Daves Video Arcade - The Hanheld Electronic Game Museum - Come on in and see my collection, past and present, including LCD, Game & Watch, VFD & LED Games, Electromechanical, and Portable Game Consoles, and how they work.

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BanDai Grandstand / Hales Mattel Milton Bradley

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HANDHELD ELECTRONIC GAME MUSEUM

My personal collection

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This section is dedicated to handheld electronic games, which were originally very popular in the late 70's and early 80's.It was at this time, when arcade videogames were most popular and of course everyone wanted a way to be able to play these at home, but with the then home computers and TV games consoles being so expensive, and everyone bored of the 'pong' style TV games, people needed an alternative.Handheld electonic games were the solution, compact, no need to connect to a TV (important since most of us only had one TV back then), and more importantly affordable.Although the games were not as detailed as the computer and console games, they became very popular, especially when popular arcade games were licenced and released as handhelds, and also because many were styled to look a little more like small arcade games.However each game was a dedicated unit, capable of playing just one game, although sometimes with variations (The exception being MB's Microvision, the world's 1st programmable handheld) mainly because the graphics were etched onto the display unit, and so it wasn't until the release of the Gameboy, that handhelds were able to play different games, simply by changing a cartridge.Handheld games originally started out using mechanical systems, usually involving clockwork, or electric motors, but when electronics becoming cheaper and more versatile, games then started to use solid state, and eventually 4bit microprocessors.

It's the latter 2, which is my interest, as these were the closet many of us ever got to owning a videogame cabinet in those days.So in this section, you'll find games which are either in, or have been, in my personal collection.I didn't actually have many of these as a child, but that and the fact that I used to love the arcades, is what perhaps has fuelled my enthusiasm for retro games in general.I started collecting these around 14 years ago, when I rediscovered some of the games I'd owned as a child in my loft.Unfortunately with space and money for new games sometimes being an issue, some have unfortunately been sold and are no longer in my collection.Here I hope to eventually display my entire collection, which currently stands at around 70 games, but since this will take sometime, and it's always changing, this section is very much 'under construction' as they say, so please visit again soon, and hopefully you'll always find something new.

I've decided to split my collection, by display type, and then manufacturer, so before you start browsing, it'll probably help, if I just first explain what the different types of display used are.This is just a basic overview of what and how each display was used, however for a technical explanation of how each type actually works, I'd suggest using Wikipedia (since I'm only familiar with LCD technology), which covers LCD, LED, and VFD displays very well.

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display - Originally used on early calculators and watches, these eventually found their way onto handheld games, as they were cheap to produce, needed very little power, and could generate quite complex displays.By the mid 80's all games were LCD.Dot matrix LCD displays were also used, which instead of using glass etched with graphics, used dots, or pixels as you'd refer to them now, this mean't that graphics could be generated by a pattern of these pixels, in the same way that everything is being generated on the LCD monitor you are probably looking at now, and indeed this is where LCD technology is now most popular, for creating TV monitors, so at last the dream of a 'hang on the wall TV', is a reality.

LED - Light Emitting Diode - The first digital watches and calculators used this type of display, before it was used for the first electronic games.The earlier ones did not have very bright displays, and so were quite difficult to play, except in the dark!.The graphics, were well, non existent, and basically the LED illuminated an etched shape on the screen, in the same way earlier games had used regular light bulbs.This type of display didn't survive long in handheld games, but did find many other uses, especially more recently, as they have very low power consumption, and reliability, so much so that even Christmas lights are starting to convert to LED's

Electromechanical - These were used on the earliest games, and consisted of using clockwork, or electric motors and gears to create moving displays, such as a moving roadway.This system was also used on the early arcade games, before videogames came along.Tomy managed to create some amazing games with this system, including the famous Pocketeers 'pocket money' range, and even recently on their ride-on motorbike arcade game for children.They also created a whole range of home robots in the 80's, all of which were extremely advanced for their time, and yet consisted usually of just one or two motors, using a very complex system of cams and gears.It may be of no surprise to those reading this that I also collect those, as well as some early tin robots, with the price being the main prohibitive factor

VFD - Vacuum Fluorescent Display - These were initially used on early calculators, as they were much brighter than the earlier LED types displays, and so eventually they were used in tabletop games.Due to the high manufacturing cost at the time, and high battery consumption these type of displays were often quite small, and usually mangnified via fresnal screen.The early displays also copied an idea from the early monochrome arcade videogames, in using coloured film over sections of the display to create a colour game.The way the screen created animation was very similar to LCD, in that the display was made up of segments, each of which could be individually illuminated.To see a VFD in action, just look at the front of your DVD player or VCR, almost all of these use a VFD display, mainly because they are easier to see, cheap to manufacture (now), and are not affected so much by temperature.

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