handheld/tabletop companies US market 77-84

[christianscott]

sorry for the clunky sounding subject line, what i mean by it is "help me complete a list of companies who released handheld/tabletop games on the US market during the classic era 1977-1984" or to break it down even further "i'm trying to make a database of all the games a US shopper could have picked up back then and first i'm making a list of the companies"

 

its important for my purposes to stick with companies that served the US market, including asian and euro games would take the list from long to endless. the games i'm talking about as "handhelds/tabletops" include things along the lines of the mattel football games and the coleco pac man mini arcade games. i'm not talking about electronic toys such as simon or electro mechanical toys like tomy's daring driver, the game must have a SCREEN of some sort. the screen should be LCD, VFD, LED etc.

 

alright with that out of the way heres the list i have so far, can anyone add to it?

 

COMPANIES THAT MADE HANDHELDS FOR THE US MARKET 1977-84

coleco, mattel, tomy, entex, epoch, bambino, tandy, sears, parker bros., nintendo, tiger

[raindog]

I'm pretty sure one of our handhelds was by Bandai, though I couldn't tell you which one.

 

Rob

[RMila75]

I have a game called "Electronic Football II" that I'm pretty sure is not made by any of the companies you mentioned.

I will have to get it out of storage at my parents house this weekend and find out!

[badbrad]

I'm pretty sure Electronic Football II is made by Mattel.

Is it green?

[NE146]

Don't forget Milton Bradley and Kenner

[christianscott]

yeah those football games...they are like the pongs, many different companies cashed in the craze and produced games with different shells but the same electronic guts.

 

the goal here is create a list that will serve the US collector, i'm trying to keep overseas games off the list. i want it to contain every classic game you could expect to find without importing, just the stuff that was in the US stores. there are a few really good handheld sites but none of them break it down this way.

[RMila75]

I remember it now: it's Electronic Football II by Conic.

It's not foreign either. I know I bought it in Columbus, OH sometime in '81 or '82.

[RMila75]

I just did a search and found a pic of the original Conic football game:

 

http://zappa.brainiac.com/cdyer/handhelds/...ic/football.jpg

[RMila75]

Bingo! I kept searching and found exactly what I have:

 

http://users2.ev1.net/~rik1138/Conic/Football2.htm

 

The other Conic games look interesting as well.

[christianscott]

thanks for tracking that one down, i gotta feeling there are a lot of these out there, many companies to go.

 

in case anyone is wondering the list will be available (when its done) on the digital press master list. if its like the other guides they've put up it will be ready to print out free just like the pages in their published guide.