handheld electronic game not to be confused with handheld video game game watch redirects here for the nelsonic industries product line see nelsonic game watch coleco electronic quarterback 1978 handheld electronic games are very small portable devices for playing interactive electronic games often miniaturized versions of video games the controls display and speakers are all part of a single unit rather than a generalpurpose screen made up of a grid of small pixels they usually have custom displays designed to play one game this simplicity means they can be made as small as a smartwatch and sometimes are the visual output of these games can range from a few small light bulbs or led lights to calculatorlike alphanumerical screens later these were mostly displaced by liquid crystal and vacuum fluorescent display screens with detailed images and in the case of vfd games color handhelds were at their most popular from the late 1970s into the early 1990s they are the precursors to the handheld game console 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 1976 and mattel electronic football 1977 which featured very simple redled 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 entered the handheld market with simon a simple colorandsoundmatching 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 2player headtohead games from coleco other games were miniaturized versions of popular arcade video games in 1979 gunpei yokoi traveling on a bullet train saw a bored businessman playing with an lcd calculator by pressing the buttons yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time 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 wellknown handheld games of the lcd era are the game watch series by nintendo and the games by tiger electronics and many titles from other companies were also popular especially conversions of arcade games new games are still being made but most are based on relatively simple card and board games in 1982 the bandai lcd solarpower series were the first solarpowered gaming devices some of its games such as the horrorthemed game terror house featured two lcd panels one stacked on the other for an early 3d effect 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 brick game despite the increasing sophistication of handheld consoles such as the nintendo switch dedicated handhelds continue to find a niche among technophilic gamer subcultures like akibakei 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 poker and sudoku also spawn dozens of original and knockoff handheld games devices like brick game estar e23 include games using the block grid as a crude low resolution dot matrix screen such devices often have many variations of tetris and sometimes even other kinds of games like racing or even space shooters such as space invaders where one box projects boxes at the enemy boxes the most advanced of these designs can easily have more than 20 distinct games implemented and feature multichannel sound voice synthesis or digital sounds samples and internal cmos 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 though the vast majority are just different speed and difficulty settings the most basic can now be sold for less than the cost of a glossy magazine at the lowest end of handheld game sophistication there is also the avoidcatch 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 wikimedia commons has media related to handheld electronic games calculator gaming dedicated console handheld game console mobile game electronic handheld game museum the largest handheld museum on the web handheld empire collectors site cataloguing 70s 80s handheld games vtehandheld game consolesbandai lcd solarpower design master senshi wonderswan game parkholdings gp32 gp2x xgp gp2x wiz caanoo nintendocomparison game boy family game boy color game boy advance family advance advance sp micro virtual boy pokmon pikachu pokmon mini nintendo ds family nintendo ds lite dsi nintendo 3ds family nintendo 3ds 2ds new 3ds new 2ds xl switch nokia ngage ngage qd sega game gear nomad snk neo geo pocket neo geo pocket color neo geo x sony playstation portable xperia play playstation vita tiger rzone gamecom other handhelds1970s microvision 1980s selectagame entex adventure vision palmtex portable videogame system super micro nelsonic industries electronika epoch game pocket computer atari lynx 1990s turboexpress game master gamate barcode battler watara supervision mega duck 2000s tapwave zodiac gameking gpang service didj leapster gizmondo coleco sonic dingoo vsmile pocket 2010s jxd devices pandora dragonbox pyra shield portable leapster explorer gcw zero gpd xd gpd win gpd win 2 early units list comparison 