The Video Game Handheld War Part 7 September 13, 2013

The first year of the PSP versus DS battle was now a memory and the DS was far ahead due to a lower price point and more successful titles, however Sony was not out for the count and had a lot more planned for their handheld.  While Sony was happy to continue to support the PSP with regular software updates, Nintendo had learned from the success of the various Game Boy revisions they released over the years and believed that regularly updating their handheld line with new hardware revisions was the best way to go.  While the UMD format was taking off, Nintendo was working on the first major system revision for the DS.

In 2006, Nintendo released the DS Lite.  This was the first major hardware redesign for the Nintendo DS.  Like the Game Boy Pocket or Color before it, while it only launched in one color, the DS Lite shipped in a variety of different colors including black, coral, or white, giving players a small amount of personal customization options like we would see in today’s cell phones.  It was smaller and thinner than the original DS, but the system’s dual screens were larger and sharper than the original DS, and it had an improved battery with new power saving options to extend battery life.  It could still play all DS games and interface with all other DS systems through its internal WiFi.  The best part was even with the reduced size, it still featured a Game Boy Advance slot and a lot of developers were working on special peripherals to make use of it with DS games including a Rumble Pak.  The price was a reasonable $129 US, far less expensive than Sony’s counterpart.

Nintendo players were mixed on the DS Lite’s release.  On the one hand, it was a little upsetting to early DS adopters to see Nintendo release a hardware revision so soon after the platform’s launch.  On the other hand, the smaller DS Lite was attractive to new DS adopters who may have been on the fence about picking up the platform.  The system sold like crazy internationally, with huge system shortages at retail in Japan for months.  It looked like Nintendo was cementing its handheld reputation all over again.

On the other side, with the first hardware revision out for Nintendo, the gaming press asked Sony if they planned to release a new hardware revision for the Sony PSP.  Sony balked at the question, saying that they had no plans to revise the PSP’s hardware and that any further updates to the system would come in the form of free firmware updates, which up to that point had added a bunch of new features to the PSP including an Internet Browser.

Sony may have been holding firm on their support for the PSP but in reality their handheld was struggling.  While it saw a few great exclusive titles for the platform that rivaled the PS2 in graphical quality, instead of choosing to pick up the platform, gamers instead complained that these games were not being released on platforms that people already owned.  After the release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was such a critical hit, instead of being excited about the chance for a brand new game that could bring all of Liberty City on a portable system, gamers were furious they would need to buy a PSP to play the next Grand Theft Auto game, and that it didn’t release on the PS2.

The UMD movie format was also starting to reach its peak.  After the initial successful launch, more movie studios threw their weight behind the format and released many popular titles that the PSP’s players would be interested in buying, by 2006 Walmart,  one of the biggest retailers in the US, pulled their support for selling the format.  They claimed that the format’s low sales didn’t justify them stocking the format, although other retailers including Best Buy and Circuit City pledged to continue supporting it.  More titles were being released for the format on a regular basis, including popular movies like The Matrix and cult classics like TRON.  In fact, some studios were experimenting with what could be done with the format and released music albums like Nirvana’s Nevermind on UMD.  Heck, some studios even released Digital Graphic Novels on UMD, including an interactive Silent Hill graphic novel, and a graphic novel version of the original Metal Gear Solid game.

Even with all this behind them, by 2007 the Sony PSP still couldn’t compete against the outstanding sales figures of the Nintendo DS and DS Lite, and Sony started to work on the first major hardware redesign for the Sony PSP.  The plan was to make the system lighter and thinner than the original model PSP, take out what was never used, and bring in what players were asking for since the platform’s launch.  Sony improved the PSP’s CPU to make it able to cut down on game load times, removed the IR port on the top of the PSP, and redesigned the UMD slot to make the system slimmer.  But most important of all, Sony announced that their new model PSP would feature TV Out, the most requested feature players wanted, so PSP owners would finally get to play their PSP games on their SD and HDTVs.  Sadly, most of this functionality could not be brought over to the early PSP adopters, and they would need to upgrade their PSPs to take advantage of the system’s new features.  Dubbed the PSP-2000 in Japan, or PSP-2001 in North America, the new slim PSP was Sony’s best chance to finally overtake Nintendo’s dominance on the handheld market.

How did they do?  That’s a story for next time!

The Video Game Handheld War Part 6 September 7, 2013

The latest Video Game Handheld War was in full effect and the Nintendo DS had struck first blood.  Pretty soon, Nintendo had a hit in the handheld market with the release of Nintendogs, which did a great job in getting players to adopt the format and would go on to become one of the best selling titles for the entire DS platform.

On the other hand, all was not going well for the PSP.  After a successful launch, Sony’s PSP sales started to slow down.  Gamers knew their major problem was that they had a much more expensive platform with only a few titles that could take advantage of it.  While the DS had the same problem, it could rely on its Game Boy Advance slot to appease players until the DS library was expanded, which could play any Game Boy Advance game without much of a problem, a smart move on Nintendo’s part as they were still releasing new titles for the Game Boy Advance for some time even after the DS’s release.

The PSP on the other hand was seeing decent sales for PSP versions of their more popular franchises, and to everyone’s surprise, gamers found something special included with their copies of Wipeout Pure.  Some industrious players discovered that the game’s DLC menu functioned very similar to a webpage, and they determined that with a little ingenuity, they could get the PSP to visit any webpage they wanted to without the need to alter the system in any way!  Players were excited at the chance to have a mobile web browser that could run off a wireless internet connection, and the PSP could do it.  Not too long after the browser was discovered in Wipeout, Sony officially updated the PSP’s firmware using the device’s WiFI connection and made the platform’s Internet Browser accessible from the system’s menu.  Sony didn’t charge any extra for the update and all PSP’s were able to download and install it.  This kind of development was quite common for PC users to expect, but nearly unheard of on a gaming platform, let alone a portable one!

The UMD movie format was a very surprising development in the early days of the PSP.  Sony noted that they had a lot of success at launch by choosing to bundle copies of the Spider-Man 2 movie with the PSP on the UMD format.  A lot of early PSP adopters were choosing to buy the system just so they would have a way to watch movies while on the go in near DVD quality.  Unlike the game component of UMD, Sony chose to release the movie specifications for the format openly, allowing any movie studios who wished to release content on the format the opportunity to do so.  A lot of different movie studios showed interest in releasing content for the portable platform, but they were cautious about moving too much content for a platform that could be just having a brief boom.  If the format failed, the studios stood to lose a lot of money in the costs of unsold manufactured discs.

On UMD video’s official launch date only two movie studios were willing to invest in the UMD movie format at launch, Disney and Sony Pictures.  Some launch titles for the format included recent hits from the studio’s back catalog including Hellboy: Director’s Cut and Kill Bill Vol. 1, and to everyone’s surprise the format had a great launch.  The studios did a great job by picking some popular titles for the format’s launch, expecting that many gamers would be interested in rebuying their movies to play them while on the go.  Picture quality was pretty good on the PSP’s screen, and while Sony chose to release their films on a cropped widescreen format to fit them to the PSP screen, Disney decided to release their films in full widescreen, and let the user choose for themselves how they wanted to display them.

Game developers had more power to spare with the PSP’s system architecture and they were ready to release some titles that would truly take advantage of everything the PSP could do.  Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories may have seemed like it would be a smaller game, but it turned out to be a full fledged open world prequel to Grand Theft Auto 3.  All of Liberty City was completely recreated in detail, and while many players wished the PSP had a second analog stick, the camera control worked very well.  Planet Moon Studios, who had announced around the time of the PSP reveal that they would be a PSP exclusive studio, released Infected.  All of the great humor that Planet Moon had been known for was intact, even though this would be the most violent game that Planet Moon had worked on to date,

While the PSP was trying to make it clear to gamers they could produce a console experience on a handheld device, Nintendo knew they had a handheld system with a unique control system and display, and they were going to make every one of their games to be a unique DS experience.  In late 2005, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: Wild World, a portable entry in their widely successful Animal Crossing series and one of the first games to take advantage of Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection, which allowed DS players to play their games online.

Both the PSP and the DS systems were selling.  The games that were coming to the platforms were getting critical hits, but Sony just couldn’t shake the fact that the DS was far less expensive, and had a unique control system that people were enjoying.  Sony decided to release a special bundle for the holiday season that would include a PSP with a whopping 1GB Memory Stick.  The bundle cost $299 US, but this was in a time when flash memory was very expensive, and some people thought of it as a decent deal since they would need to have a Memory Stick with decent storage capacity in order to get the most out of the PSP’s capabilities.

The first year had ended and the Nintendo DS was still ahead of the Sony PSP.  While Sony was still behind in the first year, the UMD format was a surprising success and more movie studios, including Warner Bros, were starting to release movies for the PSP alongside their DVD versions.  But this war was just beginning, and both Nintendo and Sony had a lot more planned for the road ahead.  Stay tuned for next time, when we talk about Nintendo’s first major hardware revision to the Nintendo DS, and how Sony’s UMD bubble finally burst.

The Video Game Handheld War Part 5 August 26, 2013

The Nokia N-Gage was by all intents and purposes a complete failure.  By the time the next generation of the Video Game Handheld War started to kick into gear, Nokia was nowhere to be found.  Instead, the cell phone company decided to incorporate N-Gage branding into several of their new cell phone models, offering customers the chance to download games through their carrier.  This new N-Gage store didn’t last very long, as by this point, more cell phone companies and providers were offering these services.

On the dedicated game handheld front, Nintendo was firing up development of the successor to the Game Boy Advance, which would be in a lot of ways, the first true successor to the Game Boy line that started fifteen years earlier.  Taking a page from Gunpai Yokoi’s original Game & Watch designs, Nintendo designed a truly revolutionary new type of handheld system that the West had never seen before, a dual screen system.  It would fold in two just like a Game Boy Advance SP would, but in a fit of genius, the new handheld would feature two backlit screens with one screen being touch capable.  You wouldn’t need a System Link cable anymore, as it would have internal wireless support that could connect the handheld to either another handheld locally or a wireless hotspot for online access.  Even with having to render two screens and touch inputs, the system’s graphics would be comparable to a Nintendo 64.  It would also have a Game Boy Advance slot so gamers would not need to choose between Nintendo’s systems when on the go.  The new system became known as the Nintendo DS, a fitting name as only something this completely different in design could put an end to the Game Boy’s lifecycle.

However, Nintendo would not be fighting this battle alone.  Technology company Sony had won the previous two console generations with the highly-successful Playstation and Playstation 2 gaming systems, and now Sony wanted to dominate the handheld market Nintendo had controlled unilaterally.  Sony believed the time was right to offer an alternative device to a market that was growing up.  Nintendo, and their properties like Super Mario Bros and Pokémon still had a kid-friendly image attached to them, and like the N-Gage before them, Sony believed that there was a market who had not decided to enter the handheld race quite yet, who had previously chosen to purchase Playstation systems.  Sony planned to manufacture a multi-purpose portable system which would have slightly more power than an original Playstation, but slightly less power than a PS2.  Like the DS, it would use WiFi for local and online multiplayer, but more than that, it could receive system updates with new features down the line.  As this device epitomized everything about Sony’s Playstation mantra on a handheld format, what better name for it than the Playstation Portable?

Sony developed a new proprietary disc format for the system’s games called UMD for Universal Media Disc, which was based on DVD technology and could offer much more storage than Nintendo’s previous game carts could.  In fact the UMD format could also store more than just games, it could hold movies or music in a pinch, and offered some interesting possibilities for the PSP down the road.  The problem was the UMD format was read-only memory, the PSP would need some other storage medium for save games and downloadable content.  To solve this problem, Sony included a slot for their Memory Stick Pro Duo storage device, the exact same popular storage used by Sony’s cameras, and if a customer had used the Memory Stick on multiple Sony devices, it would be able to display the photos on it.   The device’s screen would not be able to support touch controls, but it was pretty big and supported widescreen gameplay.  In all, this was a Sony branded device through and through.

The Nintendo DS launched first at a suggested price of $149 US and started to sell like mad.  The system’s graphical capabilities were ever apparent right off the bat as a launch title for the DS would be a port of Super Mario 64, one of the greatest games released for that platform.  A demo version of Metroid Prime: Hunters, the first handheld game of the highly successful Metroid Prime series, was bundled with every launch model of the Nintendo DS, and although the final version of Metroid Prime: Hunters would be delayed a bit the Nintendo DS sold like hotcakes.  Nintendo made some great decisions with the platform and people were totally loving the device’s touch capable second screen.  As the DS lacked any analog stick, some developers chose to use the second screen to simulate analog control, similar to how a game developer simulates a control stick on a touch-screen smartphone nowadays.

The PSP launched a few months after the Nintendo DS with what has been described as one of the best launch lineups since the launch of the Sega Dreamcast.  Sony did a mega marketing campaign featuring the latest hit from Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out”.  A brand new system would launch at the price of $249 US and include a whopping 32MB Memory Stick Pro Duo, a set of earbud headphones with remote control, and a protective sleeve.  Ridge Racer, Metal Gear Ac!d, and ports of popular EA Sports titles all launched alongside the platform, and other games like Mercury and Infected were in development and were promised to be coming later.  In North America, a UMD copy of Spider-Man 2, one of the highest rated movies of the year, was bundled with every launch model of the PSP.  The PSP may have come with only one analog stick, but the system’s games would make you forget you even needed one.

After launch, the PSP saw immediate sales to die-hard Sony fans, gamers who were looking for a more mature handheld than what Nintendo would offer, and gamers interested in the platform’s exclusive titles.  However, The PSP was still $100 US more than the Nintendo DS, and Nintendo’s flawless handheld track record spoke volumes about their experience.  While the PSP had its loyalists, the Nintendo DS continued to outsell the PSP.  Everything about the DS was designed from the ground up to be for games, wheras the PSP tried to be a multi-purpose device for portable electronic use that just so happened to be really good at playing games.  However, this was just the beginning of the story, and Sony wasn’t out for the count just yet.  On top of that, Nintendo wasn’t going to rest on their success as Sony started to gather momentum.  What happened next?  That is a story for next time.

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!

The Video Game Handheld War Part 1 August 5, 2013

That’s right, we’re bringing back the GameXcess.net History section, and what better way to bring it back than to talk about the other component of the gaming console wars, handheld game systems.  Previously, anachronos and I had talked about the various console wars from all the generations that we were around for, but that was all we had discussed, home consoles.  Well, home consoles are not the only front for the gaming wars, and today we’re going to talk about the battle behind handheld game systems.

Mobile or handheld gaming devices go back a very long time, but they have only been electronic for the past forty or so years.  They’re basically just an extension for the human desire for recreation during boring activities like travel.  For as long as human beings have been mobile, we have desired to take games with us on our journey.  A person cannot go for days either working hard or doing nothing, we crave mental stimulation and relaxation in order to maintain mental focus.  Games have provided us with both stimulation and relaxation, and there’s probably a reason why there are so many stories about cowboys or western settlers playing card games.

Of course as our technology started to improve, circuits got smaller and cheaper to make, and a deck of cards became replaced by a small board of microprocessors and LCD screen.  By the late 70s, bored businessmen in Japan took to playing with their pocket calculators for entertainment.  Gunpai Yokoi, who worked for Nintendo, thought there was a better way to entertain people on the go.  Nintendo’s motto has always been “Creating Something Unique”, and he set out to do exactly that.  Nintendo themselves started off as a toy and playing card company before they started developing video games.   As technology progressed, Nintendo started with their first portable devices, the Game & Watch from creator Gunpai Yokoi.

All of a sudden, video games could go mobile, but there were limitations.  You would have to buy a new handheld device for each individual game.  Other companies across the world tried their hand at mobile gaming devices of their own to capitalize on the market of technically savvy young people, but it wasn’t until the late 80s when multiple companies decided to enter uncharted territory and release portable game consoles.  Unlike the mobile games of the past, these new handheld systems would be game consoles of their own, and could play a wide array of game cartridges the player purchased separately.

Very quickly, these companies knew they would be competing with each other to get their handheld into the hands of gamers, and several tried to do this by boasting improved system specifications or other gimmicks, because they thought that in reality, a handheld console war would be decided as much by the system as it would by the games.  For this first part of the Video Game Handheld War, we’re going to talk about the first handheld war that I was a part of, and that was the battle between the Nintendo Game Boy and Sega Game Gear.

It was the late 80s and Nintendo’s NES was enjoying a near total market share in people’s homes and Nintendo wanted to bring a portable gaming device to the market.  Calling it the Game Boy, it was designed to be a complementary device to Nintendo’s NES which could bring many of Nintendo’s classic franchises mobile.  The Game Boy had a monochrome screen, stereo sound, and a very similar button configuration to the NES controller,  It was equipped with a D-pad, A and B buttons, and Start and Select Buttons.  Nintendo was banking on brand recognition and awesome first party launch titles to sell the system.  Launching at the height of the summer, the Game Boy was expected to be a hot item.  Now gamers would finally have the chance to play games like Super Mario Land and Tetris on the go, and games could even support two-players through a unique link cable.

Game Boy launched with a monochrome screen and one of the best pack-in titles a handheld ever had, the Game Boy version of Tetris, which featured a great multiplayer mode which took full advantage of the Game Boy’s included Link Cable, and cameo appearances by Nintendo heroes Mario and Luigi.  By including a Link Cable and and bundling a 2-player game, it was clear that Nintendo wanted to showcase the 2-player functionality of the Game Boy to the early adopters.  The Game Boy took 4-AA batteries, but they lasted longer than you would think.  You could get several hours of gaming on just a single set of batteries, and there was an optional AC adapter for when you wanted to play games at home.  I cannot tell you how happy I was the Christmas I received my Game Boy and copy of Super Mario Land.  I spent many summer road trips helping Mario battle the minions of Tatanga.  In fact, it was the first Mario game I had ever been able to complete.

Now, I would be neglectful to mention that there were two other portable gaming systems which launched around the same time as the Nintendo Game Boy, and they were the Atari Lynx and NEC TurboExpress.  I’m not really going to talk about them very much, as they really had no baring on the handheld gaming market in general.  Neither the Atari Lynx nor the NEC TurboExpress seemed to gain enough traction to be competitive against Nintendo’s Game Boy.  In fact, I can’t remember a single person who actually had either of these devices, or even talked about them.  All my discussions with friends growing up, if our conversation would turn to gaming, would be about our desire for a Game Boy, or raving about it if we were fortunate enough to have one.

The TurboExpress, while it had decent hardware, was far too expensive to be competitive.  On top of that, it was prone to hardware issues, even on new units.  The Atari Lynx, while it lasted in the market much longer, had a full color screen which to this day is still considered difficult to view, and was a problem that wasn’t fixed in the revised Lynx II.  The Lynx survived into the era of the Atari Jaguar, but I never thought of it as a competitive product, especially given when the next gaming handheld entered the ring to try to take Nintendo’s crown.

As the 16-bit war fired up, Sega planned to complement their extremely successful Genesis console with a handheld of their own, the Sega Game Gear.  By all intents and purposes, the Game Gear was an improvement on everything that the Game Boy was.  It boasted a larger screen with full color display.  Heck, the screen was so good, Sega planned to sell a TV tuner so people could watch broadcast TV channels with it while on the go.

As far as I can remember, the Sega Game Gear was the first handheld console that was seriously perched to take Nintendo’s crown.  Not only did it have the better system specs over the Game Boy, it had the full first party backing of Sega, which had found a valuable mascot in Sonic the Hedgehog.  In fact, Sega included a copy of the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog with each Game Gear to show front and center just what the Game Gear could do graphically.  I have to admit, having seen the system in action myself back in the day, it was surely capable of producing the amazing graphics that I had seen Genesis games produce.  However, the Sonic the Hedgehog game Sega included with the Game Gear was not a port of the original, and the biggest thing I remember from that game was how frustrating it was that I was unable beat the game’s first boss!

While the Game Gear had impressive features, looking back on it there was a lot that was wrong with the system.  I can’t remember the Game Gear ever getting a library of games that was able to compete with Nintendo’s Game Boy.  In fact, the only other game my sister purchased for the system back in its heyday was a port of NHL Hockey, which to this day remains the only sports game I was able to score a goal in.  While by all intents and purposes, Sega had made a superior system over the Game Boy, better technology is not always what wins a console war, and while Sega had succeeded in making a more advanced portable system, they had neglected one of the major concerns about portable electronic devices, battery life.

I think many people can remember how bad it was in the early 90s when it came to power consumption.  This was just as high drain devices like CD-players had started to hit the market, so many people were aware that a pack of AA-batteries wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours of regular use.  However, for a portable game system like the Game Gear, being a high-drain device that was competing against a much more power efficient system like the Game Boy was a huge black mark.  The whole idea for a portable device is that people intend to use them on the go, and if your device is unable to withstand the duration of a long road trip, gamers are going to grab something else to play that will.

In the end, Sega could not compete with Nintendo’s Game Boy, and the Game Boy took the first handheld gaming crown, with the Game Gear taking a far second.  In fact, the Game Boy was so competitive in its market, Nintendo continued to support the device for years as other handhelds tried to take its crown, but that’s a story for another time.