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The first handheld game console to use interchangeable game cartridges was the Microvision, designed by Smith Engineering , and distributed and sold by Milton-Bradley in 1979. A small screen, a small selection of games (only thirteen) led to its demise only two years later. Today, working Microvisions are quite rare. The keypad was brittle, and the LCD technology in the late 1970s was poor, leading to liquid crystal leaking and darkening.
It wasn't until ten years later that Nintendo released the Game Boy. The design team headed by Gumpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch system, as well as the Nintendo Entertainment Systemcomputer than a toy to avoid being associated with the video game industry, which crashed in 1983. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is a video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, and Australia. The console is the internation games Metroid and Kid Icarus. The Game Boy came under scrutiny by some industry critics, saying that the monochrome screen was too small, and the processing power was inadequate. The design team had felt that battery economy was a more important concern, and when compared to the Microvision, the Game Boy was a huge leap forward.
Yokoi recognized that the Game Boy needed a killer app – at least one game that would define the console, and persuade customers to buy it. In June 1988, Minoru Arakawa, CEO of Nintendo of America saw a demonstration of the game Tetris at a trade show. Nintendo purchased the rights for the game, and packaged it with the Game Boy system. It was almost an immediate hit. By the end of the year more than a million units were sold, and 25 million were sold by 1992. The original Game Boy (along with the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Color) is the best selling game console ever, having sold more than 145 million units [1].