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Retrospective: Nintendo's Handheld Legacy Article
GameBoy Advance DS Article by Christian Donlan
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I got it all wrong at the time, but quite a lot of other people did too. Almost everyone who saw Sony's PSP prior to release assumed that it spelled the end for Nintendo's long domination of the handheld market.
Why wouldn't it? Sony had been on a roll for over a decade by this point, transforming consoles from things children played with before going to bed - at least in the popular imagination - into chic accessories professional clubbers, DJs, models and probably even sexy drug dealers wouldn't mind leaving lying around on the coffee table next to a copy of ID or the UTNE Reader.
The PSP was beautiful: it was exotic and smooth and shiny and it looked, in fact, like it had slipped through a wormhole and tumbled into the present day from some point in the future. Nintendo's handheld tech, on the other hand, always tended to resemble something that had just been decommissioned by a particularly unglamorous facet of the Russian military.
So, yes, I got it totally wrong: Rumours of the PSP's death have been greatly exaggerated, of course - it's still a nice machine with a growing library of decent titles - but the DS, meanwhile, is a phenomenon. It's a phenomenon in exactly the same way the Game Boy was so long ago, a phenomenon that reminds you that, when it comes to playing games on the bus, in the bath, or in the back of the car, Nintendo absolutely knows what it's doing.
And now, with the release in Japan of yet another DS variant - this one has slightly bigger screens, gang! - it seems as good a time as any to look back over the history of Nintendo's handheld legacy, to gather all of the company's portables together in one space, and reflect on a golden age for gamers and early-onset arthritis experts alike.
Game & Watch
Game & Watch (1980-1991).
Proof that all technology, no matter how mind-bendingly futuristic it initially seems, is inevitably going to end up on someone's keyring one day, Nintendo's Game & Watch series boldly leveraged LCD displays and a natty clamshell casing, to give children something to do while shivering outside on winter lunch breaks, before, of course, most UK schools sold all their playing fields off to private military contractors and industrial waste processing companies.
Created by Gunpei Yokoi, the stern-looking engineering yang to Miyamoto's grinning high-colour yin, Game & Watch was a series of portable one-shots Nintendo made between 1980 and the early nineties. Inspired, allegedly, by Yokoi watching a commuter stuck on a train screwing around with a pocket calculator because there was little else to do - Yokoi came very close to inventing books at this point, but that honour would go to Intellivision in 2003 - 46 titles were eventually made (full disclosure: this is what Wikipedia tells me) including outings for Mario, Zelda and Balloon Fight.
A word, here, about Gunpei Yokoi - a towering figure in handheld gaming, and easily the most influential designer in this field, having had a decisive hand in all of Nintendo's portable consoles up until his death in a car accident in 1997.
While Miyamoto will always be the most famous creative force at Nintendo, Yokoi, creator of the Metroid series, is a figure of equal stature and the company's handheld legacy is largely down to this one man. Even the consoles that came after his resignation and subsequent death bear his unique hallmark: a clever mixture of lowest-cost tech and smart ideas to distract players away from the obvious limitations. Word over.
Yokoi was yet to have his finest hour at the time he was working on Game & Watch, but the series represented an important first step for portable gaming and, often, a very generous one, if you took into account the relative low price of the unit, and the fact that most titles had A and B variations of the same game.
Some of us found the fiddly drabness of the LCD screen depressing, even back in the eighties when everything was depressing - but that's probably just because we couldn't afford them. Needless to say, there's a fairly buoyant collecting scene in operation for Game & Watch these days. Equally needless to say, I've yet to meet anyone who genuinely used the "& Watch" part at the time.
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Comments: 1-46 of 46 in total
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freakzilla
22/11/09 @ 09:08
+1
lol, I remember the days my friends used to play pokemon and when I saw it I was like "WTF is this shit?" I couldn't even make out any of the characters on screen.
Gaming has progressed so fast, hope it continues. |
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kingcrowbar
22/11/09 @ 09:16
+3
Still have the original grey brick, color, and SP around the house, along with a micro and ds lite. The brick has been truly punished over 18 years drowned and dropped and has one column of pixels dead on the left, but it still plays the best version of tetris ever made (psp mini version is very good though). I've never seen F-Zero on Gameboy though but we did have good times playing F1-Race at school lunch break with the 4 player link cable.
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tenofspades
22/11/09 @ 09:57
+5
does anyone wonder about Yokai, and had his life not been cut short?
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+3
This reminds me of when I got a GBA for Christmas, and some two weeks later, Nintendo announced the SP. Ugh. I tried to make do with the normal GBA for a while, but honestly, that screen was just impossible to see when you were playing inside. Worst design choice ever. I ultimately ended up buying a SP (and even a Micro later on, though only on a clearance sale).
Later I would get the DS on launch day. The announcement of the Lite didn't phaze me narly as much - first, because it came out a bit later, and second, because the Phat was still very good. I only recently bought a red Lite. Don't care about the DSi or LL either. Mind you, I'm finding that the PSP is pretty good too. |
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metalangel
22/11/09 @ 10:13
+4
I remember that burned Game Boy... I was a subscriber to Nintendo Power and the owner wrote saying how they were on Operation Desert Shield when their tent burned. The A and B buttons still work, too. Nintendo were so impressed they sent the soldier a new one (the mag was full of pics of soldiers in Eye Rakk playing Tetris at the time). Cool that Nintendo STILL have it.
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GrandpaUlrira
22/11/09 @ 10:34
+3
F-Zero never came out on the original Game Boy! Unless the sentence implies that an F-Zero was designed by Yokoi's team?
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+3
i bought a metalic blue dsi a week ago.i love my psp but i ve got to say,dsi rocks too.especially the games that use the stylus more.i have meteos,minis march again from dsiware,dual strike and dark conflict(the best games i have ever played on a handheld ever)and phantom hourglass.the touch screen really makes it unique.the only problem i have with it,is that i ve got to convert my mp3 music to mp4a.but that is a small problem.
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+2
I've had a Gameboy, Gameboy Color (not 'Colour' like in the article, they didn't bother changing it for us in the UK), DS and now DSi. Still remember the days of having a giant magnifying glass/light contraption for my Gameboy. Loved Tetris on the original Gameboy, and then loved Tetris DX on the Gameboy Color even more.
Never heard of Rocket Slime though- although it doesn't seem to have been reviewed on this site, unless I just can't find it? |
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+6
I still feel a big smile on my face when I hear that little Ninteno logo scroll Dow the screen and go ping!
I didn't feel that Super Mario Land felt wrong at all, it's still one of my favourtie Mario games. I'm still hoping Nintendo do a remake or DSi Virtual Console version, I've long since lost my copy! |
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0
The Gameboy accessories reminds me of this a special Gameboy Color sewing machine kit.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 22/11/09 @ 12:03
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curtlikesmeat
22/11/09 @ 12:19
+4
Nice article, I never had an original Gameboy - I wasn't allowed Reebok Pumps either :(
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 22/11/09 @ 12:19
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CaptainTrips
22/11/09 @ 16:45
+1
Great article, but disappointingly no mention of the games that made me buy a DS - Phoenix Wright and Trauma Surgeon (and later on Professor Layton).
These are games which could only work on the DS, and are better for it! |
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The Bodybuilder
22/11/09 @ 17:27
0
>"Chris Tarrant photographed looking at a DS while frowning - possibly because he's checking the onboard calendar and realises he's booked in two conflicting sexual liaisons on the same day - everyone was playing.
ROFL!!! |
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PearOfAnguish
22/11/09 @ 17:40
+1
Xerx3s, he says he bought a Virtual Boy in the second to last paragraph of that page.
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FladgeMangle
22/11/09 @ 18:56
0
Game Boy Color was my first, then a GBA and SP (which is now Tingle Tuner). The PSP stole my heart though, and the two DS lites we have in the house belong to the children.
Lots of happy Golden Sun, Advance Wars and Zelda memories, especially Minish Cap. What a game! |
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StooMonster
22/11/09 @ 20:21
+1
Friend of mine (at the time) had a business importing consoles from Japan, I bought his first GameBoy which was a few weeks after it's Japanese launch. I played it on a train and a crowd stood round watching whilst I played Tetris (and Mario? memory failing) all going "oooh" and "arrr" and "what's that?" etc.
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0
Ah the early days of the DS, I remember picking mine up in Toronto a while before it launched here, they were shockingly quiet times even a few months into its release. I distinctly remember having almost every game and thinking if I got the last few I might end up having every title released.
Sturdy machine though, that original DS is still my only handheld and looks as good as new. The obvious point that sticks out here, whilst the competitors have almost all gone down the power route, Nintendo have by and large stuck with genuine portable games machines that are robust, have good battery life and critically, have games that are built from the ground up as portable games - not console ports. |
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0
What is interesting is that my main gripe with the DSi is exactly that -- the battery life leaves something to be desired. I think it goes empty on me in about four hours, which means I use the sleep function less than I used to, and so on. The rest of the package is all ace, though; I am not really missing the GBA slot anymore since the DS library has gotten so rich and satisfying.
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0
Oy, you must not like Phoenix Wright or must hate dating sims. Sprung is a pretty funny, offbeat game. It is a bit different and can be obtuse at times like all basic adventure type/like games can be. Just like you'll have difficulty pleasing someone in Sprung, the same player can have trouble finding the right objection in Phoenix or even the right area to check in Hotel Dusk and Another Code.
I'm not nearly as upset or "tough" as the comment may seem. I'm just saying don't tell me red apples are bad and green ones are good! |
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electrolite
23/11/09 @ 08:30
0
Original Gameboy, Christmas 1991 (age 14). Managed to assemble a collection including Mario Land, F1 Race, Double Dragon and R-Type. For some reason I then traded it all for a MD with Atomic Robokid.
Next up was a Gameboy Colour (I know that's not how they spell it, but it's how *I* spell it) which I was really dissapointed by. Then a GBA in 2001, upgraded to an SP (which is still a brilliant console) in 2003, then the DS family which I've had untold hours out of. They've consistently been the only company that really gets portable gaming, at least until Apple came along with their take on it. |
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Rev. Stuart Campbell
23/11/09 @ 10:48
+4
The DS Lite's screen was NOT "a little better" than the original DS's. I was extremely sceptical about the Lite, and so got a friend to bring his to the pub one night so I could see the two side-by-side to compare them. Next day I was at Gamestation trading in my DS Fat.
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+1
"Inspired, allegedly, by Yokoi watching a commuter stuck on a train screwing around with a pocket calculator because there was little else to do - Yokoi came very close to inventing books at this point, but that honour would go to Intellivision in 2003 - 46 titles were eventually made (full disclosure: this is what Wikipedia tells me) including outings for Mario, Zelda and Balloon Fight".
This may come from me not being a native English user nor an ancient console specialist, but I have absolutely no idea what the author is trying to say by: "Yokoi came very close to inventing books at this point, but that honour would go to Intellivision in 2003". What Game & Watch has to do with "inventing books" and what honour Intellivision got in 2003?
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 23/11/09 @ 11:09
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0
It's strange to see a retrospective in this style as Nintendo's handheld strategy has always been rubbish hardware propped up by excellent software. The Gameboy gave you back pain, the Virtual Boy was too bonkers even for Nintendo to pull through, the GBA was impossible to play in nearly all light conditions and in the light of hindsight the DS would really have been much better with one screen and no microphone.
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Fitzmogwai
23/11/09 @ 14:10
0
I've still got my original Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong II Game & Watches. They're well over 20 years old now, and they all work perfectly. As games, they're still surprisingly playable, too.
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0
I remember playing the GBA for the first time at ELSPA and being completely bowled over as it was basically "a portable SNES?!" and looked forward to at the very least playing the SNES ports.
Quite by chance I was in the US for work the week the DS was released. Bought the last one in a Walmart, only to see a kid come in with his dad for one to be told they were all sold out. Didn't really use it all that much in the early days, but Meteos was a stand out. I still use the fat DS, even though I was given a Lite. It just feels nicer in my hands, the Lite is too small. Highlights for me are the Korg DS-10 and the Chrono Trigger port. |
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TonyHarrison
23/11/09 @ 16:03
0
Nintendo's continued domination of the handheld market makes me smile, as it means we're safe in the knowledge that they will be around as a hardware developer for a long time, regardless of the pathetic desires of some idiots who wish otherwise...
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0
Probably worth mentioning that even though the Pocket was smaller, the screen was bigger.
Also didn't mention that the screen was clearer and had no blur when you moved quickly. I loved that little thing - 2 AAAs instead of 4 AAs and was bloody robust, and a very sexy silver. Although I happily ditched it when the see through purple GBC came along. Oh, and the GA SP DID have headphone capability - you just bought an adaptor. And the Micro didn't play GB(C) older games (in fact backwards compatibility seems to have been completely omitted). Many commentators said that the DS was most likely a temporary stopgap until the next Game Boy, and even more complained about how clunky the hardware seemed compared to Sony's shiny bauble. The Guardian's Nick Gillet even suggested Nintendo's latest looked like it had been knocked up in a shed. No. Nintendo DID claim that it was a 'third pillar' to their strategy and NOT a GB replacement (aware of the risk) - but it was such a success that they removed the need for a GB. I'm sure if they could go back they'd rename it the Gameboy DS.
Edited 3 times,
most recently on 23/11/09 @ 19:14
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-1
domoslaf
23/11/09 @ 11:09 This may come from me not being a native English user nor an ancient console specialist, but I have absolutely no idea what the author is trying to say by: "Yokoi came very close to inventing books at this point, but that honour would go to Intellivision in 2003". What Game & Watch has to do with "inventing books" and what honour Intellivision got in 2003? I think he means those little things that you can put e-books on? E-book reader. |
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0
@beemoh
Oooh, I see. Thanks, that makes a bit more sense now. Not really all that important, but it didn't stop me from wasting about half an hour at work to try and figure it out (fruitlessly, but I guess as ways to waste time at work go, you could do worse). I've gone as far as to suspect that Intellivision Lives! compilation for PS2 (released in 2003) has something to do with that (well it comes out at the top of Google search for "Intellivision 2003"). It appears it really was just a (n attempt at) joke though and I just wasn't bright enough to get it. ;)
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 23/11/09 @ 22:44
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Comments: 1-46 of 46 in total
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