The Pocket Games We Remember From the 1970s
Before screens, a pocket game was moulded plastic, a spring and something small that rolled. Here is what the seventies actually put in our coat pockets.
Read itThe Retro Game Room
The Retro Game Room is the club's reference shelf: how pocket games worked, where they came from and why a steel ball in a plastic case kept a generation quiet on the back seat. No news, no reviews — just the background to the games we rebuild.
The Rise of Handheld Games in the 1980s
The eighties swapped springs for segments. One flat LCD panel, a couple of buttons and a beeper turned the pocket game into an electronic product.
Read itHow Mechanical Pocket Games Worked
Open a mechanical pocket game and there is startlingly little inside. That was the point: a handful of parts, no power, and a game that still works forty years later.
Read itWhy Ball Bearing Games Were So Addictive
No lives counter, no music, no story. A ball maze holds you with round length and near misses — and both translate perfectly to a phone.
Read itPocket Games Before the Game Boy
The Game Boy arrived in 1989 into a shelf that was already crowded. This is what portable gaming looked like in the years before it.
Read itFrom Springs and Magnets to Screens
Three generations of hardware, one design brief. What changed between a spring and a touchscreen, and what stubbornly didn't.
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