handheld consoles owned
A list of the household's handheld consoles. I mostly play handhelds, so my contributions to the wiki will likely revolve around these consoles.
List items
-
2 original grey models + 1 clear model. The first handheld I ever played was an original grey model, shared with my brothers. I never found out what happened to it. I have 500+ Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, combined, spread among every genre imaginable. I keep them in sturdy cardboard boxes that are made to store MTG/baseball cards.
-
1 working and 1 broken Grape model. I have this so I can play my Wisdom Tree games, which won't work on GBA models. It's also nice for playing Kirby: Tilt n Tumble, which has a motion sensor that acts oddly in the GBA SP.
-
1 Onyx GBA SP. It only has front-lighting, which makes it great to play at night since it's less bright than...pretty much every backlit device. I love the compact design and the backwards compatibility with the GB and GBC. I have approximately 100 GBA games, almost all of which are cart only.
-
3 DS Lites; Coral Pink, Crimson/Black, and Cobalt/Black. I had a blue DS, but it broke and I gave it to a friend of mine to gut.
The dual screen has proved an amazing asset in jRPGs, a favorite genre of mine. The touchscreen abilities were never really used as well as they could have been, but I still find that I miss the touchscreen when I'm playing on another device. I feel it's just shy of indispensable for certain genres like sRPGs and Metroidvanias.
I miss the backwards compatibility with the GB/C library but I treasure the GBA compatibility. I'm also fascinated with the various goofy slot 2 peripherals that were released throughout the DS lifespan, and have a number of them.
The DS certainly has flaws, the most salient of which is how easily the shoulder buttons stop working.
The DSi and its attempt to offer acceptable online services would have been a huge disappointment even if Nintendo hadn't added region-locking to DSi cartridges.
-
1 Blue 2DS and 1 Pink/White 3DS XL. I have astigmatism, and the 3D isn't neat enough to justify the eyestrain it causes me. The consoles are very large and I had to learn how to hold them without causing hand cramps during long gameplay sessions. I do appreciate the larger screens, though.
Overall, the buttons feel sturdy, although some of them are incredibly loud to use. The 2DS's shoulder buttons are a much needed improvement over the finicky and fragile buttons of the DS and DSL. I like the feel and gameplay utility of the circle pad, but when you push it, there's a giant hole into the console.
The home menu is infinitely navigable and just customizable enough, even if it does feel...humble and unambitious. I also like their (slim, but quite good) selection of virtual console titles and the implementation of save states when playing them. The eShop needs some more work.
-
2000 model. I love the size of the screen and the analog stick. The shoulder buttons never stick like the DSL ones do. The battery life is kind of short, but it's proven sufficient for everything I need. Loading times have never been a big issue for me, except in the FFT remake where they are a minor but repeated annoyance.
My main complaints about the PSP are its noisiness, how delicate the physical game media feels, and the XMB (oh, I loathe the XMB). I'm also not impressed with its billing as a multipurpose device, as it's a terrible music player, image storage device, internet browser, etc.
Including a handful of PSN titles, I have just about 30 PSP games, mostly jRPGs and a smattering of platformers. All in all, I'm happy with my PSP library and happy with my PSP as a gaming device. I'm looking forward to getting a Vita when money and time allows me to appreciate it fully.
-
1 working and 1 broken. This is huge so you'd think it has huge guts. It doesn't, though. I have 21 Game Gear games from a smattering of genres. I have most of the GG games I'm interested in, and a few more besides.
-
One 4th Gen iPod Touch and one 1st Gen iPod Touch. My iPod is the best multipurpose handheld I've used yet. Unfortunately, most of its best games fall into the category of "good for an iOS game." Still, there are many situations where I'd rather have an excellent music player with decent games than an excellent game player with a terrible music player. I'm looking at you, PSP.
Load Comments