1976

The First Electronic Handheld Games. In the mid-1970s, the first portable electronic handheld games appeared. These devices used simple LED or LCD displays and were usually designed to play a single game.

 

One of the earliest successful devices was Mattel Auto Race (1976). It was soon followed by Mattel Football (1977), which became one of the most popular electronic games of its time.

Players controlled simple light dots or figures on small displays and tried to achieve the highest possible score. Despite the simple technology, these games proved highly entertaining.

An important step followed in 1979 with the Milton Bradley Microvision, the first handheld console with interchangeable game cartridges.

Portable gaming reached worldwide popularity from 1980 onward with Nintendo’s Game & Watch series, which sold millions of units and became the direct predecessor of later systems such as the Game Boy (1989).

These early devices laid the foundation for modern mobile video gaming.