Toys of Christmas Past - Part 13 - 1st Gen Handheld Electronic Games

Handheld Electronic Games - Various Manufacturers

Beginning in the Mid 1970's the trickle down effect of the console video games was such that it become possible and profitable for toy manufactures to produce hand held electronic (but not quite video) games.

The first successful game was by Mattel in 1976 called Auto Race.  This was a simulated Race car game using dots on an LED display.  You could move your car between lanes and try to avoid crashing into other cars.  You could also "shift", i.e. change gears to go faster or slower.

With the success of Auto Race, in 1977 Mattel introduce the first of two football games entitled simple Electronic football.  In this game, very crude by today's standards.  You had dots or dashes (again on an LED display) representing offensive and defensive players.  The goal was to "run" the ball and avoid being tackled (run into a dash), and eventually score a touchdown.  Like in real football you had 4 downs to try to advance to a first down.  This game was very popular and successful.

The success of Electronic football enticed other manufactures to try their hand at electronic games.  In 1978 Coleco a successful console game manufacturer put out another football game called Electronic Quarterback.  This game improved over the Mattel version by allowing both pass plays and run plays, as well as field goals.  It still used an LED display and crude dashes to represent players (however it was fun, I can attest to that, as I owned one of these games).

Electronic Quarterback commercial 1978

1978 also saw two other manufactures get into the handheld game market, that being Milton Bradley with Simon (and Pocket Simon - If you had LARGE pockets), and Parker Brothers with Merlin.

Simon - Milton Bradley

Pocket Simon

Merlin - Parker Brothers

Simon and Pocket Simon were clones of each other.  To play, the game would emit a pattern of colors (say blue, red, blue, green) and the players would have to replicate the pattern.  After the pattern grew to 6 or more it became quite challenging.  Merlin had 6 different games programmed in it, from Tic-Tac-Toe, to a black jack "13" game and a Echo game (a Merlin like game).  Both Simon and Merlin were quite successful.

This ultimately lead to a pocket game with inter-changeable games that being Microvision by Milton Bradley.    This was introduced in November of 1979.  The interesting thing about this system was that the CPU was in the game cartridge, not the base unit.  The base unit itself was quite expensive as were the games.  There were about 12 games in all.  Things like Blockbuster (breakout kind of game), bowling, pin ball, Star Trek Phaser Strike, and a few others.

Microvision Unit with the Block Buster (Breakout) game attached

All the games that were available for the Microvision unit.

Comparison of the size of Microvision and Play Station Portable

Lack of games, cost of the system and games, and problems with the hardware doomed this system.  Milton Bradley showed it was technically possible to have a system with interchangeable games but was not quite practical.     It was a system truly ahead of it's time and that unfortunately was one of it's problems.  It would take another 5 to 7 years for the right combination of hardware,  reliability and price, to finally get it right in the late 1980's.  In 1989 Nintendo introduced the Game Boy which has been a successful line for over 20 years.  But that is another story which may be the subject of a future post ......

Nintendo's Original Game Boy.  Black and White LCD monitor and interchangeable cartridges