Timeline of Hand-Held Game Devices

Atari Lynx

Atari Lynx

The Atari Lynx was released in 1989 by Atari Corporation and was a 16-bit hand-held console. It was the worlds first hand-held console that had a colour LCD screen, the system is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics, and ambidextrous layout, this allowed players that preferred left-handed controls to flip the console upside down and switch the side of the face buttons.
It had a MOS Technology 6502 CPU, and a screen resolution of 160 x 102 pixels. The console also featured an online capability, allowing you to connect to 17 other players. The console was originally meant to have games stored on tape but then were changed to be read off of ROM Cartridges.

Sega Game Gear

Sega Game Gear

This was the first hand-held console made by Sega and was also the third ever commercial coloured hand-held console. It was released in Japan in 1990 and released in North America and Europe in 1991. It's price at launch was $150.
It was a cartridge based console that had 8kb of RAM and 16kb of VRAM, with a Zilog Z80 CPU that produced at most 3.58 MHz of processing power. It was also based on an 8-bit Processor.
It's most popular game was easily Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic is Segas most successful game charcter and has had many sequels, some good, some bad...
In total the console sold over 11 million units and was discontinued in 1997.

 Game Boy Color

Game Boy Color

The GBC was a big step forward in hand held gaming, with many popular games and many third-party companies willing to make games for the console. The GBC has been described as 'having a bit of something for everyone' as so many games were released on the console that it was easy to find one for many types of gamers.
The console used a Zilog Z80 CPU that had up to 4 or 8 MHz of processing power (two processor modes).  The screen resolution was 160 x 144 and had 32,768 palette colours available to the console and could have 10, 32 or 56 colours on screen, it could have 40 maximum sprites, 10 per line and each sprite having 4 colours. With 8MB of ROM, 32kb of RAM and 16kb of VRAM with a cartridge RAM of 128kb.
The all time best selling game on the GBC was Pokemon Gold/Silver, selling over 14.1 million units in total. The console had an 8 point D-pad with A, B, Start and Select buttons, power switch, volume slide and could use Infra Red to connect with other consoles.
One of the most praised things of the console was its long battery life, the console could have over 30 hours of game play using standard AA batteries.

Game Boy Advance

Game Boy Advance

Following the success of the Game Boy Color, the GBA also advanced greatley on what was possible with hand held Gaming.It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China on June 8, 2004 (excluding Hong Kong).
It had approximately 15 hours on average while playing Game Boy Advance games (also dependent on the Game Pak being played, volume setting and any external peripherals being used - e.g. a screen light). The consoles CPU was 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI with embedded memory. 8 or 4 MHz 8-bit Z80 coprocessor for Game Boy emulation, as the console was backward compatible so you could play all of your GB and GBC games on the GBA as well. It had 32kb of RAM and 96kb of VRAM (Internal to the CPU).
Its best selling game was Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, selling 13 million copies as off 2004, man people seriously love their Pokemon!

PlayStation Portable
The PSP was made by Sony in response to the growing popularity in hand-held gaming. The original launch of the console didn't do so well, although the console was rather cheap, the launch titles weren't very good, a few ok games were released such as LocoRoco but it took a short while for the console to pick itself up and start to succeed. The console sold 71.1 million units worldwide to date, so you can see that the console quickly grew in popularity as prices lowered and more enjoyable games were released. The interface of the console features a D-pad, analod stick, 2 shoulder buttons, Sony's signature cross, triangle, circle, and square face buttons. The console also included a Home button and a button to change the brightness of the screen. The console also was the fist to use UMD's, which were developed by Sony and were a small Disc in a plastic case the you put in the console. It aslo used a Magic Gate Duel Memory Pro Card to save data on it, you could also save music, pictures, and films on to it and could also browse the internet on it.

Unit 20:C1: Timeline of the Personal Computer

IBM 610
This was the very personal computer, in a sense that it was operated by a singal person and a keyboard, it was made in 1957 and first bgan the design process in 1948, and was small enough to fit in a small office. The main designer of the machine was John Lentz, for the Watson Lab at Columbia University.
The computer had no electronic or air conditioning, and was controlled using a keyboard and is one of the first machines to be operated in this manner. The unit was $55,000 or $1150 per month to rent it, although if you were a student it would cost you $460 per month to rent. It was a very slow and limited machine, loading only 18 characters a second, compared to today's machines which could load whole text documents almost instantly.

Programma 101
This was the first commercial desktop computer, it was produced by an Italian company called Olivetti and was first introduced at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It's design was considered quite 'futuristic' for the 1960's and it sold approximatley 44,000 units. It was mainly used as a means of business for quick calculations.

Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 was released in 1975 and was based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest in this Microcomputer grew rapidly as it was featured on the front cogver of 1975 January Issue of Popular Electronics. To buy the product you mail ordered from hobbiest magazines and built it yourself, the company had hoped that they would sell a few hundered units but to their fortune the sold thousands in the first month of launch. This computer is still recognized as a unit that inflenced many other microcomputers to come


Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer and is one of the very first highly successful microcomputers of its time. Released in 1977 by Apple Computers (Now of course known as Apple Inc.) with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 kB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of monochrome, upper-case-only text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The original retail price of the computer was 1298 USD (with 4 kB of RAM) and 2638 USD (with the maximum 48 kB of RAM). To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. The earliest Apple II's were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore.

 Today computers are far more powerful than what they were 40 years ago, today computers can have 3.4GHz Quad-core processors with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of hard drive space, and they're only going to get evn more powerful.

Game Consoles Timelnie

Magnavox Odyssey

This was the first home console produced, it was made in 1972 by Magnavox and sold a total of 330,000 units. The console was designed by Ralph Baer, he began work on the console in 1966 and in 1968 had a fully working prototype, this was known as "The Brown Box". The console was discontinued in 1975.
It was played using a Control Paddle, the console came with two of these for multiplayer games, and also was the first console to have an add-on peripheral; the first commercial light gun called the Shooting Gallery.

Atari 2600

This was a home console designed by Atari (of course) that was produced in 1997, it has sold a total of 30 million units and was discontinued in 1992.
You played it using a Joystick or a Paddle depending on what game you played. It was also credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, on release you could buy 8 games that were sold seperatley.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
The NES was first released on July 15th 1983 and has sold a total of 61.91 million units, it was played using 2 controller ports and also had an expansion slot. The best selling game for the console was Super Mario Bros. 3 which sold approximatley 40 million units. The console was released with 18 launch titles, including Donkey Kong Jr. and Duck Hunt, these games were highly favourited by fans of the NES.

Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)
The Genesis, also known as the Mega Drive, was one of the most popular fourth-generation consoles; made by Sega, it sold approximatley 40 million units and it's most popular game was Sonic the Hedgeho which was sold with the console.
After Sony designed the popular CD Sega felt they should also be a part of this ever expanding technology craze, and so they designed an add-on for the Mega Drive which was a CD/ROM drive, this allowed owners to play CD based media, includin Games and Audio.

Sony PlayStation
The Sony PlayStation is one of the most revolutionary consoles to ever be released, the console has sold as of 2011 over 150 million units as fans to this day still love to play their Original Playstation games. The console was played using a Game Pad, the console had 2 controller ports to play multiplayer games was one of the first memory cards to incorparate a memory card as a means of saving game data. The console used CD's to play games and was also capable of playing Audio CD's. The console had many best sellers that are still remembered today and whose franchises are still expanding. Sony also released later on the Sony Duel Shock Analog controller, which had 2 analog sticks on the pad to give players full 360 degree rotation. This increased the consoles popularity further as people found it much easier to play.



Microsoft Xbox
The Xbox was released in America in 2001 and was the first console to be manufactured by Microsoft, joining the gaming band-wagon a little later than other companies (sixth-generation) Microsoft had to compete with Sony's Playstation 2 and Sega's Dreamcast. Amazingly enough the company sold more than 25 million  units (as of 2008) and had a massive fanbase. The console used a Dual analog game bad which also had a standard D-pad, Shoulder Triggers, A B X Y Face Buttons and the consoles own "Black and White Buttons". On the Xbox up to 4 people could play local split screen which boosted its popularity further. What made Xbox so popular was in addition to its revolutionary graphics and brilliant launch titles was Xbox Live, which was introduced the upcoming November. Players loved this service as many people found it superior to Sony's online Playstation service the only downside being you had to pay for it. The best selling game for the Xbox to date is Halo 2, which grew onto the Xbox 360 and now Halo is Microsofts most popular game series and is recognized globally. It was so popular because players said it was the best online game out there. The console was also the first to use a Hard Drive to save data.

Limitations of the Arcade Machine

 

Gaming began in the early 70's with the Arcade machine, this was a television screen inside a cabinet that you activated with the insertion of money, after a certain amount of time or lives, the game would end and so you would have to put more money in the machine to play it.

The Arcade Machine first appeared in 1971, when students at Stanford University set up the Galaxy Game, a coin-operated version of the Spacewar video game. The students that programmed the game were Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck. This is the earliest known instance of a coin-operated video game. Later in the same year, Nolan Bushnell created the first mass-manufactured such game,Computer Space, for Nutting Associates.

After this large companies realised that there is a lot of money to be made in Arcade Machines, and so, they began to manufacture their own games



Computer Space Arcade System

 In 1972, Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, originally an engineering firm called Syzygy Engineering in 1971 where they made a revolutionary arcade game, Computer Space. Atari essentially created the coin-operated video game industry with the game Pong, the first successful electronic ping pong video game. Pong proved to be popular, but imitators helped keep Atari from dominating the fledgling coin-operated video game market.
Atari is responsible for a lot of the progress games have made today, a lot of the games they released inspired the chain of events that took place to take gaming to where it is today. Games such as Pong, Space Invaders and Centipede

Following this chain-reaction the popularity of Arcade Machines sky rocketed, they were seen in most pubs, bars and even restaurants!
Although the Arcade Machine was popular, it had many limitations and flaws that some people may have not cared about back then. For example the main limitation being the most obvious thing about it, you had to go to it and spend money every time you wanted to play it. People back then wouldn't have cared because they didn't have Home Consoles, but this is one of the main reasons why people went on to invent Home Consoles in the first place.
In the 1990's there was a noticeable decline in the amount of arcade machines, this was because they simply began dying out as they became less popular due to the production of home consoles.
In the late 80's and early 90's a lot of consoles were made rendering arcade machines useless as a person could buy a game once and play it as many times as they wanted. There was even the production of one of the first hand held consoles, the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989.
Nintendo and Sega

Donkey Kong Arcade Game play

Nintendo and Sega today are two of the most successful game companies in the world, and are largely responsible for the way we see games today, starting with very influential and successful games that they released as arcade machines.
Nintendo even revolutionised the way we play game with their arcade game Wild Gunman released in 1874 and was a Light Gun Shooter game, so the player was given a gun shaped controller so they could aim at the screen and fire, this drove the player to eel like an even bigger part of the game.
Other influential arcade games they made were:
Space Firebird, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Punch-out

A lot of these game were created by one of Nintendo's Leading game designers, Shigeru Miyamoto, he is responsible for all of the signature Nintendo Series, such as Mario, Zelda, Pikmin etc.

Sega also influenced the game world with arcade games such as Duck Hunt, which was also a Light Gun Shooter Game that involved shooting ducks. As with Nintendo's Gunman, this game sucked the player deeper into the game and made them feel like more of a part of it.
The most popular Sega Character would have to be Sonic The Hedgehog, siimply because players enjoyed running to the right of the screen at high speeds.