Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive
electronic game
An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...
s, often miniaturized versions of
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose screen made up of a grid of small
pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...
s, they usually have custom displays designed to play one game. This simplicity means they can be made as small as a
smartwatch
A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides management and telemetry, such as long-term biomonitoring. While ea ...
, and sometimes are. The visual output of these games can range from a few small light bulbs or
LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
lights to calculator-like alphanumerical screens; later these were mostly displaced by
liquid crystal
Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter whose properties are between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For example, a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. T ...
and
vacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is a display device once commonly used on consumer electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens.
A VFD operates on the principle of cathodoluminescence, roughly ...
screens with detailed images and in the case of VFD games, color. Handhelds' popularity was at its peak from the late 1970s into the early 1990s before declining. They are the precursors to the
handheld game console
A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the cons ...
.
History
Early handheld games used simple mechanisms to interact with players, often limited to illuminated buttons and sound effects. Notable early handheld games included
Mattel Auto Race
''Mattel Electronics Auto Race'' is the first in the line of many Mattel Electronics games, and it is credited with being the first handheld game that was entirely digital, with only solid-state electronics, having no moving mechanisms except ...
(1976), and
Mattel Electronic Football
Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...
(1977), which featured very simple red-
LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
displays; gameplay involved the player pressing buttons to move his car or quarterback icon (represented by a bright dot) to avoid obstacles (represented by less bright dots). In 1978 the
Milton Bradley Company
Milton Bradley Company or simply Milton Bradley (MB) was an American board game manufacturer established by Milton Bradley in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1860. In 1920, it absorbed the game production of McLoughlin Brothers, formerly the ...
entered the handheld market with
Simon
Simon may refer to:
People
* Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon
* Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon
* Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...
, a simple color-and-sound-matching game. Simon had no dedicated display, but featured four colored, lighted buttons; the original version was large enough to be used as a tabletop game or a handheld; later versions became increasingly smaller. The same year, Parker Brothers also released
Merlin, a more sophisticated handheld which could play six different games using an array of 11 buttons with integrated LEDs. Despite their relative simplicity, each of these early games was highly successful.
The initial success of Mattel and Parker Brothers' entries spawned a wave of similar handheld devices which were released through the early 1980s. Notable among these were a series of popular 2-player "head-to-head" games from
Coleco
Coleco Industries, Inc. was an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as The Connecticut Leather Company. It was a successful toy company in the 1980s, mass-producing versions of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game conso ...
. Other games were miniaturized versions of popular arcade video games.
In 1979,
Gunpei Yokoi
, sometimes transliterated Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese video game designer. He was a long-time Nintendo employee, best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the cross-shaped Control Pad, the original designer of the ...
, traveling on a
bullet train
Bullet train may refer to:
Rail
* Shinkansen high-speed trains of Japan, nicknamed for their appearance and speed
* Other high-speed trains of a similar appearance to Japanese trains
* An ongoing project to build high-speed rail in India.
Rail to ...
, saw a bored businessman playing with an
LCD calculator
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...
by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Starting in 1980,
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
began to release a series of electronic games designed by Yokoi called the
Game & Watch
The Game & Watch brand ( ''Gēmu & Uotchi''; called ''Tricotronic'' in West Germany and Austria, abbreviated as ''G&W'') is a series of handheld electronic games developed, manufactured, released, and marketed by Nintendo from 1980 in video gam ...
games.
Taking advantage of the technology used in the credit-card-sized calculators that had appeared on the market, Yokoi designed the series of LCD-based games to include a digital time display in the corner of the screen.
For later, more complicated Game & Watch games, Yokoi invented a cross shaped directional pad or "D-pad" for control of on-screen characters.
Yokoi also included his directional pad on the
Famicom
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit Third generation of video game consoles, third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redes ...
game console's controllers, and the cross-shaped thumb controller soon became standard on game console controllers and ubiquitous across the video game industry as a replacement for the joystick.
During the 1980s,
LCDs became inexpensive and largely replaced LED displays in handheld games. The use of custom images in LCD and VFD games allows them to have greater detail and avoid the blocky, pixellated look of console screens, but not without drawbacks. All graphics are fixed in place, so every possible location and state of game objects has to be preset (and are usually visible when resetting a game), with no overlap. Illusion of movement is created by sequentially flashing objects between their possible states. Backgrounds for these games are static drawings, layered behind the "moving" graphics which are transparent when not in use. Partly due to these limitations, the gameplay of early LCD games was often even more crude than for their LED antecedents.
Some of the more well-known handheld games of the LCD era are the
Game & Watch
The Game & Watch brand ( ''Gēmu & Uotchi''; called ''Tricotronic'' in West Germany and Austria, abbreviated as ''G&W'') is a series of handheld electronic games developed, manufactured, released, and marketed by Nintendo from 1980 in video gam ...
series by Nintendo and the games by
Tiger Electronics
Tiger Electronics Ltd. (also known as Tiger and Tiger Toys) was an independent American toy manufacturer best known for its handheld LCD games, the Furby, the Talkboy, Giga Pets, the 2-XL robot, and audio games such as ''Brain Warp'' and th ...
, and many titles from other companies were also popular, especially conversions of
arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
s. New games are still being made, but most are based on relatively simple
card Card or The Card may refer to:
* Various types of plastic cards:
**By type
***Magnetic stripe card
*** Chip card
*** Digital card
**By function
***Payment card
****Credit card
**** Debit card
****EC-card
****Identity card
****European Health Insur ...
and
board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a comp ...
s.
Bandai LCD Solarpower
![Bandai LCD Solarpower](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Bandai_LCD_Solarpower.jpg)
In 1982, the
Bandai LCD Solarpower series were the first
solar-powered
Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic ef ...
gaming devices. Some of its games, such as the
horror-themed game ''Terror House'', featured two
LCD panel
A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but i ...
s, one stacked on the other, for an early
3D effect. In 1983,
Takara Tomy
is a Japanese entertainment company that makes children's toys and merchandise. It was created from a merger on March 1st 2006 of two companies: Tomy (founded in 1924 as Tomiyama, changing the name to Tomy in 1963) and long-time rival Tak ...
's
Tomytronic 3D series simulated
3D by having two
LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
panels that were lit by external light through a window on top of the device, making it the first dedicated home video 3D hardware.
The ''LCD Solarpower'' series are handheld electronic games powered by
solar energy
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture. It is an essenti ...
made by
Bandai
is a Japanese multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California and Richmond ...
in 1982. The games in the Double Panel series feature two LCD panels
two LCD panels
/ref> stacked on top of each other. This allows these games to progress in 2 stages for more variation in game play.
Games
It comprises the following games:
First series:
:, ref. 16265 and 16813 for the re-release
:, ref. 16264
: / (Sub Patrol in UK), ref. 16280
:, ref. 16282
:, ref. 16281
:, ref. 16288, released in Japan only
Second series (Double Panel):
:, ref. 16815
:, ref. 16814
:, ref. 16817
:, ref. 16818
Other handheld games were built as flipcases and had two or even three LCDs with different foreground and background scenes, offering some variety in the gameplay.
Handhelds today
Despite the increasing sophistication of handheld consoles such as the Nintendo Switch
The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...
, dedicated handhelds continue to find a niche. Among technophilic gamer subcultures like Akiba-kei
or is a Japanese slang term for Akihabara style. Akihabara is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo where many otaku, or obsessive anime, manga, idol, and video game fans gather.
Definition
''Akiba-kei'' is a Japanese slang term meaning "Akihabara ...
, unique control schemes like that of the 2008 Tuttuki Bako have been proven salable due to novelty, however dedicated handhelds such as this are uncommon. Adult fads such as blackjack
Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...
, poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
, and Sudoku
Sudoku (; ja, 数独, sūdoku, digit-single; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row ...
also spawn dozens of original and knockoff handheld games.
The Chinese/Russian Brick Game, popular in the early 1990s, include games using a 10 × 20 block grid as a crude, low resolution dot matrix
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is al ...
screen. Such devices often have many variations of Tetris
''Tetris'' (russian: link=no, Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appro ...
and sometimes even other kinds of games like racing
In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goa ...
, Breakout or even shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs
) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...
, such as those resembling ''Galaga
is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco. In North America, it was released by Midway Manufacturing. It is the sequel to '' Galaxian'' (1979), Namco's first major video game hit in arcades. Controlling a star ...
'' or ''Battle City
is a multi-directional shooter video game for the Family Computer produced and published in 1985 by Namco. It is a successor to Namco's 1980 '' Tank Battalion'', and would be succeeded itself by the 1991 ''Tank Force''.
An arcade version for the ...
'', where one block projects blocks at the "enemy" blocks. The most advanced of these designs usually have 26 distinct games sorted in alphabetical letters and feature multi-channel sound, voice synthesis or digital sounds samples, and internal CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...
memory which can save the current game progress and high scores when the system is turned off. Many of these handhelds with a dozen such games are marketed as having hundreds or even thousands of games (e.g. "9999 in 1"), though the vast majority are just different speed and difficulty settings. The most basic can now be sold as low as $1
At the lowest end of handheld game sophistication, there is also the "avoid/catch the falling objects" game. These games are controlled with 2 movement buttons, and sport a screen with a column of player positions, and rows of projectiles to animate towards the player. The player and projectiles could be any picture, from tanks dodging missiles to a dog catching sausages.
See also
* Calculator gaming
* Dedicated console
A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges, discs, downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consol ...
* Handheld game console
A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the cons ...
* Mobile game
A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...
References
External links
Electronic Handheld Game Museum
- the largest handheld museum on the web
Handheld Empire
- collectors site cataloguing 70s' 80s' handheld games
Handheld History
- Collection of 74 emulations of electronic handheld games
{{Handheld game consoles
Prequels
Video game prequels