Handheld Electronic Games - Handhelds Today

Handhelds Today

Despite the increasing sophistication of handheld consoles such as the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, dedicated handhelds continue to find a niche. Among technophilic gamer subcultures like Akiba-kei, unique control schemes like that of the 2008 Tuttuki Bako have been proven salable due to novelty, however dedicated handhelds such as this are uncommon. Adult fads such as blackjack, poker, and Sudoku also spawn dozens of original and knockoff handheld games. Devices like Brick Game include games using the block grid as a crude, low resolution dot matrix screen. Such devices often have many variations of Tetris and sometimes even other kinds of games like racing or even space shooters, such as Space Invaders, where one box projects boxes at the enemy boxes. The most advanced of these designs can easily have more than 20 distinct games implemented and feature multi-channel sound, voice synthesis or digital sounds samples, and internal CMOS memory which can save the current game progress and high scores when the system is turned off. Many of these handhelds with a dozen such games are marketed as having hundreds or even thousands of games, though the vast majority are just different speed and difficulty settings. The most basic can now be sold for less than the cost of a glossy magazine.

At the lowest end of handheld game sophistication, there is also the "avoid/catch the falling objects" game. These games are controlled with 2 movement buttons, and sport a screen with a column of player positions, and rows of projectiles to animate towards the player. The player and projectiles could be any picture, from tanks dodging missiles to a dog catching sausages.