A History of Handheld Gaming

Sharing is caring!

Back in 2015, I spent a month or so researching the history of watches that play video games. The research led to a fascinating piece I called “Time Killers,” which ran on Polygon. Unfortunately, my research also sparked a bit of an obsession for me in handheld gaming systems.

It turns out there’s a bit of shared history for both handheld games and game watches that can be traced back to, of all things, calculators.

Back in 1976, Mattel created one of the first handheld game and launched both its own line of Mattel Electronics games and handheld games with the release of Auto Race.

Auto Race, or so the story goes, was the concept of product development engineer George J. Klose who was messing around with other uses for standard calculator hardware. The Auto Race was manufactured by Microelectronics Division of Rockwell International and was so successful that it led to the creation of a slew of other titles, including the much more famous Mattel Football.

Mattel Football was released in 1977, and a year later, the much less successful gaming watch phenomenon bumped and wheezed to life, eventually giving birth to something much broader in nature: The smartwatch and hybrid watch.

Handheld game consoles soon exploded in popularity, expanding in shape and form and — most importantly — shaping the face of home consoles as well.

As I started to read up on the history of these systems, I realized that I had quite a few of my own, and that led me to start collecting those I was missing and building out a display case of my collection.

I’ve annotated the picture of my collection below to offer some details of each system I currently own. Below that, you’ll find a list of what I’m still saving to collect.

1. 1975 Quiz Kid
2. 1976 Unisonic Casino 7 calculator
3. 1976 Mattel Auto Race
4. 1976 Texas Instruments Little Professor
5. 1977 Unisonic Jimmy the Greek 21 Pocket Blackjack Computer
6. 1977 Mattel Football
7. 1977 Invitica Electronic Mastermind
8. 1979 Tiger Rocket Pinball
9. 1979 Milton Bradley Microvision
10. 1980 Mattel Computer Chess
11. 1981 Sharp WN-100 Wondertopia
12. 1983 Casio Game & Radio Shuttle Bomber
13. 199x Queentex QGH-78 (Game Kid) 
14. 1981 Mattel Dungeons & Dragons Computer Fantasy Game
15. 1990 Game Plus
16. 1991 Sharp IQ-7200
17. 1992 Watara Supervision
18. 1993 Welback Holdings Mega Duck
19. 1994 MGA Game Wizard Star Wars
20. 1995 Sanyo Giocatraduci
21. 1998 Cybiko
22. 2001 Apple iPod
23. 2003 Sony PegTH Clie
24. 2003 Tapwave Zodiac
25. 2003 Timetop GameKing
26. 2003 P5-336 Game
27. 2003 Nokia N-Gage
28. 2004 Nokia N-Gage QD
29. 2004 Timetop GameKing 2
30. 2005 Capcom Megaman Advanced PET
31. 2005 Nikko digiBLAST
32. 2005 Tiger Telematics Gizmondo
33. 2005 Gamepark GP2X
34. 2006 PDP G Pocket
35. 2007 Apple iPhone
36. 2009 Dingoo A320
37. 2010 GamePark Caanoo
38. 2016 GPD Win
39. 2016 Arduboy
40. 2016 Arduboy Tetris
41. 2019 Arduboy Space Invaders
42. 2020 Blaze Entertainment Evercade
43. 2021 Anbernic RG351P
44. 2018 Asus ROG Phone
45. 2022 Panic Playdate
46. 2022 Analogue Pocket
47. 2022 Evercade EXP

41. 1989 Atari Lynx
42. 1991 Atari Lynx 2
43. 2016 Atari Flashback Portable

44. 1995 Sega Nomad
45. 1991 Sega Game Gear
46. 1998 Sega Dreamcast VMU
47. 2014 Sega Genesis Ultimate
48. 2020 Sega Game Gear Micro
49. 2010 Sega Camega

50. 1995 Bandai Paluseata (Variant of Design Master Denshi Mangajuku)
51. 1999 Bandai Wonderswan
52. 2000 Bandai WonderSwan Color
53. 1984 Bandai Digi Casse
54. 1982 Bandai Invaders of the Mummy’s Tomb

55. 2012 SNK NEO GEO X Gold
56. 1999 SNK NeoGeo Pocket Color
57. 1997 Tiger Game.com

58. 1978 Parker Bros. Merlin
59. 1984 Palmtex Portable Videogame System (Super Micro)
60. 1990 NEC TurboExpress

61. 1989 Nelsonic Super Mario Bros. Game Watch
62. 1984 Epoch Game Pocket Computer
63. 1980 Casio Game Watch
64. 2018 Pocketsprite

65. 1995 Nintendo Virtual Boy
66. 1982 Nintendo Donkey Kong Game And Watch
67. 2016 Nintendo Pokemone Go Plus
68. 1984 Electronika Igra na ekrane: Mickey Mouse

69. 1989 Nintendo Game Boy
70. 1996 Nintendo Game Boy Pocket
71. 1998 Nintendo Game Boy Color
72. 1998 Nintendo Game Boy Light
73. 2001 Nintendo Game Boy Advance
74. 2003 Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP
75. 1998 Nintendo Pocket Pikachu
76. 2009 Nintendo Pokewalker
77. 2001 Nintendo Pokémon Mini

78.. 2017 Nintendo 3DS XL
79. 2006 Nintendo DSi
80. 2014 Nintendo New 3DS XL
81. 2004 Nintendo DS
82. 2006 Nintendo DS Lite
83. 2011 Nintendo 3DS
84. 2005 Nintendo Game Boy Micro

85. 2017 Nintendo Switch
86. 2013 Nintendo 2DS
87. 2020 Nintendo Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.

88. 2011 Sony PlayStation Vita
89. 2011 Sony Xperia Play
90. 2009 Sony PSP Go
91. 2011 Sony PSP Street
92. 1999 Sony Pocketstation

93. 2004 Sony PlayStation Portable 1000 (Japan)
94. 2005 Sony PlayStation Portable 10001 (U.S.)
95. 2007 Sony PSP Slim and Lite

96. 1975 Tomy Pocket Game Baseball (physical pachinko-like game)
97. 2015 Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator 10 arcade
98. 1981 Entex Galaxian 2
99. 1981 Entex Pac Man 2
100. 1981 Tomy Pac Man
101. 2012 MyArcade DataEast
102. 2003 Palm Treo 600
103. Mattel 1999 Uno
104. 2021 Bandai Demon Slayer Tamagotchi
105. 2010 Nintendo Mini Classics Parachute
106. 1980 Tomy Tennis
107. 2019 BasicFun! Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego
108. 1981 Bambino Safari
109. 1977 Tomy Blip (Technically, electro-magnetic so doesn’t fit here)
110. 2016 Arduboy Tetris
111. 2019 Arduboy Space Invaders
112. 2016 Arduboy
113 2021 Go-Volmon handheld 900-in-1

---

Not Shown

1977 Unitrex Monte Carlo game watch
1978 Atari Touch Me
1981 Popeye Game & Watch
1981 Nelsonic Space Attacker
1981 ALBA Y761-5010
1982 Super Barcode Wars
???? Catchen Hartung
1991 Bit Corp. Gamate
1997 Tiger Electronics R-Zone XPG
2001 Game Park GP32
2001 Aquaplus P/ece
2002 LEGO Kek Powerizer
2002 Bandai Swancrystal
2005 Timetop GameKing 3
2013 Wii U Fit Meter
2013 GCW Zero
2017 Razer Phone
2021 Nintendo Switch OLED
2021 Thumby
2021 FunKey S
2022 G Cloud
2022 Valve Steam Deck
2023 Razer Edge
2023 ASUS ROG Ally
2023 McDonald’s Tetris McNugget handheld (not even kidding)
2023 Hyper Mega Tech’s Super Pocket Limited Edition Capcom Taito bundle

Still Want

While I’m quite happy with my current collection, there are still many important systems missing, including:

1982 GCE Arcade Time watch
198? Altair DBGB-061
1990 Hartung Game Master
1996 Koei PasoGo
1996 Philips In2It
2005 MoMA Eve
2007 XGP
2009 Planet Interactive MI2
2010 Pandora
2011 Jungle
2012 Blaze Entertainment GameGadget
2021 Smach Z

It’s worth noting that a lot of the systems that hit in the late 1970s and early 1980s were single-game handhelds. That means there’s a lot to collect if, for instance, I wanted to gather all of the Game & Watch, the Bandai games, or even the relatively small assortment of Mattel handhelds. I decided it’s best to collect a single iconic handheld from each, with an eye toward collecting the first from each eventually. Ball, I’ve got my eye on you! There are, of course, quite a few variations, which I’ve largely ignored for my collection.

I’ll work on updating this list as my collection grows.