Classic Handheld Electronic Games From the 1970s to the 1990s

The portable and tabletop electronic games that took play out of the living room, from Mattel's LED race cars of 1976 to the pocket consoles of 1999, shown in roughly the order they appeared. A device earns its place by being a hit people still remember, by introducing an idea later machines relied on, such as swappable cartridges, a color screen or the cross-shaped pad, or by being a bold experiment that failed in an instructive way. Each photo shows the device itself, usually an original model. Home consoles live in a separate gallery, and later machines such as the Game Boy Advance fall outside the cutoff.