The Video Game Handheld War Part 4 August 19, 2013

While Nintendo competed practically uncontested in the previous Video Game Handheld War with the Game Boy Color, they were not going to rest on the Color’s success for nearly as long as they did with the original Game Boy.  Just a few years after releasing the incredibly successful Game Boy Color, Nintendo started to prepare its successor, the Game Boy Advance.

The Game Boy Advance would feature a color screen and a graphics system that could reproduce a Super Nintendo game.  It would be able to play any Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance game, once again making it a logical upgrade to current Game Boy or Game Boy Color owners.  The Game Boy Advance required just two AA-batteries to get working, and they would provide a phenominal 15 hours of gameplay time.  The only downside was once again you would need to buy a new cable for games that supported System Link.

The Game Boy Advance launched in early 2001.  Once again, it seemed like the company that would uncrown Nintendo would be Nintendo.  Early system sales were strong as gamers once again chose to bet their money based upon Nintendo’s flawless handheld track record and the strength of their first-party properties.  New Mario Kart, Metroid, and Legend of Zelda games would be coming to the Game Boy Advance, to say nothing of the highly anticipated third entry in the Pokémon series!  If you were a gamer who wanted a handheld in 2001, you wanted a Game Boy Advance.

However, it became clear shortly after launch that the Game Boy Advance was not without problems.  While the GBA featured a fantastic full color screen, the fact that Nintendo chose not to backlight it was a huge issue.  Providing a system backlight would drain power quickly and seriously cut into game time.  It hadn’t been much of a problem in the past due to the simplistic graphics of the earlier model Game Boy systems, but the improved graphical capabilities of the GBA made backlighting necessary.  Many gamers complained after picking the system up that the screen was just unreadable unless games were being played under a direct light source.  In fact, Penny Arcade made a comic strip which theorized the reason why moths were so attracted to light sources was because they were trying to play games on their own Game Boy Advance systems!

Regardless of issues with the lack of a backlit screen, Nintendo had once again made a successful handheld gamers bought like crazy.  By choosing to use a game cartridge slot that could accept a game from any version Game Boy up to that point, gamers were once again choosing to make the upgrade, and to take their game libraries with them.  In fact, many gamers took it upon themselves to add a backlight to their GBA screens themselves in the form of the unofficial Afterburner modification.

However, the Game Boy Advance was not the only Nintendo console that was on the market at that time.  A few months after the release of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo released the GameCube.  While it had a unique graphics system and a great first party lineup of Nintendo titles, the GameCube was sitting in third place behind the Xbox and Playstation 2. To rectify this, Nintendo tried to create a way to capture some of the magic they were having with the Game Boy Advance and bring it to the GameCube.  To do that, they created the Game Boy Advance/GameCube Link Cable.

This new Link Cable could connect to the GBA’s serial port and connect to one of the GameCube’s front controller ports.  From that point, the possibilities this cable provided were limited only by the developer’s imagination.  The cable could be used to unlock unique content in either the GameCube or Game Boy Advance games, like in Metroid Prime, where a user could unlock the original NES version of Metroid or an exclusive suit for Samus if they connected their GameCube to a Game Boy Advance with Metroid Fusion loaded on it.  As time went on, the Link Cable’s possibilities got all the more stronger when games such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles or The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures were released for the GameCube.  These games took advantage of the Link System and Nintendo promoted them as party friendly, theorizing that a player would invite over their GBA-equipped friends to play these games together.

The GameCube Link Cable was far ahead of its time.  While it did not improve the GameCube’s standing in that generation of the console wars, Nintendo saw a great amount of publicity in releasing games for the system which would now be considered cult classics with a GBA Link feature, and cemented the strength of the Game Boy Advance.  In a precursor of Sony offering PS3 and PS4 connectivity with the Playstation Vita, Nintendo’s link-enabled games offered a true dual screen experience, where you could enter rooms in the GameCube and search it in real-time on the GBA’s screen.  Nintendo has since offered Dual Screen solutions with their gaming devices including the Nintendo DS and Wii U, but the origins of that interest began with the Game Boy Advance and GameCube.

I’ve spent this whole article so far talking about the Game Boy Advance and that is because the Game Boy Advance was uncontested in the Video Game Handheld War for a few years.  That was all about to change.  In the early 2000s, cell phone manufacturer Nokia had made a huge name for themselves in meeting the demands of a country exploding with a desire to be contacted wherever they were.  Most cell phones that people used in that time were made by Nokia and because of that Nokia’s brand had never been stronger.  Suddenly the Game Boy was being replaced as the personal electronic device people took on the go.  The problem was cell phones of the time had nowhere near as much technical capability as a Nintendo Game Boy did, and because of that Nokia could only include simplistic games with their handsets.  Well, Nokia wasn’t content with doing that anymore.

Nokia announced the N-Gage in 2003.  It was marketed as both a cell phone and a handheld gaming system.  Nokia’s marketing focused exclusively on the older gamer demographic who may have been turned off by Nintendo’s cuter family friendly face.  Many people were impressed from the early previews of the system.  Nokia had done quite well in the cell phone industry up to that point and pundits believed if there was anyone with enough experience in the mobile industry that could unseat Nintendo from their flawless track record, it would be Nokia.  The N-Gage had great system specs, a long list of developers and publishers who planned to release or port games to their system, and most importantly, the ability to make phone calls.  The problem was they had went about their marketing in the completely wrong way.  A Nokia executive was famously quoted as saying that they didn’t believe their target market would be the kind of person who would break out a Game Boy on the subway train.  Well, he said this without realizing that person they were making fun of was their target market.

The N-Gage launched at a $299US price point, the same as the launch prices for that generation’s consoles years earlier, and much more expensive than the Game Boy Advance.  While the N-Gage had a few immediate loyalists, early reviews of the system were mixed.  The N-Gage had a 3D graphics chipset with a backlit screen, which could in theory provide superior graphics to the aging Game Boy Advance.  However, from nearly every other perspective, the N-Gage was a total functional disaster.  Nokia had an exclusive retail deal with GameStop, which was the same kind of retail space that a person could pick up a much cheaper Game Boy Advance.  A better retail space for it would have been a cell phone store, which were doing quite well in the middle of the booming cell phone market.  The N-Gage also failed from a design perspective.  The N-Gage released just before digital distribution of games became practical, so Nokia distributed its games on physical memory cards similar to a regular SD card which you could buy at retail.  However, if you planned to change games in the middle of a gaming session you needed to remove the system’s battery, not a convenient task for someone planning to play games on the go.  If you wanted to make a phone call you had to turn the N-Gage on its side, a very unnatural and uncomfortable position.  Because of all that the N-Gage systems collected dust on GameStop shelves.

On the other side, Nintendo was listening to their fans and understood the difficulty people were having with the GBA’s non-backlit screen.  In 2004, Nintendo released a major revision to the Game Boy Advance, dubbed the Game Boy Advance SP.  The Game Boy Advance SP’s primary selling point was that it included a backlit screen that the user could turn on and off during gameplay, but the truth was it offered so much more.  The SP was a complete top down revision of the GBA’s form factor.  Instead of being a solid device, the SP flipped open very similar to a cell phone.  This reduced its size and make the device easier to keep in a pocket.  The SP also featured a rechargeable battery, the first that I had ever seen in a portable device which exclusively played video games.  Previously, rechargeable batteries were common in electronic devices like video cameras, but devices like the iPod or modern cell phones had proven that a rechargeable battery would work in a small personal device and provide a longer battery life than disposable batteries could.  It also saved the player a fortune in not having to buy more packs of AA-batteries.  The Game Boy Advance SP could play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games, as well as support GameCube linking.  The redesigned SP scored a lot of points with critics and sold a lot of units to gamers, both in players wanting to upgrade, and new players finally ready to join the Game Boy Advance’s community.  The only problem that critics of the SP had was that it lacked a native headphone jack.  If you wanted to listen to your game with headphones you would need to buy an adapter to plug your headphones into the system’s charge port, or buy a new set of headphones which used the GBA SP’s unique port.

Undeterred by the GBA selling at a near 10-to-1 ratio to the N-Gage, Nokia decided that they should do a redesign for the N-Gage as well, and redesign they did.  On the new N-Gage, a user would no longer have to remove the battery in order to change games or turn the device on its side to make phone calls.  They also expanded the device’s retail channels.  You could finally buy the N-Gage at your local Cingular store, a perfect location as it was the same place you could buy a new cell phone plan to go along with it.  Dubbed the N-Gage QD, the redesigned system was what Nokia should have released originally.  Nokia also included a price drop on the system.  The cost of a brand new N-Gage QD would be a much cheaper $100 US.

While the QD was an improvement from almost every perspective, the problem with the N-Gage QD was that it was too little too late.  Other than a handful of titles at launch, new games for the N-Gage would be slow to release, and when sales of the system floundered, developers and publishers stopped supporting the system.  By 2005, the Game Boy Advance and the redesigned Game Boy Advance SP were seeing a renaissance of some of the greatest games the handheld would see.  Metroid Fusion, Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, and of course Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire would be some of the platform’s highest rated exclusive titles, with the Pokémon games being the system’s biggest sellers.  In fact, in Japan, Nintendo would release Mother 3 for the GBA, the highly anticipated follow up to the cult classic called EarthBound in the West.  To this day, gamers are still talking about these games, and it is no surprise that Nintendo has promised to rerelease many GBA exclusives on the Wii U’s Virtual Console in the future.

In the end, the N-Gage could not compete with the near unstoppable force of the GBA’s quality titles.  The Game Boy Advance already had a hugely solid library of hit games, as well as the full support of Nintendo’s entire Game Boy library of titles.  The N-Gage could make phone calls if you turned it on it’s side.  That was it.  In the end, even with two revisions, Nokia could not compete against Nintendo and the N-Gage was a total failure and a huge black eye for Nokia.  For a device that tried to do everything, it ended up being a device that did everything poorly.  Once again, Nintendo would take the crown in the Video Game Handheld War.

For the next Video Game Handheld War, we’re going to talk about the time Nintendo went Dual Screen, and the gaming giant who had won the two previous console wars that decided to throw their hat into the handheld gaming ring to bring the strongest competition Nintendo had seen yet.

The Video Game Handheld War Part 3 August 16, 2013

Welcome back to our history segment on the Video Game Handheld War.  When we last left off, Nintendo had completely dominated the handheld market throughout the late 80s to the late 90s with the Nintendo Game Boy and their later revisions of the Game Boy.  Sega, NEC, and Atari couldn’t even come close to penetrating their market share, and when Nintendo released Pokémon, their handheld saw a second renaissance that could not have been believed!

However, while Nintendo had been releasing amazing games for their system that people were buying left and right, the fact remained that the Game Boy had been on the market for nearly ten whole years without a successor, and to the developers, the Game Boy was quite long in the tooth.  In 1998, the Game Boy was still an 8-Bit monochrome system, just as it had been the day it was released in 1989.  While Pokémon was an amazing game that captured many people’s imagination, it was limited by the Game Boy’s technology.  The game could only be seen in color if used in a Super Game Boy adapter for the Super Nintendo.  People who would be playing it on its native system would have to look at it on a plain old black and white screen.  This was quite a shame since color handhelds had been in the market in the early 90s and gamers knew that a system with color was possible with current technology.  By the late 90s, with Pokémon keeping the Game Boy afloat, the time was right for Nintendo to release a successor to the Game Boy…and it would indeed be in color.

In 1998, Nintendo released the Game Boy Color, the first true successor to the Nintendo Game Boy.  From afar it looked almost exactly like a Game Boy or Game Boy Pocket, but when you looked closer there was a lot more going on under the plastic shell.  It was only slightly larger than a Game Boy Pocket, but the new handheld boasted all of the features of a Pocket and a lot more.  It could play any Nintendo Game Boy or Nintendo Game Boy Color game, immediately turning the system into a logical upgrade, just as the Game Boy Pocket had been years earlier.  It would also support multiplayer across multiple systems with a System Link Cable, but once again you would need to buy a new one, as the Game Boy Color’s System Link port was different than the Pocket’s.  It also featured an IR transmitter, something that has been around for quite a while but was made popular in other handheld devices like the Palm Pilot around the same time.  The best part was that it could run off of just two AA-batteries, and once again, those batteries would last a long time.

The small problem was that the system would not be perfect for displaying original model Game Boy games in color, but Nintendo devised a few workarounds for this.  They hard-coded color palates for some of the Game Boy’s most popular titles (including Super Mario Land) into the system RAM, so when a game it recognized was inserted, it would automatically load it with the color Nintendo manually programmed for it.  Nintendo would also release new color versions of popular Game Boy games, which would usually be denoted by a “DX” after their title.  For any other Game Boy games that were left over, the user could manually choose their own color palate for their game by pressing certain buttons during startup.

The number 1 game that I can remember people playing on it when it came out?  Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Red.  That’s right, my friends were actually buying Game Boy Color systems to play games made for the original Game Boy.  There were a new set of Pokémon games on the horizon which were designed specifically for the Game Boy Color, but they were taking a while to come to the US.  In the end, when they finally did get released, Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver became the two best-selling games for the Game Boy Color, and to this day many players consider them the finest games in the Pokémon series.

Now this is the point in my article where I usually discuss some other company that would enter the handheld market and try to take Nintendo’s crown from them, but in all honesty, I have to admit that as far as I’m concerned, Nintendo entered this Handheld War uncontested.  Try to remember, this system launched at the height of Pokémon fever worldwide, and while it would take a while for Pokémon Gold and Silver, the Color-native sequel, to launch on the Game Boy Color in the US, players were more than happy playing the first Pokémon games on them while they waited.  While systems like the Neo Geo Color would come out during this time, unlike the Sega Game Gear which made a small impact on the market, the Neo Geo Color would not even make the slightest blip on the radar against the power of the Game Boy Color.  I can’t think of a single person I knew who bought one of those things or discussed it.  In fact, most of Nintendo’s competition would never even come stateside, leaving the US exclusively to Nintendo.  Once again the only company to uncrown Nintendo in the Video Game Handheld War…would be Nintendo.

The lifespan of the Game Boy Color would not last nearly as long as the Game Boy did, as technology was quickly improving and Nintendo realized that they could release handhelds with improved technology on a more regular basis from then on.  For the next Video Game Handheld War, we’re going to talk about the Game Boy Color’s successor, the Game Boy Advance, and the mighty company who had made a fortune selling cell phones who thought they could beat Nintendo out of the handheld market.  Stay tuned, that story is coming next time.

The Video Game Handheld War Part 2 August 13, 2013

The first handheld devices had hit the market and consumers had chosen that the Nintendo Game Boy was the superior product.  However, Nintendo’s direct competition was not completely out for the count.  For the second part of the video game handheld war, we’re going to focus on an odd time in the handheld space, the second half of the 90s.  This era can be considered by many to simply be an extension of the first-generation Video Game Handheld War, but personally, I consider it a separate generation, and as such should merit its own part in my ongoing series.  The reason why I consider this a separate battle is because of just how long it lasted.  The rules for handheld platforms had not yet been established, and platforms like the Game Boy stayed in the market for a little less than a decade before Nintendo would release its successor.  That’s a lot of time to cover, but we’re going to do it.

It was the mid-90s and Nintendo’s Game Boy was by far the most successful handheld device on the market.  While it only featured a monochrome screen, it had a fantastic library of Nintendo games. However, as the years continued there was a lot that Nintendo could have done to improve on the Game Boy’s design.  The original model Game Boy was about the size of a brick and it took 4 AA-batteries to get running.  While it still could perform longer than any other competing handheld product, the first game handheld war made it clear that Nintendo’s competitors would attack the Game Boy by providing a superior screen.  The Sega Game Gear had proven that backlit color screens could be done in a handheld gaming device, and while it was a major detriment to battery life, gamers were starting to expect more than a fuzzy monochrome screen if they wanted portable game time.

Undeterred by coming in second place with the Sega Game Gear, Sega tried again to release a portable system that would compete against Nintendo’s Game Boy.  In 1995, Sega released the Sega Nomad.  Oddly enough, this was not a next generation handheld system to replace the Sega Game Gear, it was literally a portable Genesis.  I am not kidding.  The Sega Nomad boasted a decent screen, two player support with an extra controller, and a TV output.  This thing could play any Genesis game, with the exception of X-Men.  This was a brilliant move on Sega’s part.  Genesis players already had their games on their shelves, and the game library of the Genesis included some of the finest games ever made.  In fact, the Nomad was so ahead of its time, to this day I can’t think of any other company that has released a similar device!

However, there were problems with the Nomad.  Sega was marketing the device to people who already had a Genesis and a game library to make the best use of the device.  Well, a new Nomad was expensive.  I remember how loudly people clamored when Sony launched the Playstation Vita at a price of $249 US (even though the PSP launched on that price over five years earlier), well the Nomad was even more expensive than that!  At launch, the Nomad cost around $280 US, which was much more expensive than a Sega Genesis cost around the same time.  Genesis games could take hours to complete and the Nomad only lasted around two hours on a new set of batteries.  The other issue was compatibility with the newer Genesis peripherals, specifically the Sega CD and the Sega 32x.  I know that seems like a small trade off, but the Nomad was released towards the end of the Genesis’s lifespan, and by the time of its release, people actually wanted the option to upgrade their Genesis with a Sega CD or 32x.

The Sega Nomad floundered at retail.  Sega didn’t do a very good job advertising it, and most retailers didn’t care enough to advertise or promote it either.  Because of that, most people probably aren’t aware that it even existed.  In fact, I was around during its lifespan and I wasn’t aware of its existence until I saw it used in a few episodes of Captain S!

I know by today’s standards, the Nomad wouldn’t even be considered a competitor in the Video Game Handheld Wars, but truth be told, they were the only thing to even come close to being a blip on the radar under the near total dominance of the Game Boy.  In the end, the only company that would be able to uncrown Nintendo…would be Nintendo.  In 1996, Nintendo released a new version of the Game Boy, dubbed the Game Boy Pocket.  Launched in a series of different colors, as well as a see-through model, the Game Boy Pocket was a smaller, slimmer Game Boy for a new generation of players who hadn’t jumped on the Game Boy bandwagon, as well as current Game Boy owners who wanted to upgrade.  While it still had a monochrome screen without backlight capability, the Pocket’s screen was much sharper than the original Game Boy, making games easier to view.  To top it all off, it only required two AAA-batteries to get running!

Nintendo did a lot right here.  The Game Boy Pocket was smaller and more affordable than the original model Game Boy was at launch.  Nintendo did a great job of marketing the system as well.  They did a great commercial that played on TV constantly where an original model Game Boy was put side by side with the Pocket and clearly boasted all the new improvements the Pocket offered.  Marketers, take notice.  That’s all you need to do!  Also, by offering the Game Boy Pocket in multiple colors, it boosted the collector’s value of the system, and was a precursor to Nintendo offering multiple color options for their later handhelds.  The only issue with it was that it broke compatibility with the original Game Boy’s System Link cables.  If you wanted to play a Pocket in two-player mode, you would need to purchase a new System Link cable, which was now sold separately, or get an adapter.

In the end, Nintendo would take the crown of the second video game handheld war.  This time it wouldn’t even be close, and I would be completely remiss to ignore the huge elephant in the room that not only handed the win to the Game Boy but started a phenomenon on par with Super Mario Bros or Legend of Zelda, Pokémon.  Created by Satoshi Tajiri, Pokémon followed the story of a young boy, as he traveled the game’s world, battling, trading, capturing, and training Pokémon.  Pokémon Red and Blue were quite literally the games that defined the Game Boy as they took full advantage of all the great things the Game Boy offered.  By being on a handheld, it ensured that players would bring their Game Boy everywhere, making it easier for players to find each other, and players would need to find each other to battle or trade Pokémon with other players.  In the days before everyone would have their own cell phone, Pokémon made the Game Boy the first personal electronic device that I can think of that everyone would take with them when they left the house.

Pokémon games sold a lot of Game Boys, and cemented Nintendo’s dominance in the handheld market.  In the years after the Game Boy Pocket’s release, Nintendo would release other revisions to the Game Boy to further bank on Pokémon’s success, including a Game Boy with a backlit screen, but many of those revisions never even came to my neck of the woods and would only get released in Japan.  It would not be until the release of the Game Boy Color that a true successor to the Game Boy would hit the market, but that is a story for next time!