Portable Systems

In the early days of video games, the major companies all produced competing hand held systems. Nintendo has long held the edge in this sector starting with the incredibly successful Gameboy hand held system. Even while other companies developed more advanced hardware with color screens, the Nintendo Gameboy, with its black and white screen was very successful. Most of its success (much like that of the NES) can be attributed to the excellent quality of games produced for the system.

Early portable systems:

• Gameboy - 1989
• Atari Lynx - 1989 (first color back-lit portable system)
• TurboExpress - 1990 (featured color screen and was the only system capable of playing the same games used with its counterpart console system, the TurboGrafx-16)
• Gamegear - 1991 (essentially contained the hardware of the Sega Master System)
• Sega Nomad - 1995 (capable of playing Sega Genesis cartridges)

Image of Gameboy is in the Public Domain. Source.

Image of TurboExpress is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Source.