As the 90s wore on, though, things kind of tailed away again as the Game Boy started to look more and more primitive compared to the fancy-pants machines that were ruling home screens. Last year’s Game Boy Color brought new life (and stupid American spelling) to the market, and now it’s sparked a whole new burst of activity, spearheaded by the launch this month of the Neo Geo Pocket Colour.

The NGPC (Neo Geo, incidentally, means "new world") is a super-cute little handheld, fractionally smaller and much lighter than the Game Boy Color, but with superior graphics, a 25% bigger screen and twice the battery life (an amazing 40 hours from two normal AA batteries). It’s more stylish-looking too (available in a variety of designs rather cooler than the GBC’s lurid fluorescent look), but perhaps the biggest and most important difference is that you hold it sideways rather than vertically, which makes it much more comfortable to use if you have hands bigger than a nine-year-old’s. That’s also helped by the smooth, innovative and unusual joypad, which is perfect for stuff where you need to make elegant, sweeping movements, like fighting and football games.

Fighting games, in fact, are likely to be a speciality of the little Neo – its makers, SNK, are most famous for their long line of beat-'em-ups on the grown-up Neo Geo home and arcade console, with games like Samurai Showdown and King Of Fighters still packing ‘em in in arcades even now. And sure enough, the first batch of 14 NGPC games features three fighting games, including versions of those two titles. There are also classics like Puzzle Bobble and Pac-Man, a version of the awesome coin-op hit Metal Slug, and some excellent sports games like Neo Turf Masters, a golf game that’s incredibly like the full-size arcade version. Excitingly, the console will also be capable of linking up with Sega’s new Dreamcast, although no-one’s quite explained what for yet.

The NGPC is a terrific little console which looks like being the first-ever genuine challenger to the Game Boy’s overwhelming dominance of the handheld market, so much so that Nintendo have tried to steal some of its thunder by officially announcing the follow-up to the GB, the tentatively-named Game Boy Advance. Due out next year (though Nintendo’s release dates aren’t usually the most reliable), the GBA is a 32-bit machine (ie the same level of processing power as the Playstation) which will play all your old Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, giving it an instant library of over 1000 titles. Nintendo also plan to have the GBA hook up to mobile phones and an add-on digital camera, enabling you to play against anyone in the world and watch their face while you’re doing it for the ultimate in play-anywhere gaming. (Though juggling an interconnected console, camera and phone all at the same time might be a little tricky on a shaky bus.)