Do you think NS is a handheld or home console? Although Lao Ren has always insisted that this is a home machine (after all, the game lineup is also a home machine level), I am afraid that 99% of the friends still firmly believe that this is a handheld machine.
Since the advent of the old first generation handheld Game & Watch, to the later GB and DS families, the old ren has not been defeated in this field. In the past forty years, many brave people have been born to try to challenge this "evil dragon", but they have fallen at the feet of Lao Ren.
Today, take your friends to know these former Nintendo knife ghosts.
Game Gear
GG, it is estimated that many small partners laughed when they saw this name. Of course, at that time, GG did not have the meaning of this now.
It is said that when Nintendo's GB was listed that year, although there were some other brands of handhelds, it was not a climate because there were no games. As the number of games on GB gradually increased, especially when GB was listed in the United States, Lao Ren pulled out the first game "Tetris", and GB quickly detonated the market.
(At that time) not long ago, Nintendo got the copyright of "Tetris", resulting in SEGA's MD version of "Tetris" directly stillborn, the cassettes were completed, and finally could only be destroyed, this wave of loss SEGA that is two eyes rolled.
Now seeing that Nintendo is relying on "Tetris" to mix up in the handheld market, SEGA is so angry that it is about to vomit blood: "No, you can't let Nintendo earn this money, Lao Tzu also wants to do handheld!" ”。
So I ordered people to work overtime and put out this Game Gear handheld. The configuration alone is much more luxurious than GB, especially the color screen with backlight, which made many players hungry at the time. In contrast, the GB is not only backlit, but also a monochrome screen.
However, this game console has a fatal drawback - it costs electricity. Color screen, backlight, processor these are all power consumption heads, eventually resulting in players needing 6 AAA batteries to drive this big brick, and the battery life is only 3-5 hours... Don't look at the NS only has such a little battery life, but the NS is a lithium battery, this thing is a dry battery.
However, GameGear became the favorite of some local players at that time because it could play some SEGA arcade games, ending with 10.62 million copies sold. In fact, it is not bad, compared to other competitors in history, it is also in the third place.
You think SEGA's handheld road ends here? Not. Later, SEGA also developed a handheld machine called Genesis Nomad, which is generally called "nomadic herders" in China. This is a heavyweight, basically a mobile version of SEGA's home console MD. Then, with sales of 1 million, violent death...
In the end, SEGA played GG in laughter and left. I don't know if he's talking about GG or remembering GG.
NeoGeo Pocket
NeoGeo should have been heard by many players, it is an arcade substrate of SNK, the most famous in China is "King of Fighters 97".
NeoGeo Pocket (NGP) is quite intimidating to see the name, and there is a feeling of being able to play arcade games on handhelds. It's like Nintendo releasing a new NS called the Switch 3090, turning on the machine and looking at the old processor [Angry]
Then again, the performance of this handheld is really good. It further learns the lessons of the GG and nomads who died tragically a few years ago, requiring only 2 No. 5 electricity and an endurance of 20 hours.
Looks like a spike in GB, right? Let's take a look at the time. This NGP was released in 1998, and at that time, Nintendo had already released GBC for color screens, and epic games such as "Pokémon Gold and Silver" detonated the world.
SNK saw that it was called a suffocation: "Don't you players like to be light and durable, I made it for you, why doesn't anyone buy it?" ”。
So I worked overtime and drove out the color screen version of NGP Color. However, at this time, the NGP trend has gone, players travel between Guandu and Chengdu, between the four seasons and the ancient and modern, and adventure in the wonderland... Not many people are looking at this NGPC at all.
In the end, NGP and color NGPC, combined, only sold 2 million sets, and few players still remember it today. Oh, and now you can buy a collection of emulators for NGP games on NS...
Wonder Swan
Of all the losers, WonderSwan is one of the more decent. Domestic players generally call it "Magic Swan" or abbreviated WS.
Before Bandai and Namco had cooperated, Bandai, as a toy manufacturer, of course, also saw the fat meat of the handheld market. At this time, they looked at a person who had been the founder of Nintendo's entry into the game console industry, but also left Nintendo because of the failure of the "handheld" VB. He is Junpei Yokoi.
After coming to Bandai, he used his successful design concept to create this artifact swan here, trying to recreate the myth of the handheld machine.
Unfortunately, Mr. Junpei Yokoi was not able to witness the release of the WS in the end, and died in a car accident in 1997. There are also rumors that Nintendo sent a killer to disguise the incident as a car accident. Of course, there are countless rumors on the Internet, so I won't go into detail here.
Even if the original WS is equipped with a black-and-white LCD screen, but with a full 30 hours of battery life, the first 50 games (including "Final Fantasy", etc.), novel console design, and quite close to the people's price, it still won the favor of many consumers.
This handheld has two pairs of cross keys on the left side, which the player can hold horizontally like the GBA, and some games support vertical screen operation. This was really a very new way to play at the time.
Later, Bandai also launched a color screen version of WSC, as well as a screen upgrade version of SwanCrystal, a bit like the upgrade of NS OLED [see]
Although they eventually sold only 3.5 million units, they were already good results compared to other handheld machines that had no ashes left. More crucially, although WS's life was short, it still gave birth to many high-quality games, so that it is still the love of many nostalgic players.
PlayStation Vita
Before the Switch was born, the PSV was arguably the most powerful handheld (not counting gaming phones, of course).
However, this famous princess was not able to defend half of the country laid for her by her predecessor PSP. But compared to the unstable handhelds of the past, the PSV didn't fail because of its own hardware.
On the one hand, there is the step-by-step pressure of the old rival Nintendo, and at the same time, it also has to face the huge pressure in the field of mobile phones, and more importantly, PSV has not been born for a long time, and it has become a child whose father does not hurt his mother and does not love. Sony only cares about her life and raising, and he is not good at giving her a game, and the other seven aunts and eight aunts are even more indifferent to her.
In the end, PSV sales were only 16.1 million units, which was much different from PSP. On the contrary, in recent years, because PSV has become a simulator magic machine in the hands of many players, her price has continued to rise. In previous years, the lowest was only 600, and now most of them are running to 800, and some rare and beautiful colors can even be doubled [stunned]
The only PSP that escaped the disaster
So many brave people who have tried to slay dragons throughout the dynasties have been beaten to the bone by Nintendo.
However, only PSP, in the game lineup with the old Ren back and forth. Although the sales volume was still crushed by the 150 million units of NDS, and finally returned home, the PSP not only came back alive, but also greatly frustrated Nintendo's vigor and was sung by future generations.
I'm afraid that many NS players have been asked "Do you play PSP here", which is enough to prove its success.
There are many players who feel that the success of PSP is only in China, but the global sales of nearly 80 million are already very scary figures. It's like in a running race, the first and second runners have broken the world record, you can't always say that the second place "runs slowly", right?
Especially at the end of the NDS, because of the weak machine, more and more games ran to the PSP. And because the screen resolution of 3DS is very low later, lower than PSP, many players talk about 3DS, the comparison is not PSV at all but PSP [cover your face] and even so far pick up a small P, those screens are still not outdated, those games can still bring infinite happiness.
In fact, there are still many players in the entire handheld history that have not been introduced, because most of them have died without even knowing their names [cover their faces] Nowadays, there are more and more win palm machines on the market, and even Steam has personally taken the lead in making Steam Deck. Although it can only become a toy for a small number of core players in the end, since Sony's exit, Nintendo is the only one, and it is also a good thing to have some competitors.
Which old handheld machines have you played with, and which one is your favorite?