Timeline of Portable Consoles

1976 

Mattel electronic Auto Race

The first handheld console was the mattel auto race in 1976 and was a very simple racing game with 3 cars repeatedly racing against each other. The basic idea of the console like any driving game. The game features 2 switches 1 was to start the race and another to control the gears so that you could make the car a lot faster. The console also had a simple steer which was another switch that would make the car into either the left or right lanes allowing it to dodge on coming traffic.

1979 

Microvision Block Buster

The Microvision block buster was created by Microvision in 1979 has their attempt at entering the portable market while it had a large number of problems. The worst thing about this handheld console is a thing called screen rot this is where the console basically began to destroyed the screen due to it heating and causing the liquid inside to expand and leak through the screen. Another huge flaw is that the console broke when the console was over used due to the created added a plastic cover over all the bottom. The console itself only played a single game like the others of its time due to the fact there were no suitable ways off adding multiple games to it.

1989 

Nintendo Gameboy 

Nintendo made the Gameboy in 1989 as a way to increase there successful market of game consoles because they already had a large grip over the market with the NES and SNES but nothing to match in the portable console market. So the Gameboy was created and is by far the most successful console of its genre. This is because of its long battery life, decent sound quality and good screen resolution. The high end performance came from its CPU (a Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902), this adds beautiful 160x144 pixels. The next year the Gameboy advanced was realised and continued to increase the Gameboy because of it having more colour, improved sound and all around better quality.

1991

Sega Game Gear

The Sega Game Gear was Sega's first attempt into entering the handheld console market. the console was based on the 8bit generation making it perfect to play older arcade games such as sonic which was its most popular game. The console would take 6 batteries and usual last between 4 and 5 hours so it wasn't that good with battery life. The console had several accessories made in order to try and increase its popularity such things like a additional battery pack, a TV tuner (which doesn't work on later models) and a Super Wide Gear (which gave the console a larger screen because its original was rather small this did have a considerable affect on battery life. The main processor is a Zilog Z80 8bit system, this gave the game gear 32 different colours and a maximum sprites 64.

1998

Gameboy Colour

Nintendo wanting to continue of there portable handheld consoles they released the Gameboy colour in 1998. This console was twice as fast and twice the memory as its original the standard Gameboy. The most impressive thing about this console was tat it was backwards compatible with the younger models games making the first handheld console to do that. This gave Nintendo a huge lead of its competitors because there handheld device already had a large library of games. The most impressive thing about the Gameboy colour was that it could display a maximum 54 colours on the screen at anyone time. This console had the same screen resolution as both the original gameboy and the Sega Game Gear.

2001

Gameboy Advanced

Still continuing there successful line of portable handheld consoles. Nintendo went to release the Gameboy advance it had a large screen that its predecessors and had a lot more processing power caused by its 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI with embedded memory. Another nice feature is that the console had shoulder buttons on either side giving more selection when using fighting games. Two years after the release of the advance a smaller version called the Gameboy advance SP was released this had the same processing power as the original but was smaller and had a rechargeable battery back. Both these consoles were backwards compatible because I gave them a huge library the second they were released. 

2003

N-Gage

Seeing the enormous money to be made from the rapidly growing industry of handheld consoles, Nokia decided to try too enter the market with the N-Gage. The idea of this console was that it would be a mobile phone, a MP3 player as well as being able to play different games. This wasn't a very popular console selling only 3 million units despite having online capabilities and a nice little 104MHz ARM 920T CPU.

2004

Nintendo DS

Nintendo continued there successful line of handheld consoles after the Gameboy Advance with the Nintendo DS. This console featured two screens, the bottom of which was a touch screen. To power both these screens it has a 67.028 MHz ARM946E-S and 33.512 MHz ARM7TDMI. The Nintendo DS sold even more consoles that the previous consoles.153.87 million consoles (all models). The DS was a huge jump for the market because a console with a touch screen hadn't been seen during its time, while as of 14/05/2013 there are now several different consoles/tablets that play touchs screen games.