Handheld electronic games (also LCD games, LED games) are very small, portable devices for playing video games. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose screen made up of a grid of small pixels, they usually have custom displays designed to play one game. This simplicity meant they could be made as small as a digital watch, and sometimes were. They were at their most popular from the early 1970s into the early 1990s. They are the precursors to the handheld game console.

The most well-known handheld games are the Nintendo Game & Watch series, but titles from other companies were also popular, especially conversions of arcade games. New games are still being made, but most are based on relatively simple card and board games.

The visual output of these games can range from a few small LED lights to calculator-like alphanumerical screens, to liquid crystal and Vacuum fluorescent display screens with detailed images and in the case of VFD games, color. The use of custom images in LCD and VFD games allows them to have greater detail and avoid the blocky, pixellated look of console screens, but not without drawbacks. All graphics are fixed in place, so every possible location and state of game objects has to be preset(and are usually visible when resetting a game), with no overlap. Illusion of movement is created by sequentially flashing objects between their possible states. Backgrounds for these games are static drawings, layered behind the "moving" graphics which are transparent when not in use.

External references

• Electronic Handheld Game Museum
• Guide to Handhelds
• Miniarcade.com

See also

• Handheld game console