Jimmy the Greek and Handheld Gaming

March 7, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

Jimmy George Snyder Sr., better known as Jimmy the Greek, is not the sort of person you might connect with the history of handheld video games, but it turns out he did have a brush with my favorite form of gaming.

Jimmy the Greek was a famed sports commentator and Vegas bookmaker in the late ’70s and ’80s. His celebrity in gambling was so well known that in 1977, Unisonic rebranded one of their blackjack calculators the “Jimmy the Green” Unisonic 21. It was, by my research, the four gaming handheld — or thereabouts — ever released on the market. More importantly, it was released by the company that, it turns out, may have actually released for the first gaming handheld ever made.

I’ve written about Mattel’s entry into the gaming market, one best epitomized by Mattel Football, but which kicked off with the 1976 release of Auto Race. It was, essentially, a very basic racing game built off of the guts of a calculator and is widely believed to be the first gaming handheld ever made.

But it turns out, that Unisonic released its own gaming handheld in 1976: The Casino 7. It’s unclear which month the Casino 7 and the Auto Race hit, which means either or both could be the first-ever gaming handheld.

Like a lot of consumer electronics companies of the ’70s, the Unisonic Products Corporation dabbled a bit in the video game market as gaming became more popular in the United States.

The company released its own version of Pong, using the same integrated circuit by General Instruments that most of these systems used. Their’s was called the Sportsman, included four games, and hit in 1976. That was followed by four more Pong and light gun consoles that year, three more in 1977 and a final two in 1978. Of course, by then, the Atari Video Computer System launched, making nearly all other systems in the U.S. seem obsolete by comparison.

So in the midst of pumping out these Pong and light gun consoles, the company decided to release a few handheld systems.

The first was the Casino 7 in 1976, which simply played blackjack as a secondary feature on a vacuum fluorescent display calculator. The company also released its own version of a math game calculator that year, similar to the Little Professor. The Mickey Mouse Space Quiz was a bit of a monstrosity that was shaped like a UFO, complete with a Mickey Mouse in a little capsule on top. A number pad let players enter their formulas and answers and red and green LEDs lit up to show if you were right or wrong.

Those were followed by the Unisonic 21 and Unisonic 21 Jimmy the Greek calculators, which both hit in 1977. And that seemed to wrap up Unisonic’s interest in handheld gaming. Perhaps, Atari’s domination of the gaming market in 1978 scared the company away from making game systems.

The Unisonic 21 is a classic ’70s calculator with a sturdy body, orange buttons, and that wonderful VFD display. It’s an oddity with a single game built into it, but it’s also a joy to play around with.