Nintendo's Handhelds, From Game & Watch to 3DS

Nintendo has made the handheld that won nearly every generation it competed in, starting with a calculator-sized LCD game in 1980. The screens got color, then backlights, then a second screen, then 3D. Along the way, each family went through revisions, and some of those revisions matter a lot when you're buying one used.

The family tree

System	Released	Sold (about)	Screen
Game & Watch	1980	43.4 million	Segmented LCD, one game per unit
Game Boy	1989	118.7 million, with Game Boy Color	160 x 144, reflective, four shades of green-gray
Game Boy Color	1998	(counted with Game Boy)	Reflective color, 56 colors on screen
Game Boy Advance	2001	81.5 million, all models	240 x 160, reflective on the original
Nintendo DS	2004	154 million, all models	Two screens, the lower one touch
Nintendo 3DS	2011	75.9 million, all models	3D without glasses on the top screen

Game & Watch is where the d-pad came from, and it's the direct ancestor of the Game Boy. The Game Boy ran on four AA batteries for a very long time on one set, and that battery life, more than the screen, is why it beat flashier competition. The DS family is the best-selling handheld ever made.

The revisions that matter

Game Boy Advance

Model	Screen
Original GBA (AGB-001)	No light at all. Hard to see without good room light
GBA SP (AGS-001)	Front-lit, folding clamshell, rechargeable battery
GBA SP (AGS-101)	Backlit. Much brighter and clearer
Game Boy Micro	Tiny and backlit, but no Game Boy or Game Boy Color games

The AGS-101 SP is the one to own. The original AGB-001 has the nicest shape, but it really needs an IPS screen mod to be comfortable to play.

DS

• Original DS (the chunky one) and DS Lite both have the GBA cartridge slot underneath, so they play Game Boy Advance games too.
• DSi and DSi XL dropped that slot and added cameras, an SD card slot and a download store.
• The DS Lite is the sweet spot for most people: smaller, brighter, and it still plays GBA.

3DS

The family goes: original 3DS, 3DS XL, 2DS (no 3D, a slab shape), New 3DS and New 3DS XL, and the New 2DS XL.

The "New" models have a meaningfully faster processor, a small extra analog nub, better 3D with face tracking on the 3D ones, and a handful of games that only run on them. If you're buying a 3DS today, get a New one.

Heads up

The 3DS eShop closed in March 2023. Digital-only games that were never re-released can't be bought anymore. If you have any installed, back them up.

Mods worth doing

IPS screen kits exist for nearly every system in this post, and they're the biggest single upgrade for the models without a backlight. An original Game Boy or AGB-001 GBA with an IPS screen is a different machine: bright, sharp, and playable anywhere.

The other one is a flash cartflash cartA cartridge with an SD card slot that plays game backups on the original console. The EverDrive is the best-known one.More: Preserving Your Own Game Collection: Dumps, Backups, Boxes and Old Hardware, which lets you play backups of your own games on the original hardware: the EverDrive GB and EverDrive GBA, the EZ-Flash family, and the R4 type for DS.

Tip

Before you buy an IPS kit, check which shell and which board revision it's made for. Some kits need you to trim the inside of the shell, and some come with a new shell that doesn't.

And then the Switch

Nintendo folded its handheld and home lines together in 2017. The Switch is technically both, and it sold more than 150 million, which puts it right up with the DS. Switch Lite is the handheld-only version.

If you want the rest of the handheld story, the Sony side is the PSP and Vita, and the handhelds that didn't win covers Atari, Sega, SNK, Bandai and a phone that tried. For Nintendo's TV consoles, see NES to Wii U. And if what you really want is to play all of these on one modern device, emulation handhelds by chipset is where I'd start.