Evolution of the Handheld

The handheld gaming scene has witnessed many attempts by a variety of companies to gain commercial success, but over thirty formats shown below, only a handful have been able to gain support of the mainstream. The main problems for companies trying to enter the handheld gaming scene is how to create an affordable, portable machine that won't eat up the battery.
It wasn't until 1989 when Nintendo released the GameBoy, with it's dot-matrix screen, low battery consumption (though needed 4 AA batteries), relatively small size and one killer game, Tetris , that guaranteed them the success they wanted. No other company could emulate what Nintendo had created, try as they may, there was nothing as successful as the GameBoy.
Almost sixteen years after the GameBoy, in 2005, both Nintendo and Sony released their 'revolutionary' contenders, each aiming at a different market. So far, two years down the line it seems like Nintendo still have the same magic formula they had back in 1989.

Milton Bradley Microvision - 1978

Nintendo Game & Watch (60 in the series) - 1980 - 1991

Epoch Game Pocket Computer - 1984

Nintendo Gameboy - 1989

Atari Lynx - 1989

NEC TurboExpress - 1990

Sega GameGear - 1991

Watara Supervision - 1992

Sega MegaJet - 1992

Nintendo VirtualBoy - 1994

Sega Nomad - 1995

NeoGeo Pocket - 1996

Nintendo GameBoy Pocket - 1996

Nintendo GameBoy Pocket Light - 1997

Tiger Game.com - 1997

Nintendo GameBoy Color - 1998

Cybiko - 1998

Dreamcast VMU - 1998

Sony PocketStation - 1998

NeoGeo Pocket Color - 1999

Bandai WonderSwan - 1999

Bandai WonderSwan Color - 2000

GamePark GP32 - 2001

Nintendo GameBoy Advance - 2001

Nintendo Pokemon Mini - 2004

Bandai Swan Crystal - 2002

Nokia N-Gage - 2003

Nintendo GameBoy Advance SP - 2003

Timetop Gameking - 2003

Tapwave Zodiac - 2004

Nokia N-Gage QD - 2004

Nintendo DS - 2004

Sony PSP - 2004

Tiger Gizmondo - 2005

Nintendo GameBoy Micro - 2005

GamePark XGP - 2005

V-Smile Pocket - 2005

Ez Mini - 2005

Nintendo DS Lite - 2006

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