Nintendo has gone through countless ups and downs in his decades as a console developer. From the highs of defining what mainstream gaming can be with the NES and conquering a universal market with the Wii, to the lows of failed efforts like the Virtual Boy and Wii U, it has largely achieved success with portable devices in comparison. with a rockier track record in the home market.
Not every Nintendo handheld has been a huge success, but bringing games on the go has worked out better for Nintendo than competitors like Sony, and the strengths of Nintendo’s handheld devices seem to have been taken over by the hybrid Switch. Being able to play games at home or on the go is likely a strategy Nintendo will be pushing forward with the inevitable successor to the Switch, but it could be worth it if this next device – or a separate venture – returns to the dual-screen gimmick of handheld. consoles past.
Nintendo’s Handheld History
While many will see the Game Boy as Nintendo’s first handheld, one could give this distinction to the Game & Watch line as well. These were simplistic in design, starting with the Silver Series in 1980 with titles like Ball, Judgeand Firework. Each release was a time-killer on a single LCD screen, although as the name suggests, the devices could also function as clocks. The Super Smash Bros. character mr. Game & Watch would pay tribute to these titles, and special editions such as a Legend of Zelda 35th Anniversary Game & Watch is still being released.
The Game Boy line to follow would bring a number of popular series to the fore, from Tetris and the Super Mario Land games to Game Freak’s own mega hit pokemon. After that, the Game Boy Advance family brought the kind of pixel art graphics loved in SNES titles to handheld experiences, represented by the Super Mario Advance series that translate titles like Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island.
The Nintendo DS was more of an odd step forward, focusing on the gimmick of having two screens and touch controls rather than offering powerful graphics, but this was a huge success in the end. The DS is currently the second best-selling console of all time, after Sony’s PlayStation 2, with sales of several tens of millions on the third best-selling Game Boy and Game Boy Color line. While the 3DS gained much less momentum, both dual-screen devices (and adjacent devices like the 2DS) were deeply rooted in Nintendo’s history, clearly detracting from the two-screen Game & Watch line that began with Oil Panic in 1982.
The benefits of preserving dual screen devices
While the DS era is sometimes reviled for its focus on casual audiences and the abundance of shovelware (similar to the Wii), the benefits of this approach to marketing are clear. Not only was the DS popular, it also had a strong lineup of much-loved games from pokemon diamond, Pearland Platinum to AlphaDream’s Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. The 3DS continued this legacy with titles like Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a link between worldsand Kid Icarus: Rebellion.
Many games, especially early in the DS’s lifecycle, relied heavily on gimmicks like touch controls. While this allowed for many cheap puzzle games or shoehorn mechanics, its unique features also resulted in more creative endeavors such as Kirby: Canvas Curse or the map impression puzzle in Phantom hourglass. The subtler use of the dual screen setup was also noteworthy, from displaying extra information to cases like Pokemon Sun and Moon where players could see a minimap at all times. It’s also hard to overstate the legacy of the DS pushing handheld multiplayer over Wi-Fi and the DS Download Play system, though these are less relevant these days.
Still, the games available on DS and 3DS are as relevant as ever, especially in light of Nintendo’s announcement that the 3DS and Wii U eShops will close in 2023. Many games can be lost in time, and franchises like metro will be incomplete again without mentions like MercurySteam’s Samus Returns – his testing ground for Metroid Dread. Nintendo developing more dual-screen systems could avoid the headache of having to adapt these titles to work on a single screen, and the years of experience means new consoles would likely have a stronger use of the bat gimmick.
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