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History
In 1978, after the huge success of its Simon games (co-invented by Ralph Baer, the creator of the Magnavox Odyssey), Milton Bradley (MB) was looking for its next toy line. Mattel had recently released Auto Race, the first electronic handheld game ever made, and the handheld market was on the verge of exploding. Milton Bradley wanted in on the action.
Smith Engineering, a firm specialized in developing electronic toys, came to see Milton Bradley and pitched the idea of a new handheld video game. The firm was owned by Jay Smith, a 39-year-old engineer who would later design the Vectrex game console. Jay had already worked on the Mattel Football electronic handheld, which made him the perfect match for Milton Bradley, and he was commissioned to develop its new toy line for 1979.
Since the introduction of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972, the concept of interchangeable cartridges had existed. However, it was not until the introduction of the Fairchild Channel F in 1976, the first gaming device to use ROM-based cartridges, that cartridge-based systems became the norm rather than the exception. Because of technical challenges, no company had ever attempted to create a handheld that supported cartridges, until Jay Smith decided to crack the problem.
The main obstacle was that the display options for portable devices were fairly limited at the time. LED display technology was very primitive and could not create a complex game field. Vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs) were also a new technology, but they required high power consumption and had a high manufacturing cost, neither of which was ideal for a handheld game. The other display technology of the time was the LCD, but those displays could only produce three rows of active dots, which was definitely not enough for a video game.
At the time, the biggest producer of LCD screens was Hughes Aircraft, and Jay Smith had started a side business making the chemicals used in LCDs and selling them to Hughes. Jay was already very familiar with LCD technology and decided to push its capabilities further. He realized that some lines would always be on, which did not require much attention from the CPU, while most of the screen would only be on while certain moving parts passed through it. Using this idea, Jay managed to bring the number of rows to 16, which was unheard of at the time.
The first design of the Microvision was about the size of a Game Boy, but Milton Bradley wanted a bigger device because it thought a bigger console could fetch a higher retail price.
Once the design was completed, MB worked with Smith Engineering on manufacturing and game creation. In November 1979, about a year after the project began, the Microvision was released along with five games.
Release
The Microvision, released in the U.S., Canada and Europe, was a commercial success at the time. It grossed some $8 million for Milton Bradley and helped turn Smith Engineering into a million-dollar operation.
Smith Engineering was convinced the technology could be improved further and invested a lot of money in R&D to develop the next version of the Microvision. It first pitched a 32 × 32 LCD screen to Milton Bradley, but MB did not think the improved display capacity was enough of a selling point to justify a new release. Smith Engineering then designed a console that would have been years ahead of its time. It had a quarter-wavelength LCD that would have produced a 32 × 32 backlit color display, a common set of buttons instead of dedicated buttons on each cartridge, and a common CPU instead of one CPU in each cartridge, all for a price only marginally higher than the Microvision. Again, Milton Bradley turned the system down because it believed the video game market was a fad.
This attitude was one of the major reasons for the downfall of the Microvision. The home video game market was evolving very rapidly, and the limitations of the Microvision’s technology were showing more and more with each passing month.
Another reason Milton Bradley did not want to invest in a new video game system was the number of problems the Microvision had caused. Aside from several copyright infringement lawsuits over some of the titles, the Microvision had various technical issues.
The most common issues were with the LCD display. The manufacturing process was very delicate. If any impurities were introduced before the screen was sealed, or if the seal was imperfect for any other reason, the liquid crystal would leak and permanently darken the screen. This condition, known as “screen rot”, was one of the main problems. The screen could also be damaged by heat, which could happen simply by leaving the device in the sun for an extended period.
The second problem was the microprocessor inside each cartridge. When a user opened the protective sliding door that covers the cartridge pins, they could give the microprocessor an electrostatic discharge (ESD). The low-voltage integrated circuit inside the cartridge was extremely sensitive and could be destroyed by a simple shock.
The build quality of the buttons was also a problem, and they would inevitably become unresponsive after extended use. All of these issues plagued Milton Bradley, which had to deal with a lot of returns and customer complaints.
Milton Bradley also faced a supply problem. Purchasing issues made it impossible to acquire the Intel 8021 processor needed for the cartridges. To meet demand, MB had to switch to a Texas Instruments TMS1100 processor, a more primitive CPU, which meant that all the 
games had to be reprogrammed to work on it. The TMS1100 had the advantage of requiring less power, so only one 9-volt battery was needed instead of two. Because redoing the mold would have cost a lot of money, Milton Bradley kept the two-battery compartment but only used one of them. The second compartment was called the “spare battery holder”, but it was not wired into the system. The user had to physically swap the batteries to use the second one.
Demise
Although the first year was very successful, Milton Bradley failed to generate more interest in its console. Instead of continuing development with Smith Engineering, it decided to let the console die. In 1981, only one year after the official launch, just two games were released. A third game, Super Block Buster, was released in Europe in 1982 and was planned for release in the US around Christmas 1982, alongside another game called Barrage. Neither game was released in time for Christmas, which made Super Block Buster a European exclusive and Barrage the only unreleased game for the system.
Games
Each games cost $19.99. At launch 5 Games were available (November 1979):
- Block Buster
- Bowling
- Connect Four
- Shooting Star
- Pinball
By the end of 1979, three other games were launched
- Mindbuster
- Star Trek: Phaser Strike (later released as just Phaser Strike)
- Vegas Slots
In 1980–1981, only four games were released:
- Baseball (1980)
- Sea Duel (1980)
- Alien Raiders (1981)
- Cosmic Hunter (1981)
In 1982, Super Block Buster was released in Europe.
