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?