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Remember when it seemed like dedicated handheld gaming consoles were everywhere?

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Like, who didn't have a Game Boy? Me actually, I had a Game Gear, but the point is,

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now our choices for mobile gaming seem to be either

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playing on your smartphone or buying a Nintendo Switch,

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which honestly is more of a hybrid console than a true handheld anyway.

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So how did we get to this paradoxical situation

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where mobile gaming is more popular than ever before

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and yet we're super limited in our choice of platform?

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It helps to look at some relevant history, which is actually mostly the story of how Nintendo

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pushed its rivals more or less completely out of the market.

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Nintendo initially recognized that there was a real market

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for mobile gaming, not long after the success of early handheld games from companies like Mattel.

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These took the form of single-game handheld toys that weren't true consoles.

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Instead, you had to buy a new unit for each game you wanted to play.

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Nintendo's first foray into gaming on the go was with a lineup of toys called Game & Watch,

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which creator Gunpei Yokoi thought up while watching a board businessman playing with a calculator on the train.

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The Game & Watch series was wildly popular and helped the market for handheld games surge,

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not to mention that it helped establish Nintendo as a handheld gaming brand in the minds of consumers

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ahead of the launch of the original Game Boy in 1989.

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Now, the Game Boy wasn't even the first console

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with interchangeable cartridges. That title went to Milton Bradley's microvision

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that had actually come out 10 years prior, even though it was actually a dumb terminal

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with all the processing handled inside the cartridge itself.

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But unlike the microvision 16 by 16 resolution display,

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the Game Boy could handle detailed 160 by 102 pixel images,

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and perhaps even more importantly, it was accessible.

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You see, there were actually some cool portable contraptions

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that came out before the Game Boy. The VTEC game mate from 1983 actually had 3D,

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complete with binocular-like eye cups, but the Game Boy had long battery life

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and was relatively affordable. These characteristics, along with a solid library of games,

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helped the Game Boy fend off technologically superior rivals,

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like the Sega Game Gear, for instance. It had a color screen and even an optional TV tuner,

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which you might think would help justify its higher price of $150 compared to the Game Boy's 90.

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But the battery life was terrible, and that was a big deal

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before built-in rechargeable batteries became common.

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There also just weren't many killer apps, partly because Nintendo got the lockdown

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on third-party game developers early on.

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You see, Nintendo often made third-party dev sign agreements

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not to release the same game for a competing platform

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for some period of time. So the Game Gear ended up just porting over

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lots of games from the Master System, the home console that preceded the Genesis,

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which wasn't enough to make the Game Gear a serious threat to Nintendo's dominance.

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Other systems, like the Atari Lynx and Turbo Express,

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faced similar issues and were even more expensive than the Game Gear.

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Then other competitors cut costs, but were based around unappealing gimmicks.

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For example, Tiger's Game.com from 1997

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was cheap and touted internet capability,

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but this was limited to a text-based service over a 14-4 kilobit connection that no games even used.

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Aside from those issues, bad timing also doomed other

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would-be Nintendo rivals. In 1995, Sega tried releasing a portable Genesis

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called the Nomad, but with more interesting home consoles around the corner,

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including Sega's own Saturn, people weren't terribly interested in a rehash

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of an aging platform. I guess it just hadn't been enough time yet.

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Then there was the Neo Geo Pocket Color from 1998,

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which was released at the height of Pokemon Mania. Between that and the fact that the Game Boy Advance

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was on its way in 2001, Nintendo already had the market cornered.

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The company brought us the innovative DS in 2004,

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and it was around this time that Sony tried to become a major competitor

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with its PlayStation Portable or PSP,

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which actually became a relative success due to its powerful internals,

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lovely screen, and solid lineup of games.

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But a big reason for the PSP's ultimate undoing was that it was trying to replicate

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the full PlayStation experience rather than building something

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completely with mobile gaming in mind. The Nintendo DS's dual-screen design, for example,

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would be awkward on a home console, looking at you, Wii U,

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but made a ton of sense in a handheld form factor. The PSP's successor, the PS Vita,

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ended up making the same mistakes, but unfortunately with an even worse game library,

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as Sony was far more concerned with its upcoming PlayStation 4,

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meaning that the 3DS became the dominant handheld until the Switch was released in 2017.

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Then when you consider how powerful smartphones were getting all that time,

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opening up more possibilities for gaming on what was already a do-it-all platform

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that you had in your pocket anyway, it's not surprising that dedicated gaming gadgets

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from companies not named Nintendo have mostly been squeezed out of the market

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to the point where we might not even be able to play snake on our graphing calculators anymore.

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Come on! Thanks for watching, guys. Like, dislike, check out our other videos,

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