5 HUGELY Important Video Game Consoles (You Haven't Heard Of)

Dedicated handheld games consoles are on life support in 2020. Sony discontinued the Vita in early 2019, whilst Nintendo only has one model of the 2DS XL still in production. Though their Switch also has an innovative handheld mode, this will probably be the last handheld that they ever produce, bringing to an end a period of 30 years where various iterations of Game Boys and DS’s have been staple possessions of any gamer.

The continued rise of smartphones and tablets has gradually chipped away at the appeal of the handheld, though they’ve had a fantastic run and many will hold fond childhood memories of long school trips with entire busloads of friends glued to different versions of Pokémon.

Whilst Nintendo’s Game Boy is the archetypal handheld, it was beaten to the market by almost 10 years by the Milton Bradley Microvision, the first handheld with removable games. Both Milton Bradley and Coleco had released handhelds with built-in games prior to this, but the Microvision is what would ultimately inspire Nintendo to change the gaming landscape forever. They used it as the basis for their Game & Watch creations, designing around the quality flaws and limitations (such as a lack of third-party support) that led it being pulled from the market after just 2 years.

Seemingly everybody has released a handheld in the last three decades, from Sega (Game Gear) to Nokia (N-Gage) with varying degrees of success. They can all be traced back to the Microvision.