For as long as I can remember, Nintendo home consoles have always had a handheld counterpart. The NES and SNES had the Game Boy, N64 had the Game Boy Color, GameCube had the Gameboy Advance, Wii had the DS, and Wii-U had the 3DS. While the handheld consoles occasionally received ports of home console games, it's the games that were made specifically for those handheld consoles that we hold near and dear to our hearts. So while you were playing Super Mario 64 on N64 while you're at home, you probably also had Pokemon Crystal ready to go in case of a road trip, or if any of your friends came over and wanted to trade some cool monsters that they'd found.
Don't get me wrong - I think the Switch is AWESOME. Being able to focus all resources on one console that can do gaming at home and on-the-go has given birth to some incredible games from some previously handheld-only series that just could not have been made in the past due to how restricted developers were with handheld hardware. Not to mention that retro emulation handhelds have become incredibly popular, affordable, and easier to use in the past few years. Putting all of this aside, I really miss having a console dedicated solely to handheld gaming.
While Sega, Sony, Atari, and even SNK have dabbled in the handheld market, it's Nintendo who really nailed handheld gaming. That's not to say that the aforementioned companies didn't have good handheld consoles though. I adore the NeoGeo Pocket/Pocket Color and the PSP and quite a few of the games that called those consoles home.
Shout-out to non-Nintendo handhelds. Mad respect for those.
While games made for handhelds aren't as graphically stunning as games on home consoles, they always made up for it with awesome gameplay. Quite a few genres eventually felt right at home on handhelds - like RPG's, platformers, and puzzle games. Games like Pokemon, Mario, and Tetris were system-sellers and even felt just as good to play as their home console counterparts. As the years counted up, this only got better. Nintendo especially went whole-hog in making sure their handhelds were stacked with really great games. Heck, you even had ports of games from previous home consoles on handhelds! Stuff like Dragon Quest, Harvest Moon, Mega Man, and even Donkey Kong Country saw handheld console ports and were incredibly solid games. There were even many series that started on home consoles and became handheld mainstays - like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars (formerly Famicom Wars), and even Castlevania. That's not even putting into account the countless original series that called handhelds home.
Some of the absolute best games that are playable only a handheld (back in the day, of course).
Handhelds were also great if you were looking to game on a budget. Cheaper hardware and software made it easier than ever to dip your toes into the proverbial pool. Oh, and remember the cool color variants you'd see on handhelds? I miss the transparent colors and I will scream that from the top of a mountain for as long as it takes until we get them back.
The form factor of handhelds is also really important. If you're gaming on-the-go, you need to be able to slip that thing into your pocket. While early handhelds were still pretty big, they eventually slimmed down enough to be able to fit into your pocket. They've evolved in the coolest ways over the years, adding things like rechargeable batteries, backlight screens, wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc), more buttons, touch screens, and more!
With Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch, Logitech G Cloud and even retro handhelds, it's cool that we do still have some handheld gaming options. While they're definitely bigger than handhelds past and might not fit into the pocket of your favorite pair of jeans, they're much more powerful than handhelds of the past. It's so insane to see how far handheld gaming has come. If you were to tell me in 2009 that Steam would have its own dedicated handheld, I would have laughed right in your face. If you were to grab me again in 2010 and tell me that in 2024 people would still be making games for Game Boy Color, I'd have called you a sorcerer and thrown salt at you.
Top: Nintendo Switch, Bottom-left: Logitech G-Cloud, Bottom-right: Valve Steam Deck
There's just something about the aesthetic of past handhelds that I miss as well. Like swapping game cartridges with your friends at recess, checking gaming news every day to see what new games are coming to your favorite handheld, or even the cool ways that home consoles could interact with handhelds. Like transferring Pokemon from Red or Blue to Pokemon Stadium on N64, connecting your Gameboy Advance with Metroid Fusion to Metroid Prime on your GameCube to get a cool new suit, or even how you could connect various games from NeoGeo Pocket Color to your Dreamcast to unlock new characters or rack-up points to unlock new items. This stuff was so cool and was such a neat way of rewarding you for delving into their ecosystems.
I get that nowadays it takes way, way, way more time and money to develop a game than it did 15-20 years ago. It just makes more sense for companies to focus all resources completely on their hardware, software, or whatever they make, rather than splitting teams to make sure that someone's working on handheld stuff. It was just so cool to have that entirely separate experience on-the-go when you're away from your home console, as opposed to how everything is all-in-one now.
Thanks for reading my nostalgia-fueled nonsense article. Have a sweet day!
Procedural Gameboy Advance - ArtStation
