Is there a major difference in hand held consoles from different country regions?...

Is there a major difference, for example, between a US model GameBoy & a Japanese model GameBoy, and for other handheld consoles such as the GameGear, Nomad, Wonderswan, Virtual Boy, etc?

I've already started my own collection of video game consoles in NTSC-J, NTSC-U, & PAL (UK), and wanted to know if the categorized collections of the handheld consoles are necessary...

 

As far as the Gameboy goes, no. I have a JPN Famicom color GBA SP, and I haven't had any problems with it.

 

Well nomad I believe was US only - That and the PC engine GT/Turbo Express are probably the only handheld which would have had differences between regions - due to using the same carts as the home systems. Otherwise, AFAIK, all other handhelds play the same games through all regions

 

the ngage...not sure if it was region protected game wise....but the cellphone thing...one was triband the other was somethin else...im no ginius at cell phones....the cougar boy/mega duck were the same systems.just released in different countries

 

Afaik only the PC Engine GT/Turbo Express aren't region compatible, due to the pin-outs having been switched around on american Hu-Cards.

Game Gear is region free, but has region detection in some games, which means some games (mostly those with little or no text and thus no required localization) have both the Japanese and Western version on the cart. In practice this means, for example, if you stick a japanese GG Aleste II in a european Game Gear, the european title-screen for Power Strike II will automatically appear.

Neo Geo Pockets lets you switch the systems language between English and Japanese. Many games also have both languages on one cart, so there are a lot of Japanese games that are playable with English text. Some text-heavy japanese games like Ogre Battle or Faselei don't have English on them however.

Nomad only exists in a US version, as stated before, and Wonderswan only exists as a Japanese version.

Gameboy is entirely region free, but some versions of the GB were only released in Japan, such as Game Boy Light, a b&w GB with a blue backlight - very nice item, btw.

Dunno about Virtual Boy though, sorry.