History of Handheld Consoles

Mattel Electronics was well known for it's amazing collection and variety of Handheld games. They covered everything from sports to fantasy. The Mattel Missile Attack handheld was one of the earliest "controversial" handheld gaming devices on the market. Many companies had a problem with the name and at one point this game was renamed from Missile Attack to Space Alert.

This simple, yet complex device was very popular in the 70s and Mattel ended up releases a few variations of the unit. It features 2 modes, PRO-1 and PRO-2 and offers a total of 6 buttons for gameplay. The Mattel Football I unit even made a few Hollywood appearances in random movie scenes.

The Atari Touch Me handheld game is very similar to the still-today popular game, Simon. A game that tests memory and reflexes. This game is a bit more challenging than Simon purely based on the size of the device and buttons. It's a bit harder to "pound on" compared to the traditional full-size Simon game.

This retro electronic game device may not exactly be considered a "handheld" but it's close enough for this list, due to the fact that it's pretty small, portable, and battery operated. The Electronic Laser Battle Game has amazing sound effects and lightning, especially considering it was developed in the 1970s.

Entex Space Invaders was simply a handheld version of the famous arcade game, Space Invaders. This battery operated handheld retro video game replicated the arcade experience greatly. The atmosphere of the arcade may be gone, but the joys of playing Space Invaders in a distraction-free enivornment and with an affordable price tag, may have been a major selling point for many youths in the early 1980s.

Burgertime was an excellent Arcade game and a great classic console video game. Mattel turned this wonderful retro game into an amazing battery operated handheld game.

Not only is Tronica Dragon Fighter a great little handheld game, it also featured a clock and calculator.

An interesting Pac Man handheld game created due to the much success of Pac Man across multiple arcade, consoles, and other forms of media including comics and TV.

Portable Scrabble at it's best, a game for those who may not call themselves a "gamer".

Nintendo's Game Boy handheld was a groundbreaking system. Often refered to as a console in itself, the Game Boy was been one of the most successful units ever created. Games on the Gameboy actually felt like "console games" and Tetris was an extremely popular game that alone helped sell hundreds, if not thousands of units on it's own, due to it's widespread popularity which reached even "non-gamers".

The Atari Lynx was a bit less well-known but had a good library of games available to it. It featured quality sound and a full color screen. One thing that makes this unit very unique even to this day, is it's "FLIP" option. This option would flip the screen, you could then rotate the entire device around, making it perfect for both right-handed and left-handed users.

The TurboExpress was pretty much a portable version of the TurboGrafx-16 PC Engine. It hit the market at a whopping $249.99 upon release. It was the most advanced piece of portable hardware to hit the gaming industry at the time. It was able to play all of the TurboGrafx-16 games and provided a full color screen the same size as Nintendo Game Boy's screen.

The Sega Game Gear was a great competitor to the Game Boy. It featured a full color screen, and a large array of additional 'add-ons' - including a massive battery pack (because this thing sucked battery life to no end) and even a TV tuner ("bunny ears" as you may know them today). It featured a great collection of games of many of the Sega branded characters.

This handheld was created with the intent to compete with Nintendo's Game Boy console. It had a unique feature which allowed it to be used as both a portable unit, but also as a home console - you could hook it up to your TV. It functioned a lot like Nintendo's Super Game Boy, replacing texture with basic colors. This device didn't make it very far in the eyes of most gamers, however it did make a few appearances on hit TV shows such as Legends of the Hidden Temple.

The Sega Nomad was a brilliant system but had many minor flaws (battery and screen-decay). The Noman plays original Sega Genesis games, essentially this device is a portable Sega Genesis with odd dimensions, but more compact than a Sega Game Gear.

The Game Boy Pocket was a smaller version of the original Game Boy. It was thinner and shorter, and came in a variety of colors. It played the same games as the original Game Boy, and seemed to get better battery life.

The GAME.com system was an interesting one. Not many of these made it out there, but for those lucky enough to have one of these, you were indeed thrilled at many of the additional features this possed. It had a calender, organizer, and contact manager. Black & White screen, however it also had the ability to connect to the World Wide Web, which was groundbreaking in itself (and something that wasn't seen again in the handheld World for years to come).

The Neo Geo Pocket was a first attempt at a handheld gaming device by SNK. The unit bombed, however SNK's next model was a big success, the Neo Geo Pocket Color. The system wasn't popular Worldwide, but had some big hit games released for it.

The WonderSwan was released by Bandai with intent to compete with the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Nintendo Game Boy Color. It didn't take long for them to realize they had to rethink their model, and thus the WonderSwan Color was born.

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was the third "handheld console" of the Game Boy series (Game Boy Color was technically #2). The games are a bit smaller but are a giant step forward for portable gaming. Many of the GBA games released mimic or even topple both NES and SNES games. This full color, high quality sound, crisp LCD screen provides fantastic gameplay. The Game Boy Advance was a great system, and Nintendo eventually made a Game Boy Advance SP - a folding version of the handheld device with a bright LCD screen allowing you to enjoy your favorite games at all light levels. Even better, Nintendo made a "Game Boy Micro" - which played the same games, had a bright screen, and was smaller in every way than an original Nintendo NES controller.

The SwanCrystal was Bandai's next attempt at a handheld video gaming device. It offered a crisper screen with sharper contrast and offered state of the art object tracking (aka less "ghosting"). It was also powered by a single AA battery and allowed users to import their personal data such as their name, BOD, gender and blood type. Aside from having it's own new catalog of games, it was also backwards compatable with the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color.

The N-Gage was an interesting handheld which fell short of it's hype. Nokia had planned to steal customers from Nintendo with this unit. The N-Gage failed to please gamers due to it's complicated controller setup. This was "a phone first, a gaming system second" - thus it let to most gamers completely overlooking it as a reliable source of entertainment.

The Nintendo DS, "Dual Screen" was a revolutionary addition to the handheld market. It offered full backwards compatabilty with the Gameboy Advance games, and offered a large array of new games with dominating graphics compared to any handheld on the market. It could easily replicate Super Nintendo games as well as some Nintendo 64 games. The DS became even more popular as R4 and AceKards arrived to the scene.

Sony had to get a piece of the handheld market. The PSP offered high quality graphics that matched, and on some levels, surpassed the Nintendo DS. Sony also has a great selection of titles for this unit, including Grand Theft Auto. The PSP has online gaming features to keep you connected where WiFi is available. The PSP also comes natively ready to play mini-DVD movies which can be found at many stores.

Just like the Nintendo DS, except smaller and available in more colors. The Game Boy Advance compatibility is still present, but the games stick out slightly.

The GP2X is a handheld made to compete with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS handhelds. It's success was largely based on the fact that this handheld makes an excellent "on the go" complete emulator for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and even some arcade classics. The price comes affordable, especially with all the other features it included (music and video player for example).

The Nintendo DS continues! The DSi offers built in WiFi, a Webcam, and pre-installed software (including a web browser and DSiWare shop).

Nintendo's 4th version of the DS unit. The DSiXL is exactly that, a larger edition of the DSi due to the fact that many users were older and also using it as a house-hold console, not just "on the go".

The Pandora handheld game console was designed with the intent to use open source software as it's primary basis. Target audience includes homebrew communities. Pandora includes features never seen before on a handheld device and developed OpenPandora, formerly known from GP32 and GP2X. The device is primary made for gaming but as netbook like properties to it.

The Nintendo 3DS is coming out in 2011 and promises some unique, never before seen aspects, including 3D without needing 3D glasses. You can expect to see many Augmented reality games available for the Nintendo 3DS. 3D movies should be able to take flight once this unique handheld gaming console is released and in the market for awhile. All I can say is, these are going to sell like hot cakes, better pre-order yours ASAP!