Hand-Held History of Nintendo

[Mr.Verto]

Nintendo was had many hand-held consoles, more than you think...You probably think "Oh, the Gameboy and the DS" WRONG Nintendo has produced 13 hand held consoles, From the Game and Watch to 3DS take a look.

GAME & WATCH

A simple game, huge hit. Nintendo produced the first, hand held called the Game and Watch in 1980. It was based of arcade games, in your hand. Nintendo used the limited technology they had at the time and made something great, I applaud you Nintendo.

GAMEBOY

The Gameboy, the said first hand held of Nintendo (although the G&W was first). As soon as it hit the shelfs it sold like hot bread, hand held were kind of new. Nintendo sold 118.69 of this fella, more than the NES. This console was released in 1989.

GAMEBOY POCKET
Released years before the Gamboy Color, this hand held was the first to show colors and had a more battery life, it used AAA batteries instead of AA. This was released in 1996.

GAMEBOY COLOR

Nothing to different from his past brother, 8 bit processor but slightly larger and it was able to process colors. This innovation gave him his name when released in 1998 and sold almost as much as the Gameboy.

GAMEBOY LIGHT
An improvement of the Gameboy Color, released the same year of Color only in Japan. As same as the Gameboy Pocket its battery could last around 20 hours.

GAMEBOY ADVANCE

A enormous hit again, this console was released in 2001 and it had a 32 bit processor! It sold around 88.78 million, not as much as his pasts forms...Why? Look forward..

GAMEBOY ADVANCE SP

Just 2 years after the GBA release this fellow was sold. It was exactly a copy of the GBA only its shape and brigther LCD screen was modified, this console stopped almost completely the hot selling of the GBA.

GAMEBOY DS (DUAL SCREEN)

Yup! The first DS comes to the world with Gameboy as a name, not many know this though. The system was released on 2004 and by fans it was named DS, Nintedo followed the new "catchy name".

DS LITE

Absolutly no difference of the original DS, only different design and longer styluses, this system was releases the same year as the original.

GAMEBOY MICRO
The third form of Game Boy Advance system, the Game Boy Micro is four and a half inches wide (10 cm), two inches tall (5 cm), and weighs 2.8 ounces. This tiny tinni was released in 2005



DSi

A little bigger and fancier than DS lite the DSi came to life. This new system was released in 2009 in Japan and it sold 23.54 millions. The DSi brought better graphics and and a camara, and some downloadable apps. Also online multiplayer functions were improved

DSxL

Exactly the same as DSi but 90% bigger screens if you were blind and couldnt see the screen of previous systems.

3DS

The mighty lord of hand held, the 3DS includes new memory, new controls, 3 camaras, the augmented reality feature and of course is in 3D without glasses, how messed up can that be.... This system has already been released in Japan and it will in America March 27.

So with that you can see that Nintendo has a huge coverage in the portable system, even more than its home consoles. The only true rival that Nintendo has had in all this time, has been the PSP, that with so many releases in 10 years has practically killed it.

Nintendo has this "bad custom" of selling a DS and two months later there is a new one, and we are stupid enough to buy it when we know that in a year there is going to be a way better DS. Together the original DS to the DSxL has selled 144.59 systems, one Gameboy sold almost as much alone.

If Nintendo permited that DS sold like the Gameboys (couple years in between) Im sure they would make so much more money. But now again this is what they want. The only "improvement" that I can see to the 3DS is the 3DSixL Lite, Nintendo dont do that.....

 

[Atheistbigred]

Looks like you missed a couple of other models of the Gameboy, such as the Gameboy Pocket, the Gameboy Light and the the gameboy Micro.
The Gameboy Pocket was released 2 years before the color (1996) it was a smaller version of the Gameboy and the first to have color, it featured a longer battery life, instead of AA battery's it utilized AAA battery's.Then there was the Gameboy Light (only released i japan) it had longer battery life than all the other Gameboy models (20 hours) and it used 2 AA battery's. The Gameboy Micro was released in 2005 , 2 years after the Gameboy Advance SP, it was desgined to be more portable,it has no backwards compatibility meaning it only plays Gameboy Advance games and it wasn't that popular. Not to be rude but when doing the history of the Nintendo handheld gaming systems, mention the ones that aren't that popular because they have a huge impact on the design of the newer systems.

 

[Mr.Verto]

Looks like you missed a couple of other models of the Gameboy, such as the Gameboy Pocket, the Gameboy Light and the the gameboy Micro.
The Gameboy Pocket was released 2 years before the color (1996) it was a smaller version of the Gameboy and the first to have color, it featured a longer battery life, instead of AA battery's it utilized AAA battery's.Then there was the Gameboy Light (only released i japan) it had longer battery life than all the other Gameboy models (20 hours) and it used 2 AA battery's. The Gameboy Micro was released in 2005 , 2 years after the Gameboy Advance SP, it was desgined to be more portable,it has no backwards compatibility meaning it only plays Gameboy Advance games and it wasn't that popular. Not to be rude but when doing the history of the Nintendo handheld gaming systems, mention the ones that aren't that popular because they have a huge impact on the design of the newer systems.

Thank you for noticing that, I left the Light out in purpose but added it anyways. I couldnt add a picture to them because of the picture limit...

 

[Caeda]

cool. I did not know about the gameboy pocket or light. You learn new things everyday.

 

[Cel-Shaded Deku]

GAMEBOY DS (DUAL SCREEN)
Yup! The first DS comes to the world with Gameboy as a name, not many know this though. The system was released on 2004 and by fans it was named DS, Nintedo followed the new "catchy name".

Darn it! Every time I corrected my mom when she called my DS a Gameboy I was wrong! Well, she doesn't have to know that.

 

[SuperGanondorf]

I remember when the original DS came out... It was AMAZING! The DSi and Lite are cool and all, but it's the giant hunk of plastic that was the original that really brought it home how awesome Nintendo was.

Also some of the Game & Watch stuff was frickin' weird. Like the Crystal Screen series... In which the screen is transparent, giving you a glorious view of your knees in the background while playing. What the point was supposed to be, nobody seems to know. And then there's the Tabletop series, which were basically tabletop arcade cabinets. Which were huge and bulky, defeating the point of the games being small and portable...

Good thing Nintendo was rich back then. They had enough money to burn to experiment on completely ridiculous ideas. But it's good for another reason. The DS wasn't the first dual screen handheld. The Game and Watch Multi Screen Series was, even though two Donkey Kong games were all that actually used the format. Bet you didn't know that.

 

[LolGames4U]

Nice job! But the DSi is just called the DSi, not DSi Lite.