This is taken off June 2005 issue of Game Informer. So again, all the credits here goes to Game Informer
Please thank Game Informer for all of this and not me.
Anyway... I also took my time to type all of this stuff up from the magazine. Please post what you think of it and all when you are finished so my typing didn't go to waste, haha.
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Thanks to the excitement generated by the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP, handheld gaming has become one of the most excitedly debated and fervently covered aspects of the video game industry. While these two systems have gamered huge amounts of media attention, portable game systems have historically been treated like an afterthought compared to their console brethren. But that doesn't mean that many companies haven't tried their hand at breaking into the world of handheld gaming. Until recently, there has been only one name in portable gaming: Game Boy. Nintendo's pocket system has dominated mobile gaming since it's U.S. release in 1989, and many have tried to take its place. While several were superior to the Game Boy in many ways, none achieved the same levels of success as Nintendo's portable juggernaut.
Preceeding the Game Boy by many years, the first handheld system was Milton Bradley's Microvision, released in 1979. Featuring a small LCD screen capable of rudimentary block graphics, the system's games were cartridges that added an overlay to the screen to add context, similar to the Vectrex home system that would launch two years later (both units were designed by the same man, Jay Smith). Despite pioneering handheld gaming, and had only a small selection of games. The system died a quiet death by 1982.
The next evolution in handheld gaming came from the individual who would go on to create the Game Boy - Gunpei Yokoi, the man behind of some of Nintendo's earliest video games. Yokoi created the Game & Watch series. a collection of small handhelds with a LCD screen. Each Game & Watch played a dedicated game, such as simple titles like Parachute and Fire Attack. But as the series continued the games became more complicated, and some (such as Donkey Kong and Mario Bros.) even had two screens and a surprisingly similar design to the Nintendo DS.
The Game & Watch titles laid the groundwork for Nintendo's later handheld success, and even its console design (the directional buttons on the Game & Watch units are considered a precursor to the d-pad first seen on the Nintendo Entertainment System). The original Game Boy launched in 1989, and the evolution of the system could fill up several pages on its own. But another portable system release that same year, and had a much different fate. The Atari Lynx was the world's first color portable gaming system, and was far more advanced than the Game Boy in nearly every way, but it also featured many drawbacks.
The Lynx was developed by the small game developer Epyx and was originally referred to as the 'Handy.' Atari bought the Handy in 1987 from the struggling company, and for some reason, held off on releasing it until 1989. Although Atari could have beat the Game Boy to the market, it instead launched around the same time for a much higher price (nearly $200). Although the Lynx featured both a 16-bit and 8-bit precessor, could be flipped to play right or left handed, and was designed with multiplayer support in mind, technical shortcomings hurt the Lynx. As a cost-saving device, the gray unit was cast in clear plastic and painted, as it was cheaper than using gray plastic. Paint had a tendency to rub off of the expensive unit.
A new version of the Lynx was released in 1991, featuring a more compact design, sleek black look, and a lower price. However, the unite aws still dogged by technical problems, such as an unimpressive speaker system and power plugs that would wiggle loose. By the time that Lynx II (the unofficial nickname for the second version) launched, the Sega Game Gear and TurboGrax-16 TurboExpress had both launched, and the handheld wars grew fierce, Atari shifted its marketing focus to the Jaguar home console, and the Lynx was officially dead by 1995.
Sega's entry in the handheld wars fared much better than the Lynx, but was till eventually slain by Nintendo's flagship handheld. The Sega Game Gear was, until the release of the Game Boy Color, the most popular color handheld in gaming history. Featuring the same processor as the Sega Master System, the Game Gear looked much better than the Game Boy and featured a decent roster of games. Unfortunately, the unit required 6 AA batteries, which would only power the unit for roughly six hours. The Game Boy, on the other hand, could be played for 35 hours on 4 AA batteries.
Sega offered several different chargers to keep the unit from eating through batteries so quickly, but these all added to the unit's already-impressive size or tethered the player to a power outlet. While the Game Gear sold well initially, the unit's shortcomings kept it from becoming a phenomenon like the Game Boy. By the mid-'90s, Sega has also released Sega 32X, Sega CD, and the Sega Saturn, and tge Game Gear got somewhat lost in the shuffle. The company had several products to spend advertising money on, and the consumer had several Sega products to choose from, which didn't help the Game Gear stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
The final color handheld released early in the 1990s was the TurboGrafz-16 TurboExpress. The TurboExpress was far and away the most powerful handheld on the market, and had a feature that none of it's competitors could boast. It played the same games as the TurboGrafx-16 home console. However, it had several strikes against it right off the bat. At $300 dollars, it was easily the most expensive handheld, and it didn't include a game like all the others. Third-party support was incredibly weak, and although it cuold play TurboGrafx-16 games, the console was a distant thrid behind Nintendo and Sega. Finally, the TurboExpress amounted to little more than a footnote in video game history.
The TurboExpress was the first protable to play the games as a console, but it was not the last. In 1995, Sega again tried to make inroads into to portable gaming market with the Sega Nomad, which was essentially a handlheld version of the Sega Genesis. It played all the same games, and could even be hooked up to a television so that one player could play on the unit and another on the TV (a Genesis controller could be plugged into the Nomad for two-player games). But by the time the Nomad was introduced, the Genesis (and thus it's library of games) was on the way out. The Nomad was incompatible with the Sega CD and the SEga 32X, and ate through batteries even faster than the Game Gear. Again, power plugs were available, but those from previous Sega consoles wouldn't work with the unit, meaning Nomad owners would have to buy seperate chargers. Considering that the unit originally retailed for $180, consumers were not in a hurry to go out and spend more money on the Nomad.
The Nomad ultimately failed to find an audience, and like all of the Game Boy's other challengers, it died a quick and quiet death. But that didn't stop the other companies from trying to break Nintendo's stranglehold on the portable gaming market. In 1997, Tiger Electronics (makers of of the popular Furby toy) released the Game.com, a black and white protable with a touch screen. The Game.com had some interesting features, such as two game slots, synthesized speech, and the ability to access text-only webpages via the Internet Cartridge peripheral. Tiger originally released the Game.com for $70, and unveiled a smaller version of the unit (with only one game slot) in 1998 for only $50. Despite ports of hit games like Resident Evil 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog, the Game.com faced stiff competition when Nintendo finally released a color cersion of the Game Boy in 1998. The Game.com's online abilities were simply no match for the newliy colorized Game Boy and its huge library of games.
The Game Boy saw its last serious challenger in 1999 when the Neo Geo Pocket Color released stateside. A black and white version of the unit was available in Japan the year before, but did not mae it to the U.S. The Neo Geo Pocket Color featured a great thumbstick and a nice screen, but the system's library of 32 games was no match for the Game Boy Color and its ultrapopular Pokemon titles. Today the system is a sought-after collectable, with the boxed copies of many games selling over $100 online.
Over the years since the Game Boy was launched, several portable gaming systems have tried and failed to usurp its position. Some of them were so unsuccessful that few gamers have even heard of them, such as the Supervision from Watara Industries. Designed as a low-cost alternative to the Game Boy, the Supervision cost only $50 and acme bundled with a game called Crystball. while over 60 games were evnetually released (and priced between $8/95 and $14.95), the system never gained much notice in the United States.
Other handhelds never seen managed to get a U.S. release, such as the Wonderswan from Bandai and the obscure GamePark GP32, which is testament to the power of the Game Boy line. in some form, the Game Boy has dominated the handheld gaming market since its launch. the recent launches of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP will certainly have a huge effect on its position, but the Game Boy will likely still hold strong. But now that handheld gaming is coming to the forefront, it is unlikely that other companies will refrain from attempting to unleash their own portables. Already lower-profile next-gen handhelds like the Gizmondo are priming to launch. Based on the history of handheld gaming systems, another round of brutal competition could be quite dramatic and interesting indeed.
Handheld ReleasesMicrovision [Milton Bradley] - Released 1979, priced at $100
Game Boy [Nintendo] - Released 1989, priced at $109
Lynx [Atari] - Released 1989, priced at $199
TurboGrafx TurboExpress [NEC] - Released 1990, priced at $300
Lynx II [Atari] - Released 1991, priced at $99
Game Gear [Sega] - Released 1991, priced at $150
Nomad [Sega] - Released 1995, priced at $180
Game Boy Pocket [Nintendo] - Released 1996, priced at $60
Game.com [Tiger Electronics] - Released 1997, priced at $70
Neo Geo Pocket [SNK] - Released 1998, priced at $68(Japan Only)
Game Boy Color [Nintendo] - Released 1998, priced at $80
Neo Geo Pocket Color [SNK] - Released 1999, priced at $90
Game Boy Advance [Nintendo] - Released 2001, priced at $90
Game Boy Advance SP [Nintendo] - Released 2003, priced at $100
Hope you learned something about the handhelds today, haha
Credits to Game Informer magazine issue 147, June 2005
Topic: A Brief History of Handheld Gaming (Read 2368 times)