Nintendo Handhelds Ranked Worst-to-Best: Part 1
With special guest Virtual Boy
Let’s get something straight before I delve into the relatively inoffensive world of Nintendo handhelds. I’m a console man. Always have been, likely always will be, at least until holodecks become commercially available.
Oh sure, I’ve played a handheld or two in my time. The Game Boy on that trip to Texas, where it seemed like we crossed the same barren plain over and over again. My cousin and I, brothers in boredom, gorged as much as our humble battery supply would allow. He also had a Game Gear, saved for rare occasions on that two-week journey. Sometimes you’re tired of grayscale, only Sonic and Tails in color will do.
Every so often on a plane, I’ll switch on the Nintendo DS and play a Professor Layton game, the millennial equivalent of those Sudoku or crossword books at Walgreens. Solving puzzles while sipping coffee and flying 30,000 feet above the planet is a beautiful and surreal experience, one that should be treasured, not replicated often. Such is the extent of my handheld gaming experiences in modern day.
But I realize I’m strange. I remember going to the Midwest Gaming Classic 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Everywhere I went, people had their 3DSes at the ready, Streetpassing and playing games while the world went by around them. God bless and no judgment, that sort of activity just feels foreign to me.
When I play a game, I want to sit on a comfy couch, look at a large screen, and get enveloped in whatever world awaits me. Handhelds don’t provide that same level of immersion, they can’t, I’d be a fool to expect them to. For me, they’re like focusing on a side dish when the main course is sitting right there, infinitely richer and more substantial. Why settle for potatoes when the steak’s calling your name?
Maybe I sound like a crank or a curmudgeon, but that’s not my intent. Nintendo’s handheld devices are crafted with love and hundreds of millions of people around the world have found much joy in them and their games. The following ranking isn’t from an expert, but an outsider peering into a world that he’s not completely familiar or comfortable with. I don’t always understand, but I’m willing to learn.
#8 - VIRTUAL BOY
Is the Virtual Boy a handheld? No, but it’s not a console either. It’s a portable tabletop headset, a headache-inducing nightmare that has no reason to exist. You can take it with you onto the bus, the train, or in the back seat of the car, so long as you juggle it on your lap. 6 AA batteries will ensure you too can look like a fool in front of your fellow man, but why would you do this? To be someone, to be different, to be “seen”? Keep it at home on the kitchen table where it belongs, next to the junk mail, the cat litter you forgot to put away, and the half-drunk plastic water bottles your kids refuse to finish.
When you peer into the Virtual Boy’s caverns, you’re greeted with layers of ominous red and black. Red lines, red sprites, everywhere a red red, the only color permitted to pierce the darkness. Perhaps the Virtual Boy is a hell simulation, only with Mario and friends merrily playing tennis in the dead of night.
I don’t understand the technical wizardry within the Virtual Boy, only that the system uses a parallax effect to make the games appear like they’re in full 3D, despite still being in 2D. Even as a kid, I knew the Virtual Boy’s promised revolution was all lies. I wasn’t being transported into new dimensions of excellence, Red Alert, Teleroboxer, and its brethren were all farces. Worse yet, within fifteen minutes of play, my head was pounding, my lips were chapped, and after I drew my head away from the display, red was my constant companion for a few minutes afterward. Such was the lot of those who sampled the Virtual Boy’s unholy wares.
Even at age 10 - a time when I considered sour candy and Batman Forever to be the peak of civilization - I never wanted the Virtual Boy. It was the rare Nintendo misstep, an experiment I had no interest in participating in. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one. A year after its release, Nintendo discontinued Virtual Boy, and all retailers lowered the price to get extra stock out of their stores. So far as I know, there was no funeral, and outside of some fan sites, no one ever cared about Virtual Boy again.
#7 - GAME BOY COLOR
The Game Boy Color should have been as revolutionary as color TV. No more Howdy Doody reruns in black-and-white, kids, you can see that creepy puppet’s fiery red hair now. But the successor to the wildly popular Game Boy failed to light the gaming world on fire, and I know why.
Two months before the Game Boy Color washed up on North American shores, Pokémon Red & Blue came out for the original Game Boy and conquered the world. Why pay for a brand-new system when two life-defining titles are on a handheld you’ve already owned for the last eight years? The Game Boy Color sold well enough its first couple of years, sure, but it would take Pokemon Gold & Silver, the sequels to Red & Blue and the first Pokemon games in full-fledged color, to make the handheld worth purchasing.
Like all Nintendo handhelds, the Game Boy Color has its fair share of solid titles. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Wario Land 3, Metal Gear Solid, Mario Golf / Tennis, and the Zelda titles really bring the boys to the yard. But even more than Game Boy Advance, DS, etc, the Game Boy Color was pummeled by a deluge of licensed dreck. Austin Powers, Looney Tunes, Star Wars, and all the early 2000s television/film cartoon properties are among the offenders here, but peer at the Wikipedia GBC game list and you’ll see hundreds more. Refuse as far as the eye can see.
The Game Boy Color did indeed bring color to the Game Boy line, but it also brought childishness and immaturity, as evidenced by the five-year-old scrawl font used for the word “color” on the system’s logo. The original Game Boy was marketed towards everyone. Tetris could be played and enjoyed by adults and children of all ages. The Game Boy Color was marketed towards little kids and Pokémon fans and received lots of worthless licensed crap like Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo Jojo that no one wanted to play. The Game Boy Color doesn’t offend, per say, but it does disappoint.
#6 - GAME & WATCH
Imagine playing video games on the go in the late 1970s. Such an idea must have seemed like a dream. Unless you were blessed enough to own an Atari 2600, arcades were the only place to find games in those days. You couldn’t very well shuffle a Space Invaders cabinet out the door and onto the bus for a joyride. You’d hurt your back, get the cops called on you. And anyway, the bus doesn’t have any outlets. What a hassle.
In 1980, Nintendo shut down this absurd line of thinking with their Game & Watch handhelds. From Wikipedia: “Each Game & Watch [unit] was only able to play one game, due to the use of a segmented LCD display being pre-printed with an overlay. The speed and responsiveness of the games was also limited by the time it took the LCD to change state.” Every Game & Watch unit also came with a clock, and later, an alarm, for the wayward salaryman who had to be reminded when to stop playing Ball or Octopus
The Game & Watch series contained multitudes. Single-screen handhelds of varying colors and sizes, vertical multi-screen handhelds that resemble rudimentary DSes, and tiny tabletop arcades with abnormally small controls. There was the bizarre Panorama series, the elongated Super Color line, the Micro Vs. series with two controllers attached, controllers that look like they’re ready to break with the slightest sibling altercation. Remember when Mario was a blue-collar worker, laboring away for his daily bread? Game & Watch remembers, with titles like Mario Bombs Away and Mario’s Cement Factory.
For me, though, the pièce de résistance is The Legend of Zelda released in 1989. You control Link as he battles eight dragons, saves eight Triforce pieces, and rescues Princess Zelda, all on an LCD multi-screen. Such ambition!
Simple, technologically limited creations these handhelds may be, but Game & Watch made portable gaming a reality. Better still, in this day and age of muted minimalist design, each Game & Watch unit is aesthetically pleasing, with unique art and overlays. The name also effectively conveys its essence. Each unit really is just a game and a clock, nothing more. No apps, no peripheral features you never wanted or asked for. As such, Game & Watch is one of few man-made creations, like a watch or a Walkman, to be perfectly and wholly itself. Oh, that we could say the same.
#5 - GAME BOY
I just wrote a bunch of words about the Game Boy for its 35th anniversary, so what’s a few more, right?
The Game Boy is a great handheld, no question, and I think it would have sold well, regardless of its library. That said, Tetris made the Game Boy. My cousin and I played Tetris, my grandma played Tetris, and my aunt - who’s probably never played another video game in her life - played Tetris. If Tetris was the only game that ever released for the Game Boy, the handheld still would have sold millions of units and made Nintendo stupid amounts of money.
Thankfully, the Game Boy was blessed with other children, including the Super Mario Land trilogy, Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, exclusive Castlevania, Contra, and Turtles games (not all of them great, but they were there), and Donkey Kong ‘94. Then after nine years of market dominance, just when you thought the Game Boy was ready to call it a day, play parcheesi with the Lynx and TurboExpress at the park and relax in its wheelchair, Pokemon Red & Blue emerged out of nowhere. The latter sold 31 million copies, broke the Game Boy out of near-obsolescence, and took it on one last amazing road trip. A victory tour, if you will.
Game & Watch may have invented the portable gaming device, but the Game Boy absolutely cemented the handheld’s worth in modern culture.
NEXT TIME: My Top 4 Handhelds
*images courtesy of Wikipedia, Games Radar, Game Informer, Lette Moloney and Sullla
I've never played or seen a real Game and Watch, only the Game and Watch compilation for Game Boy Color that's on Switch. I'm sure that game was only a novelty even on the actual GBC.
My sense is that a G&W was significantly better than a Tiger Electronics game, which I had plenty of unhappy experience with. But what do you think? I was dumping on the Game Boy on your previous post, but it's hard to appreciate the breakthrough the GB represented without remembering how bad the alternative was.
The thing about the Game Boy Color, to me, was that it came so late. Games during the early part of the Game Boy / Game Gear era really didn't seem too primitive compared to what we had at home, especially if we can excuse the Game Boy's monochrome. We were stacking them up against the NES and early 16-bit titles.
But by the time of the Game Boy Color launch, the PS1 was old, the N64 was even starting to age, and the Dreamcast was on the horizon followed shortly by the PS2 and GameCube. It was almost a joke: after all this time, you're updating this dinosaur of a handheld by just giving it color and roughly matching the capabilities of the NES? It was like adding color to an old-school LCD calculator, what would even be the point?
There are a few good games locked to the Virtual Boy, including one of the Wario Land games. Would’ve been great to see Nintendo rerelease some of these games for the 3DS.