Gaming has long been a popular hobby for young people. However, the demographic enjoying this pastime has expanded significantly to include all age groups and genders. A lot of this can be attributed to mobile gaming which makes it much easier for gamers to play anywhere, anytime and easily download new games with little to no cost. Of course, mobile gaming had to make some significant changes over the decades to arrive to the gaming experience we all know and love today.
Gaming On Your Terms
The idea of being able to play on a smaller, more mobile device at first was just another crazy idea until it was explored by Nintendo. In 1980, they released their Game & Watch. This was revolutionary in that it didn’t require players to have to be hooked up to a television to play their game. While the Game & Watch was ahead of its time and really didn’t take hold, it opened the door for further devices. Nine years later, Nintendo released their Game Boy and eventually Atari kept up by offering their Lynx.
The Game Boy was created by Gunpei Yokoi, a Japanese video game designer who worked for Nintendo. Yokoi was inspired to create the Game Boy after seeing children playing with calculators and wishing that there was a handheld device that could play games.
Yokoi and his team began working on the Game Boy in 1988. They wanted to create a device that was small, lightweight, and affordable. They also wanted to create a device that could play games for long periods of time without needing to be recharged.
The Game Boy was released in Japan in 1989 and in the United States in 1990. It was an instant success, selling over 118 million units worldwide. The Game Boy was one of the first handheld gaming devices to achieve mainstream success. It helped to popularize the handheld gaming market and paved the way for future handheld consoles, such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.
Turn your smartphone into a Game Boy with Hyperkin’s Smartboy
Games Created Smartphones
This was the world’s first cell phone with a game loaded on it
Mobile phone developers took notice and began to look at how they can add games to their mobile phones. The first game to be released was a game similar to Tetris on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device in 1994.
and naturally, it was TETRIS.
Perhaps the most popular game and the true spark for the mobile gaming revolution was Snake, which was loaded on Nokia devices beginning in 1997. When smartphones became the new generation of phones, they also led to a significant upgrade in gaming. Accessing the internet on one’s phone made it possible to easily add games to your phone meaning you can tailor the games to your preferences. With smartphones, mobile casinos are now popular places to play. Just about everyone today has a mobile phones so it makes it the most used gaming device today.
The popularity of mobile gaming seems to be growing. Through the decades, advancements in technology have helped to get us to where we are today with mobile gaming. Given the high probability of changes coming in technology, the implications for gaming will be interesting to note.
