The top ten handhelds that never made it

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2004 is going to be a fascinating year for handheld gaming. Sony is entering into the handheld space with its PSP and Nintendo aims to double its dominance with the Nintendo DS. It's great to see new products enter a market that has been dominated by one system: Nintendo's Game Boy.

The forthcoming entries into mobile gaming have made us reminisce about all the systems that tried to grab a piece of the action, but failed. Some of these devices were really cool and ahead of their time, while others were ill-conceived units that never had a chance in hell.

News source: GameSpy

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#1 Digital Oracle on 31 Jan 2004 - 14:17

Interesting..................

(3 replies) #2 .Atlantis on 31 Jan 2004 - 14:55

old :sleep: I saw this about a week ago

#2.1 Dazzla on 31 Jan 2004 - 15:02

Funny that seeing as it was posted on the 26th which is 4 days ago.

#2.2 BTallack on 31 Jan 2004 - 17:01

Didn't you know, anyone who says it's old news obviously saw it long before us common folk did.

#2.3 radixvir on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:16

maybe he wrote it and didnt post the article on gamespy until 4 days ago so he could tell us it was old

#3 tiffer17 on 31 Jan 2004 - 15:34

somehow i dont think nintendo is gonna lose the handheld market....they will come up sith something to rival the PSP

(1 reply) #4 DoeJohn531 on 31 Jan 2004 - 15:44

Yep nintendo will have the market for awhile

#4.1 NateZ on 01 Feb 2004 - 06:16

thats proabably what the thinking was behind their consoles too...

(1 reply) #5 iomayho on 31 Jan 2004 - 15:47

i had a game gear..., very nice handheld.., the only two drawbacks are that its slightly oversized, and eats battery like hell....!

#5.1 XiXora on 31 Jan 2004 - 16:57

I had one too

if you had a battery pack... it was even more oversized and only lasted 30 mins hehe

(4 replies) #6 Lingwo on 31 Jan 2004 - 15:54

Lynx was my favourite handheld as a child, i used to play APB for hours (near a power socket). yeah it was massive but it had all the cool arcade games on it.

#6.1 pjak on 31 Jan 2004 - 17:53

i agree, the Atari Lynx was the best portable game system, especially as every game was in COLOR (not puke yellow and black) from the beginning. it's a shame that they are no more, thanks to Nintendo and others. the lynx is still more enjoyable than the latest gameboy offerings. it's funny that the latest gameboy has the same shape as the lynx, especially when Nintendo originally promised that gameboy's first shape was forever.

I am pleased Nintendo are now starting to get new competion, in the form of Nokia N-Gage, Sony PSP and others. Maybe we will see some real powerful latest technology from forthcoming portable game systems, instead of one lame gameboy after another.

Last edited by 7205 on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:42

#6.2 Mav Phoenix on 31 Jan 2004 - 20:48

^ What an idiot, the GB has come a long way from its start.

#6.3 pjak on 31 Jan 2004 - 21:52

the LYNX was the best from the start, and gameboy has seemed to follow in LYNX's footsteps (just Nintendo managed themselves better), but not really exceeding the tech, even now.

why did it take SO long for the gameboy to go COLOR, when lynx had it from day one??

#6.4 yayaba on 01 Feb 2004 - 00:06

Because Nintendo was concerned with battery life. I doubt Lithium-Ion was as prevalent as is now.

By keeping it B&W Nintendo was able to maximize game time. That's why every other color machine that was out during the ole' GB days only lasted a few hours at most...

(1 reply) #7 krazeguy on 31 Jan 2004 - 17:56

Yeah go Lynx! Did you have that game which had 4 sub games, Skatboarding, Volly Ball, Surfing etc.

Surfing one was the coolest, although it was lame compared to todays standards.

#7.1 pjak on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:00

yeah, that was California Games (normally supplied with the system). it's still pretty fun! surfing, bmx, volleyball and skateboarding, all in one!

#8 Dazzla on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:10

I've still got my Neo Geo Pocket Color and there were some awesome games available on that like Card Fighters Clash!

#9 radixvir on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:14

game gear was a failure? i thought it did alright even though never reaching ninteno

i got one sitting here with the tv tuner

#10 Zelpus on 31 Jan 2004 - 18:35

I still have my turbo express somewhere, that thing was awesome.

#11 tiffer17 on 31 Jan 2004 - 20:13

i still have my game gear with the sonic games...those were the days

#12 Ben_G on 31 Jan 2004 - 21:01

I still use my game gear for TV with the tuner and i use the big battery pack

#13 dougkinzinger on 31 Jan 2004 - 21:22

Great article, enjoyed reading it. I too still have my TV Tuner in my GameGear; it's why I bought it ten years ago!

#14 rekka on 01 Feb 2004 - 04:58

yeh, nice article. I had none of them, but I want a Neo Geo pocket

#15 bangbang023 on 01 Feb 2004 - 05:59

Excellent read.

#16 nic on 01 Feb 2004 - 08:04

man it would be neet to own all of those. Checking ebay nnnnnn...........now

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