Prior to the launch of the Nintendo Switch in early 2017 it was the general consensus that, by and large, video game consoles were separated by the divide of "home console" & "handheld console". This was mainly enforced by the simple fact that handhelds were consistently less powerful than their home counterparts & sometimes aimed to deliver different gameplay experiences, due to the general difference between playing on a stationary screen like a TV or monitor & playing while on the go. Aside from the rare exception of a console (or at least an accessory) that blurred the line between home & handheld, this was an undeniable truth that meant that you'd never see a portable game ported to a home console; maybe a remake once in a blue moon meant to take advantage of the change in console type, but not a direct port. However, things started changing once the new millennium started, as handhelds became more comparable in power to consoles (even if still a generation behind, or so), which in turn started resulting in handhelds being capable of experiences more & more like what could be found on home consoles.
Therefore, let's go over some handheld games that later saw home console release, though I will be enforcing some rules. First, nothing that got ported to the Switch (or at least had the Switch be one of its first porting homes), because its nature as a hybrid console kind of dilutes the entire point of this concept. Second, the home console must be notably different from the handheld in terms of hardware, so no Game Gear-to-Master System picks (like the various Brazil-only ports), as those are essentially the same hardware, minus the GG having a much larger color palette (& stereo sound... and a Start button); in other words, it's kind of cheating. Finally, no PSP-to-PS2 picks due to the simple fact that there are so many examples I could do an entire Obscusion B-Side about that subject.
Founded on August 27, 1999, Artoon was a studio created by Naoto Oshima, who had previously worked at Sega for over a decade prior, having helped co-create Sonic the Hedgehog with Yuji Naka & Hirokazu Yasuhara, and also directed classics like Nights into Dreams, Sonic CD, & Burning Rangers; his final game at Sega was working on the original Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, which came out in Japan in 1998. The first game developed by Artoon was Pinobee no Daibouken/Pinobee's Big Adventure (a.k.a "Quest of Heart") for the GBA, which worked off of the experience of Oshima & his staff of ex-Sega crew by being a mascot-style platformer, in this case playing as the titular robot bee that heads out to save his "Grandpa" creator. Published by Hudson, with Activision handling international release as Pinobee: Wings of Adventure, the game managed to be a "Day 1" launch title for the GBA in all three major regions (Japan, North America, & Europe), and though it received mixed reviews (it is a bit of a weird little game, admittedly), it still did well enough to receive a Japan-only sequel (Pinobee & Phoebee) for the GBA & it established Artoon as a sustainable studio that would go on to make the likes of Blink: The Time Sweeper (& its sequel), Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, & even assist Mistwalker in developing Blue Dragon, Away: Shuffle Dungeon, & The Last Story. Artoon would then be fully absorbed into AQ Interactive on April 28, 2011, alongside Cavia & feelplus, before AQ itself would be merged with Marvelous Entertainment & Livewire later that same year; Naoto Oshima would co-found Arzest in mid-2010, where he still works at today as president.
Back to the original Pinobee, after its release on the GBA Hudson contacted Oshima & told him that they felt that it would also be enjoyable a PS1 game, since the 32-bit console was still seeing consistent support come the early 00s (even with the PS2 fully released worldwide by then), so Artoon decided to port Pinobee to home console. The fact that this was actually considered a viable idea isn't really ever given the kind of attention I feel it deserves in retrospect, as it shows a true blurring of the line between handheld & home console; imagine if Nintendo decided to simply port Donkey Kong ['94] straight from the original Game Boy to the SNES (or even NES) in the 90s. As for how the PS1 port differs from the GBA original, it mainly comes down to a new CG intro, a completely redone soundtrack (one that's actually pretty good), & a whole lot more screen space to work with. Visually, it does look a bit like a GBA game being blown up slightly, mainly because of the pre-rendered sprite work, but it's not terrible. While Hudson would still be the publisher in Japan (releasing it instantly to its Hudson the Best line of budget re-releases on September 5, 2002), Konami would be handling publishing duties internationally, releasing it as just Pinobee on April (North America) & October of 2003 (Europe), though Hudson's logo would still be on the cover; by this point, Konami had become the largest shareholder in Hudson. While it does sound a bit bizarre to release a PS1 port of a GBA game in 2003, Konami actually was a staunch supporter of the PS1 late into its life, with the company's final release for the console (GeGeGe no Kitaro: Gyakushu! Yokai Daikessen) being a PS1-original that came out at the very end of 2003 in Japan. Prior to Pinobee, it was pretty much insane to think that a handheld game could make for a perfectly fine straight port to a home console, but this marked the first time (to my knowledge) that a handheld console had truly started being comparable to its home console brethren (& wasn't simply just a portable version of a home console)... and it'd be far from the only time a GBA game was deemed fitting for re-release on the PS1.
Two of the most iconic & influential side-scrolling run-&-gun series of all time are easily Contra & Metal Slug, so much so that whenever you see a game imitate either of them it's blatantly obvious to tell which one is being copied wholesale. A perfect example would be 2002's CT Special Forces (as in "Couter-Terrorism"), a Metal Slug clone developed by French studio LSP Games (as in "Light & Shadow Productions") & released initially as a Game Boy Advance-exclusive... maybe. For whatever reason, it's kind of tricky to actually find exact original release dates for this game & its first two sequels, as I've seen both June & July 2002 for the GBA release, while the PS1 version has also been listed as both coming out in 2003 (which would make it a definitive handheld-to-home port) & coming out right alongside the GBA version; I'd still count it for this list if it was the latter, but it'd be in slightly different context. Anyway, CT Special Forces would eventually see release in North America by way of Hip Games/Interactive in early 2004 (& some reviews at the time actually criticized it for feeling "outdated" after only ~1.5 years!), but only the Game Boy Advance version, though the PS1 version was originally planned for release, as well; while there was a small group of PS1 games released throughout 2004 (& we'll get to one in the next entry), it definitely was really late, by that point.
However, things are much more cut & dry with the second game, CT Special Forces 2: Back to Hell, which came out first on GBA in August of 2003, followed by a PS1 port later that October. Hip Games would release it in North America in mid-2004 with the subtitle "Back in the Trenches", but only for GBA; today, both of Hip's GBA releases are shockingly expensive on the secondhand market. Finally, there was the third game in the series, CT Special Forces 3: Bioterror, which came out on the GBA & PS1 in early 2004 in Europe only, and once again there's some conflicting info on whether the GBA version came out first (by only a month or two) or if the two versions were a simultaneous release; Hip Games did plan on releasing the GBA version as "CT Special Forces 3: Navy Ops", but it never happened. It's also worth mentioning that there was a fourth entry, 2005's CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect (or Special Forces: Nemesis Strike in North America), but it was a radically different game, now being a third-person shooter for Xbox, PS2 (Europe only), & Windows developed by Asobo Studio (later known for Fuel, Microsoft Flight Simulator [2020], & A Plague Tale). Hip Games would go out of business later in 2005, & with it went the CT Special Forces series, though Fire for Effect did eventually get re-released on Steam by Funbox Media for a mere $3.
As for the trio of CT Special Forces games that are 2D run-&-guns, they're decent enough little games that feature some minor touches & additions to differentiate them from Metal Slug; I wouldn't put any of them above any Metal Slug game, but they're OK. The PS1 ports (each one ported by a different studio, oddly enough) take full advantage of the extra screen space & improved audio capabilities, and the visuals carry over much better than Pinobee does, since it's all traditional 2D sprites.
We put an end to the "GBA to home console" half of this B-List with a pair of games that I feel says something about the advancement of video gaming technology at the time, but I just can't figure out what (or, at least, how to really articulate it). Founded in late 1989, Flight-Plan started off as a simple little Japanese developer, probably best used as a porting house for consoles like the PC-Engine CD & Sega Saturn, most notably for the Dokyusei series of dating sims. Things changed in 1998, though, when Flight-Plan teamed with NEC Interchannel to release Black/Matrix, a strategy RPG based heavily around Judeo-Christian themes & mythology, so much so that while the later Dreamcast version of the game was initially announced for English release, it was eventually quietly dropped, likely due to said religious themes making it considered too controversial to localize. Flight-Plan would then follow that up with Summon Night on the PS1 in 2000, which would become the studio's most iconic franchise, but Black/Matrix would continue on in its own right, with both Black/Matrix II for the PS2 & Black/Matrix Zero for the GBA released in 2002 (March 28 & August 30, respectively); despite the naming sense, each B/M game is its own standalone story.
After those games, there would only be one more Black/Matrix game ever released, and it'd mark the end of an entire console's catalog. Released on May 13, 2004, Black/Matrix OO for the PS1 (pronounced "Double-Oh, despite "Zero" being shown on the cover) is a heavily expanded port of Black/Matrix Zero, so much so that Flight-Plan called B/M Zero the "theatrical version" & B/M OO the "TV version", i.e. a compilation movie vs. an entire TV series. This was such a late release that it actually wound up being the last PS1 game ever released in Japan, though there would be a handful of games released outside of Japan on the PS1 later in 2004, ending with FIFA 2005 that October; amusingly enough, this allowed characters from B/M II (a PS2 game) to cameo in mini-games featured in B/M OO (a PS1 game). The end result of all this would be Black/Matrix OO generally being considered the best entry in the entire franchise, though oddly enough it's Black/Matrix Zero that's the only entry in the series to see any sort of English fan translation (& even then it's only for the menus). Still, as I mentioned at the start of this entry, I feel as though the final PS1 game ever released in Japan being a heavily expanded port of a GBA game, a handheld that came out after the PS1 itself had stopped being the "big console on campus", should say something about how much video gaming technology had advanced come the mid-00s. Even just five years prior the idea that a Game Boy, WonderSwan, or Neo Geo Pocket Color game would be deemed "worthy" of a console port sounded absolutely ridiculous, so the idea that a "GBA game" (essentially) could actually be what closed out Sony's first ever console, in Japan at least, is remarkable in & of itself, let alone that it'd be greatly expanded upon & considered the definitive release.
Finally, we break free from the Game Boy Advance, because it's not as though that was the only handheld to see games get ported to home console of (roughly) the same vintage! After Japanese game developer/publisher Hot-B went bankrupt in mid-1993, a lot of its staff stayed together & founded a new company, Starfish-SD, in 1994. The new company would gain the rights to some of Hot-B's properties (most notably the Super Black Bass series & Steel Empire) & also create some new properties of its own, most notably dungeon crawler series Elminage (after no longer having the rights to Wizardry). One of these Starfish-original games is Kuru Kuru Chameleon, a competitive puzzle game where the goal is to claim ownership of the majority (literally just over 50%) of the playfield by changing the color of your claimed tiles to match a nearby color & claim those, while any unclaimed tiles surrounded by your tiles automatically become yours, regardless of color. It's an admittedly simple little concept for a game, but it's also actually pretty fun when you really get down to it. The game first launched for the PSP on January 19, 2006 in Japan, which makes sense (this kind of game works really well as a portable title), but Starfish-SD must have felt that it had something good on hand, as it would receive numerous ports over the years, with the first port fitting this list in an interesting way: Arcades.
Namely, Chameleon would get ported to Sega's NAOMI architecture & released exclusively in Japan on March 9, 2006; no port to the Dreamcast, though, which was still technically semi-supported in Japan at the time. Considering the simple nature of the concept & its focus on competing against another player, porting it for arcade use actually makes a ton of sense, and it wouldn't even be the first handheld game to be "ported" to the NAOMI. Namely, Nintendo's Rhythm Tengoku for the GBA from 2006 (the Japan-only first entry in the Rhythm Heaven series) would get a NAOMI arcade version developed by Sega in 2007. Returning back to Chameleon, Starfish-SD would continue to return to this game over time, with ports to the Nintendo DS, Switch, PS4 (Japan-only), & even Windows all the way up through 2020. The last three versions all look to be based on the PSP/NAOMI originals, though, as they are rather limited in what they offer, making for a short (if fun) experience. The DS version, though, looks to be the most expansive version, featuring a Story Mode with 64 stages, different game types, & even a random field generator. While I do understand why Chameleon received somewhat middling/average reviews back in the day, as it is a very simple concept, I think this is honestly a surprisingly fun little puzzle game to check out, especially if you can get it for cheap.
OK, this one might technically be a cheat, as the home console version could possibly be considered more of a "enhanced remaster" than a straight port, but at the same time I wouldn't call it a full-on "remake" so I think it should still count; even then, this is just a cool game to bring up. Originally released as a Europe-exclusive on October 2, 2007, Chronos Twins for the DS by Spanish developer/publisher EnjoyUp Games (later known for developing Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ & publishing the WiiWare remake of La Mulana & later Spy Chameleon) is a unique concept of a game that takes full advantage of the DS' dual-screen layout by tasking players to get through stages via a character who can essentially exist in two different time periods at once, so if there's a platform in the past but not modern times (or vice versa) then the player can still walk on the platform in both times; later the player can temporarily be in one time period to solve environmental puzzles. It's a remarkably unique & cool idea, though sometimes actually playing it can be tricky, due to needing to pay attention to two separate screens more or less simultaneously.
Chronos Twins would eventually see release outside of Europe on January 18, 2010 as a downloadable game via DSiWare (the original release was physical), but just a week prior EnjoyUp released another version of the game. Released on January 11, Chronos Twins DX for WiiWare was an enhanced port of the DS game with updated visuals (namely, it now uses polygonal backdrops, but uses the same character sprites, only filtered) & gameplay that simply split a single screen to allow for the same dual-time period gameplay. Because of this, I personally found the Wii version of the game much easier to get into & play, though that could just be a personal preference; it's also possible that EnjoyUp changed the difficulty to make for a slightly easier game. Eventually, both versions of Chronos Twins would come back to Europe as WiiWare & DSiWare later in 2010 (April & May, respectively), but now that the Wii Shop Channel, DSi Shop, & 3DS eShop are all shuttered there's no way for anyone to purchase this honestly really cool game & experience it (unless you hunt down the Europe-only DS cart, which isn't cheap), outside of emulation or modding your Wii, DSi, or 3DS. Yes, I know how simple it is to mod your 3DS, but let's not turn that console into the next Raspberry Pi, a.k.a. "Absolutely Insufferable Because People Won't Shut Up About It".
Seeing as EnjoyUp is still around to this day, we can hope that one day they'll bring back Chronos Twins in some form, even if it's just a port of the Wii version, because it definitely is a game that deserves your attention.
Finally, we end with a unique little entry, as this one not only went from original handheld release to expanded handheld port to finally console port, but this one's actually continued to be made available on other hardware in the years since the first console port! Originally released on the DS in Japan on July 22, 2008 (with international release over the next year), Metal Slug 7 was a return to form after the failed experiment that was the 3D entry released on the PS2 in 2006, & to this day is the final "main" entry in the Metal Slug series. Taking place last chronologically, MS7 would bring back the cast of MS6, including Ralf Jones & Clark Still (from Ikari Warriors) & overall was generally well received for the being the fun 2D run-&-gun that the series has generally been known & beloved as; maybe not one of the best entries, but still good. A little over a year later, on December 23, 2009 in Japan, SNK Playmore would release Metal Slug XX ("Double X") on the PSP, an updated version of MS7, similar in style to how Metal Slug 2 was followed up by an update called Metal Slug X back in the 90s. MSXX featured numerous little additions & changes, like bringing back old enemies, revising item placement & background details, adding in multiplayer support (MS7 was infamously single-player only), a couple of optional extra routes to take, & literal $1 DLC in the form of Leona from The King of Fighters (she's traditionally part of the Ikari Warriors Team), creating essentially the definitive version of this "final" entry in the entire series (until the upcoming release of Metal Slug Tactics, that is)... but SNK Playmore wasn't quite finished yet.
About half a year later, on May 19, 2010, Metal Slug XX was released on Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade, likely due to Metal Slug 3's XBLA release in 2008 having performed well. By & large, the home console port of MSXX was similar to the PSP version (though multiplayer could be done with one device now, naturally), minus a handful of audio differences; Leona was still $1 DLC. What's most interesting about this final entry, though, is in how it's continued to be the de facto main focus for SNK ever since, as aside from Hamster re-releasing Metal Slug 1-5 via the ACA Neo Geo sub-series of the Arcade Archives (MS6 was an Atomiswave game), it's been Metal Slug XX that's become the face of the entire series for the past decade. On November 12, 2015 it was added to the Xbox One (& later Series) backwards compatibility list, alongside MS3's XBLA version, while in May of 2018 the game was ported to the PS4 (now with Leona being available from the start), & finally on January 31, 2019 Metal Slug XX was released for Windows PCs. In comparison, Metal Slug 6's last "new" release was as part of 2006's Metal Slug Anthology, and though I do know that game is generally considered a low point for the series (or at least strictly somewhere in the middle), it still should be given some modern-day love; yes, Anthology did come out on PS3 & PS4, but those are simply emulations of the PS2 version, not a "new" release. Overall, Metal Slug XX is ideally best played on one of its various home console (or PC) versions today, so much so that I think it's kind of forgotten that it was even originally a handheld-exclusive for two years.
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And that there are six games that initially saw release on handled/portable consoles, before getting ported to home console not too long later (no more than ~2 years, tops). I'm sure that there are likely some others that I didn't know of, but these were simply "six" that I either knew of beforehand or found out about in gathering together a list for this B-Listicle. Again, in today's world this concept has pretty much become completely diluted due to the existence of both the Switch & Steam Deck, which give you the ability to play as both a handheld & home console, negating the entire point & relevance of what these listed games had, except as being examples of how video game technology used to be.
Pinobee: Wings of Adventure © 2001-2002 Artoon © 2001-2002 Konami
CT Special Forces 1, 2, & 3 © 2002-2004 L.S.P.
Black/Matrix Zero & OO © 2002-2004 Flight-Plan/NEC Interchannel
Chameleon © 2006 Starfish-SD
Chronos Twins & Chronos Twins DX © EnjoyUp Games 2007 2010
Metal Slug 7 & XX © SNK
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