilities of the Atari Lynx and other earlier colour consoles. In addition to this it was fully backwards compatible with the original Game Boy library, giving gamers a huge choice of games to play, even on launch.

(Neo Geo Pocket Colour - 1999)

Released in 1999, the Neo Geo Pocket Colour was the successor to the Japan only Neo Geo Pocket. The system on its way to becoming the biggest challenger to a Nintendo handheld in the US when it was dropped from the market after a company takeover. In 2000 the Wonderswan Colour was released in Japan, and had moderate success due to a deal between Bandai and Square to port and update Final Fantasy games for the console, though this success was shortlived.

2001 saw the release of the Game Boy Advance which added a larger screen, shoulder buttons and more power to the already successful design of the Game Boy Colour. With backwards compatibility for previous Game Boy and Game Boy Colour games as well as connectivity between the GBA and Gamecube, and the GBA SP redesign in 2003, the consoles sold a combined total of 80 million units worldwide, on top of the 118 million units sold by the original Game Boy and Game Boy Colour.

(Game Boy Advance SP - 2003)

Several competitors to the Game Boy Advance were launched between 2001 and 2004, including the Nokia N-Gage which aimed to combine the functionality of a handheld games console with a mobile telephone (somewhat unsuccessfully) and the Tapwave Zodiac, which like the game.com attempted to integrate PDA-type features, as well as photo and music storage but was ultimately unsuccessful as the company declared bankruptcy in 2005.

With Nintendo dominating the market arguably since 1989 and before, all eyes were on what would replace the Game Boy Advance, and just 3 years after its release, the Nintendo DS was introduced, featuring dual screens, one of which was a touchscreen. With many game design possibilities, games such as Nintendogs, Rhythm Heaven and backwards compatibility for Gameboy Advance titles, the system stands as the 2nd best selling console ever with almost 154 million sales, just 1 million behind the PS2.

(Sony PSP - 2005)

The first and only (so far) legitimate challenger to a Nintendo handheld console was released in 2005, in the form of the Sony PSP. Giving gamers higher graphical performance, and choosing to utilise optical media in the form of UMDs over cartridges, the system's games had more to offer in terms of content than the Nintendo DS. It worked far more like a home console than anything released before it, and could even play movies stored on UMDs. With 34.4% of the market share against the Nintendo DS, and around 80 million PSPs sold, the system was unlucky not to have been even more successful.

Although a fair amount of multi functional devices were released between 2005 and 2011, the huge success of both the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP systems lead to long term support for both, including many redesigns such as the DS Lite, DSi, PSP-2/3000 and PSP Go. The two consoles lead the handheld market in sales by a long way, and prevented any other company from gaining a foothold.

(Nintendo 3DS XL - 2012)

Continuing Nintendo's handheld market dominance, the 3DS is their current console, with an XL version available as well as the 2DS which has most of the functionality, save for the 3D feature. Despite a tepid initial reaction to the console, and many critics prematurely dubbing it a failure, it holds an approximate market share of 80% and has had many high selling games such as Pokemon X and Y. As previously mentioned this wasn't the first handheld foray into 3D gaming, but the autostereoscopic 3D is by far the best system for it in my view.

The PS Vita is the only other real notable dedicated handheld gaming device, and it's aimed more at gamers who want near-console graphics and gaming experience from their handheld play. The console went back to using cartridge style cards from optical media, though these can hold around 3 Gb which is higher than the 1.8Gb maximum for a dual layer UMD. Interestingly the Vita does feature a touchscreen, perhaps following Nintendo's lead but it seems to be less critical to gameplay for most titles.

(Handheld gaming on an Android device)

More recently handheld gaming seems to be taking place on smartphones and tablets, perhaps a natural progression given their touchscreen capabilities and the availability of ROMs online. It seems that the products which are most useful to consumers in this market are always the ones which will prevail. It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will be able to continue to dominate the handheld market with this new wave of handheld gaming across many other devices, but looking back over the history of portable gaming there's not been many points where they haven't been at the top.