Games Consoles CONSOLES

Microvision

What was the first handheld game console? Did Sony, or Sinclair, or Amstrad make it?

Nope it was “Microvision”, it was the very first handheld game console – that could be said to be like modern ones - like the Gameboy or Sega Gamegear - computers in that it used interchangeable cartridges.

Microvision was produced by The Milton Bradley Company in November 1979. It had moderate success, and made £8 million in the first year of the system's release.

You could get quite a few classic games for it – in fact they look a lot like the games that came free with the first cheap mobile phones: Connect 4, Mindbuster (!), Block Buster, Star Trek, Bowling, Vega Slots. All in all there were only 7 games released in 1979, 2 games in 1980 and 2 more games in 1981.

However, because they had so few games, and nothing much came out on the consile after 1980 – the Microvision was short lived. And Milton Bradley stopped production in 1981, only 2 years after it was released!

Microvision units and cartridges are really really rare. And you probably wouldn’t get a working one as they were really prone to problems – in fact most of the consoles either got "screen rot," damage to their electronics or keypad destruction (or all 3!).

BTW – just to let you know how powerful this computer was… it had 2k of ROM (yep, 2k!)


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Do You Remember Microvision?

Do You Remember Microvision?