In this article, we take a look back at how video games have evolved into what we know and enjoy today. We’ve come a long way, baby!

The Handheld Battle

It seems so long ago, but in the 8-bit era we were lucky to have the LCD dot-matrix Game Boy. No one was crazy about monochrome, but it worked. The competition’s handheld gaming used a static, painted backdrop.

We saw pre-molded LCD caricatures in which movement was defined by disappearing from one part of the screen to appear on another part; comparatively, the 8-bit yellow-and-green dot matrix LCD screen of the Game Boy worked.

Not only did we now have a handheld video game system that actually created its own backgrounds and allowed for actual fluid motion, but we got a handheld that had interchangeable games (as novel as that sounds)!

Still, it was only monochrome, or as Sega called it in their Game Gear ads, “creamed spinach-colored”. So, many of us – myself included – could only wonder what Super Mario Land would’ve looked like in color form on our NES.

We waited, hoping Nintendo would be generous and give us an enhanced port of the game, but it was for naught.

Sega ramped things up substantially when they delivered their Master System in the form of a handheld: a device known as the Sega Game Gear. Full color and a built-in backlight! Sure, it sacrificed battery life, and ni-cads offered HALF the life of alkaline batteries, but it was full-color.

16-bit Era

The years moved on. Nintendo moved on from the NES to SNES, and Sega moved on from the Master System/Master System II to the Genesis. The handheld market stagnated. So many systems fell by the wayside. Among them were the Turbo Express, Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket, and ultimately, the Sega Game Gear.

In 1998, Nintendo decided to take a big leap forward. Even though they had total dominance over the handheld market, they recognized the need for handheld gaming to go live with color. The GameBoy Color came into the world.

It was fully backwards-compatible with all previous GameBoy games, allowing button-combinations to change screen pallet color, and boasted a specially light-reflective screen. Unless you were in total darkness, chances are you could easily see games on your GameBoy Color screen without much trouble.

Nintendo also gave new life to two classics: Super Mario Bros. and Link’s Awakening in the form of Super Mario Bros. DX, which had some additional content added rather than a straight port of the old game, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX, which added new content and was backwards compatible with the old Gameboys!

Nintendo Innovations

Nintendo wasn’t done yet. Far from it, in fact. Just a few small years later, the GameBoy Advance came to life. Yes, it was incredible. SNES graphics in handheld form. In fact, it was so incredible, even Nintendo didn’t realize its full capabilities! Around its release, Nintendo stated the system was lacking the Mode 7 technology and wouldn’t be able to handle 3-D graphics the way the SNES could.

They had to admit they were wrong when games like Star-X, Top Gear Rally, and Hotwheels Stunt Challenge came to be. Star-X came very close to Nintendo’s Star Fox. The graphics were quite close. Actually, one who didn’t pay attention to the fact none of Nintendo’s trademark characters weren’t anywhere to be seen could think it was Star Fox.

Alas, time marches on. While the GBA could give gamers SNES-level graphics, Nintendo moved from the Nintendo 64 to the GameCube, Sony moved from the PSX to the PS2, and Microsoft unleashed the XBox. Some looked at the GBA as being “antiquated”.

Whilst the consoles were boasting the fully 3-D Grand Theft Auto III, the GBA could only replicate the old-style top-down GTA gameplay. Some of us didn’t mind; we liked the classic “back-to-your-roots” gameplay. Others weren’t so pleased. It seemed that as with previous eras, no handheld could ever come close to console-level graphics. It was like the comparison of a home console to arcade machines in the 1980’s. It seemed as though every time a new console hit the market, the arcade world just reached its next level.

Dual Screen’s Bring New Success

It was time for a revamp to the handheld market. At E3 2004, Nintendo unleashed its “third pillar” known as the Nintendo DS. Not so much a “handheld portable” as a system that just simply did more than previous handhelds had done.

With dual-screen action, a touch-screen, a microphone, and Nintendo 64-quality graphics all made this a system worth looking into. I remember watching Nintendo’s press conference at E3 2004. While I was also quite excited about the new games they’d shown coming to the GameCube and GBA, I was mostly excited about the DS.

I didn’t know what was bubbling down below in the Sony world. It would be the biggest change to hit conventional handheld gaming since the original GameBoy: the Sony PlayStation Portable, or PSP. It wasn’t an alternative, per-se, to the DS, but an augmentation.

I’ve always felt that, to get the most out of handheld gaming, one must own both a DS and PSP. The DS provides a unique gaming experience, whilst the PSP can emulate the console experience, albeit a little stripped-down in some cases. The PSP has managed to pull off a solid replication of console gaming. It’s not perfect, but many of the current-generation games released for the PSP have come off without a significant hitch.

The Sony PSP

In the year of the PSP’s launch (2005), Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories came into being. It actually looked like Grand Theft Auto III and, more importantly, it manged to play like Grand Theft Auto III.

Since this time, the PSP has had many more multi-system games released on it, and in more faithful translation than previous handhelds. Resistance: Retribution is remarkable. It puts the game in third-person view instead of first-person, and it’s not a “port” as a parallel story to the PS3 games. Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines has a few minor flaws because of the lack of a right analog-stick, but it holds up in gameplay.

Even more incredible is Dante’s Inferno; the maps are identical to the console version’s maps. The layout is exactly the same. The only difference being the PSP game’s gameplay graphics are a little stripped-down, and the non-playable cutscenes have been simply recorded, and play in a digitized manner instead of relying on the system’s hardware to render the cutscenes, resulting in a small loss of quality and the inability to perfectly segue from gameplay to cutscene and visa versa.

There’s No Time Like The Present

So, here we are now. The DS is an excellent system, and I recommend it to all, but for anyone looking to capture the world of console gaming in handheld form should really give the PSP a try.

Sony has some excellent bundles on the market, and included in said bundles are all the things you’ll need to get started. Standard bundles usually include: game (based on your bundle), 1GB memory stick, a special-edition PSP, and the essential AC adapter and rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

The only DS bundle that is currently on the market is the DSi bundle which includes a white DSi and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.

How do YOU feel about the progress of handheld gaming? Discuss it below in our comments section!

[Editor's Note: If you liked Bone Meal's short history on the handheld, read his Top 10 Games for the PSP.]

Image credits: Damien Lopez, broccoli, cinefil, xcassiegotto, diodoro