Today marks the official U.S. launch of PlayStation Vita. It?s a great system, but it has its work cut out for it. Nintendo?s 3DS is making serious inroads after a soft launch, and Sony runs the very real risk of seeing history repeat itself. To date, Nintendo has triumphed against every handheld competitor to challenge it since the Game Boy launched 23 years ago. We can?t predict how the Vita/3DS battle will turn out just yet, but we can certainly look to history to see how Nintendo has consistently triumphed over its impressive competitors.
1989: Game Boy
Shortcomings: The Game Boy was almost laughable from a hardware standpoint. Its puny processor was more than a decade old at launch, and its screen felt like a throwback to the ?70s, too, offering no color support but rather a paltry four shades of grey on a cheap LCD so prone to ghosting and blur that it rendered many action games nearly unplayable. Atari?s impressive Lynx arrived almost simultaneously with Game Boy, rendering Nintendo?s handheld practically obsolete from day one.
Why they didn?t matter: Nintendo?s design philosophy rendered many of the Game Boy?s perceived flaws into strengths. That weakling of a processor and mess of a screen allowed Nintendo to sell the system for about half of what the Lynx cost, and its battery life was extraordinary. On top of that, Nintendo was at the pinnacle of its NES-era popularity in 1989, and the mere opportunity to play games like Mario, Castlevania, and Mega Man on the go was profoundly motivating. Plus, Game Boy had a killer app in the form of Tetris. Game Boy games weren?t often truly great ? but they were certainly good enough.
1989: Lynx
Strengths: Atari?s Lynx arrived mere days after the Game Boy and, technologically speaking, blew it away. It boasted a vivid full-color screen with proper backlighting, beside which Nintendo?s pukey-looking graphics paled. Behind that screen was an impressive array of hardware, including a beefy processor and a fast 16-bit graphics chip, putting it nearly on par with the TurboGrafx-16. On top of that, Lynx featured an innovative ambidextrous design so that both lefties and righties could play it comfortably.
Why they didn?t matter: With great power comes great responsibilities, and Lynx failed at living up to its demands. It cost nearly twice as much as Game Boy, and the hidden cost of batteries was even more significant: It required six AA batteries to run for four hours, where the Game Boy could run five times as long on fewer batteries. The system itself was massive and cumbersome thanks to some ill-advised focus testing. And perhaps most crushingly of all, Lynx wasn?t made by Nintendo, which meant its software library was filled with obscure games and dated arcade conversions. The sad thing is that Lynx probably would have done much better for itself had it been launched in a more timely fashion: Epyx developed it in 1986, but Atari sat on it for two years only to debut it head-to-head with Game Boy.
1990: TurboExpress
Strengths: The TurboExpress was nothing less than amazing. A compact and comfortable system, it was capable of playing TurboGrafx-16 games. Not ports, not repackagings; TG16 HuCard chips slotted directly into the system and played with few compromises aside from some difficulty with saves and the different resolution of its beautiful color screen.
Why they didn?t matter: Like Lynx, the TurboExpress was an incredible power hog, requiring as many batteries as Lynx for even less play time? and that was on top of its hefty $249 price tag (almost $390 in today?s money). The TurboExpress also had the misfortune to be tied to the TurboGrafx-16, a console that achieved very little success in the U.S. ? and outside the U.S., its popularity was largely tied to the TurboCD add-on, which wasn?t compatible with the handheld.
1990: Game Gear
Strengths: Game Gear definitely offered the strongest competition to Nintendo?s handheld hegemony until the PSP arrived. Compact and comfortable with a slick color screen and a solid library, Game Gear featured all the strengths of its fellow competitors but also backed it with the Sega name ? a true boon, especially in the U.S., where Genesis was eating Super NES?s lunch at the time. Another advantage: Gear Gear was essentially a scaled down Sega Master System, meaning existing games could easily be tweaked to run on the hardware and resold. It even had an optional TV tuner!
Why they didn?t matter: Unfortunately, as with Lynx and TurboExpress, Game Gear was hoist by its own petard: Its power and screen devoured batteries. While it never managed to overcome its thirst for power, by the time the system was retired it had moved more than 10 million units and boasted a library of nearly 400 games: A modest success.
1992: Watara Supervision
Strengths: Rather than trying to outdo Game Boy, this device by Asian manufacturer Watara took the opposite tack by trying to undercut Nintendo?s design. It was half the price and featured similarly low-power, low-cost components.
Why they didn?t matter: Supervision was too little, too late. With a paltry software library and even worse visual prowess than its competition, Watara?s effort appealed only to cheapskates and, these days, to aficionados of the obscure.
1997: Game.com
Strengths: In the twilight days of the Game Boy, Tiger Electronics launched the Game.com, which offered enhanced black-and-white graphics and far more power than Nintendo?s aging machine. It sported a touch screen (a first!), and Tiger pursued aggressive licensing (presumably carried over from its simple LCD games) to bring PlayStation hits like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Resident Evil to the system.
Why they didn?t matter: Game.com looked good on paper, but it was either a giant train wreck or too far ahead of its time, depending on how kindly disposed you are to it. The hardware proved to be grossly underpowered for the games it aspired to run; Sonic and Resident Evil were downright disastrous. The system felt flimsy and insubstantial, and its touch screen was strictly used in conjunction with its PDA elements, which were ill-conceived and not particularly useful.
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