Handheld game console

[10] The Nintendo DS, released in 2004, introduced touchscreen controls and wireless online gaming to a wider audience, becoming the best-selling handheld console with over 150 million units sold worldwide.

These electronic devices are capable of playing only a single game,[3] they fit in the palm of the hand or on a tabletop, and they may make use of a variety of video displays such as LED, VFD, or LCD.

The project began when Michael Katz, Mattel's new product category marketing director, told the engineers in the electronics group to design a game the size of a calculator, using LED (light-emitting diode) technology.

[21] Soon, other manufacturers including Coleco, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, Entex, and Bandai[5] began following up with their own tabletop and handheld electronic games.

[26] 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.

[32] In 1983, Takara Tomy's Tomytronic 3D simulates 3D by having two LCD 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 Game Boy came under scrutiny by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, saying that the monochrome screen was too small, and the processing power was inadequate.

The design team had felt that low initial cost and battery economy were more important concerns, and when compared to the Microvision, the Game Boy was a huge leap forward.

Due to its high price, short battery life, production shortages, a dearth of compelling games, and Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign, and despite a redesign in 1991, the Lynx became a commercial failure.

Even by the standards of the day, its screen is rather difficult to use, suffering from similar ghosting problems that were common complaints with the first generation Game Boys.

Following Sega's success with the Game Gear, they began development on a successor during the early 1990s, which was intended to feature a touchscreen interface, many years before the Nintendo DS.

[44] Although, like its predecessor, the Game Boy Pocket has no backlight to allow play in a darkened area, it did notably improve visibility and pixel response-time (mostly eliminating ghosting).

The first model of the Game Boy Pocket did not have an LED to show battery levels, but the feature was added due to public demand.

In 2000 following SNK's purchase by Japanese Pachinko manufacturer Aruze, the Neo Geo Pocket Color was dropped from both the US and European markets, purportedly due to commercial failure.

[52] Another reason for the WonderSwan's success in Japan was the fact that Bandai managed to get a deal with Square to port over the original Famicom Final Fantasy games with improved graphics and controls.

[52] However, with the popularity of the Game Boy Advance and the reconciliation between Square and Nintendo, the WonderSwan Color and its successor, the SwanCrystal quickly lost its competitive advantage.The 2000s saw a major leap in innovation, particularly in the second half with the release of the DS and PSP.

The SP features a "clamshell" design (folding open and closed, like a laptop computer), as well as a frontlit color display and rechargeable battery.

While not a commercial success on a level with mainstream handhelds (only 30,000 units were sold), it ended up being used mainly as a platform for user-made applications and emulators of other systems, being popular with developers and more technically adept users.

The system received much criticism alleging defects in its physical design and layout, including its vertically oriented screen and requirement of removing the battery to change game cartridges.

The most well known of these was "sidetalking", or the act of placing the phone speaker and receiver on an edge of the device instead of one of the flat sides, causing the user to appear as if they are speaking into a taco.

The console also features online capabilities via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and ad-hoc wireless networking for multiplayer games with up to sixteen players.

The Gameking's speaker is quite loud and the cartridges' sophisticated looping soundtracks (sampled from other sources) are seemingly at odds with its primitive graphics.

TimeTop made at least one additional device sometimes labeled as "GameKing", but while it seems to possess more advanced graphics, is essentially an emulator that plays a handful of multi-carts (like the GB Station Light II).

The Pandora is a handheld game console/UMPC/PDA hybrid designed to take advantage of existing open source software and to be a target for home-brew development.

Unlike other Super NES clone consoles, it has region tabs that only allow NTSC North American cartridges to be played.

On February 13, 2011, at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011, it was announced that the device would be shipping globally in March 2011, with a launch lineup of around 50 software titles.

[74] The Razer Switchblade was a prototype pocket-sized like a Nintendo DSi XL designed to run Windows 7, featured a multi-touch LCD screen and an adaptive keyboard that changed keys depending on the game the user would play.

"[77] The Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console that can either be used in a handheld form, or inserted into a docking station attached to a television to play on a bigger screen.

The Switch features two detachable wireless controllers, called Joy-Con, which can be used individually or attached to a grip to provide a traditional gamepad form.

The Steam Deck is a handheld computer device, developed by Valve, which runs SteamOS 3.0, a tailored distro of Arch Linux and includes support for Proton, a compatibility layer that allows most Microsoft Windows games to be played on the Linux-based operating system.