My “Flask” Collection: A look back on handhelds of the last 2 decade
(Let’s “drink” to Nintendo’s 7th anniversary. May it have a full 8th year all to itself before its successor crawls into the market.)
Yours truly had read everything Ian Fleming wrote featuring James Bond, long and short, as a 23-year-old. The biggest takeaway is how I started to think “gaming” as a vice instead of a hobby. In those stores, “vice” is usually used on drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, excluding stationary activities like gambling and making out. Drinkers have their flasks and smokers with cigarette cases. Gaming on handhelds is definitely closer to drinking booze from flasks. No one has to see what you play if you can help it just like no one has to smell what you drink while smoking is showing how you are spreading poison.
Anyhow, I am going to rate the “flasks” I “drink” from. Is the rating affecting by recency bias? Most definitely. With cutting edge graphics offering diminished returns, handhelds had become the field where I can feel the advancement of technology more tangibly, home consoles finally had internal volume control by 2013’s PS4 and Xbox One not withdrawn.
No.5 Playstaion Portable: Wrong place and wrong time
Sony’s Playstation Portable was once viewed as a rebel against Nintendo’s monopoly on dedicated gaming handheld, except the fact that it’s not as dedicated to gaming. “The Walkman for the 21st century” it was marketed and those 2 certainly share demerits: UMD read lid can be as loose as Walkman’s cassette lid. When I got my PSP in 2008, I was a dirt poor Freshman in college, which means that piece of hardware I got was modified and I never got one single UMD. Back then, pirated TV shows came in the formats of AVI, MKV or RMBV while PSP only plays MP4, one format not as common back in those day here at miHoYo’s country of origin (Actually, People’s Republic of China could not even be called “miHoYo’s country of origin” yet for the company was not established until 2011.). So, the “video player on go” function was a bust. MP3 format of music is fine though.
Then there were the games. I did have at least one toe in the console war pond back then, not that I would praise one over another no matter what. I chose Xbox 360 over PS3 more out of circumstance, as I could plug the former through VGA into a PC monitor at home while the latter require the DVI not on said monitor. Well, that plus Mass Effect. But I did a thirst for the “cutting edge” high polygon stuff. So, PSP library simply lacked that illusive “it”. For said Xbox 360, I sold that PSP without second thought.
Fast forward a decade. I bought my second Vita in 2018, the blue one pictured above, set up a PSN Japan account and just dived into the classics. Mega Man Legends’s Japan only PSP port was one item I ticked off my bucket list, then I finally finished Policenauts in 2023. It serves me as a retro machine that way PSP was to many before.
And one got to say that UMD was doomed from the start, for the digital media reality we live under today pretty much started back then. Steam was already a thing when PSP came out, just between iTune and Kindle…
No.4 Nintendo 3DS: Wrong place but right time
My handheld life was probably sealed in early 2021, 7 years after it started to take root in early 2014. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds winning Gamespot’s Game of the Year 2013 sold a 3DS to me (The empty cart I saw when I went to get the hardware by subway during 2014’s Lunar New Year vacation still haunts me more than anything during the relatively recent Pandemic.), yet Half-Life Alyx winning in 2020 did not give me any incentive towards virtual reality.
3DS is very much a PS2 on one’s paw, with Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D and Resident Evil Revelations as its showcase software. The 3D gimmick was a product of its time after James Cameron’s post-Titanic bullshit. It would be fair to call it the last one in line of Nintendo handhelds, with each one being backwards compatible to the one before while Switch swept the slot “clean” in 2017.
No.3 Playstation Vita: Right place but wrong time
Oh, the Last of Us! How I wish you can meet something like death by thousands of cuts! And no, the devised views on your sequel do not count! For you got so much blood on your imaginary hands, including but not limited to Sony’s handheld line. Playstation Vita is fine piece of hardware with so much potential. It might have a bright future, then you overrated piece of shit pointed to an illusive Prestige house style for the greed at Sony to pursue and sink all their resource into. Now the Playstation brand is nothing but stale.
Anyhow, the Vita certainly wears the “portable PS2” mantle on its imaginary sleeve. Persona 4 Golden, a game considered by many as the best piece of software on the platform is a port of beloved PS2 game. My personal favorite on the platform, Odin’s Sphere Reifraiser remade another PS2 game. I certainly would not have binged through Metal Gear Solid 1 to 4 without this thing. Oh well, Vita sold a PS3 to me for Sony, as I bought a PS3 just to finally play through Guns of Patriots. Then it led me to play Last of Us and started a loathing of current way Sony operates…
No.2 Nintendo Switch: Right place and right time
As of the time of writing, Nintendo Switch was still the closest I got to buying a console during its launch window. About 2 weeks after launch week to be precise. While I never saw credits roll in it, the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did give me goosebumps when it booted up. As the piano strokes kicked in and the plain opened up in front of me, I realized that “Holy shit! Now something on par with Xbox 360 or PS3 is on my hand.”
The library of Switch is really embarrassment of riches. My first actual playthrough 1993’s Doom was on this platform. Fire Emblem Three Houses and Hades, my personal favorites for the year 2019 and 2020 respectively, still have their places in my heart. I played through my first Mario game as a 27-year-old with Odyssey before I experienced a double GOTY winner of Gamespot and IGN in Galaxy. Last year’s Metroid Prime Remastered was a great way to experience a stone-cold classic.
And the Switch “saved” the PS4 at my home from my wrath. Had I played Persona 5, no matter vanilla or Royal, on the stationary console, said console might already been smashed with disc in for some absolute bullshit that game is up to. But I played P5R on Switch to kill time on subway or in the comfort of bed, so my wrath did not get to console smashing. Ha, ha, just kidding, or am I?
No.1 Steam Deck: Transfarmotive
Yes, it’s a typo and no it’s not unintentional. It’s very much an FU to Hideo Kojima for pulling that “Transfarring” bullshit back in 2011. Remembering “Transfarring” with Metal Gear Solid HD Collection? I certainly have not used for gaming on Xbox 360 until 2014. The made-up word is about save file sharing through the Cloud between PS3 and Vita. It aged like milk for A Sony got their own Playstation Cloud saves very soon, and B the function was only used on the 3 almost old MGS games by then. Anyone wanna bet on the odds for OD to triumph?
Back on topic, this is also about celebrating Steam Deck’s 2nd anniversary. I currently have more than 800 titles in my Steam library, with more than 400 Verified plus more than a handful labeled Playable. Even among the Not Supported and the Unknown, some run perfectly on the device. It’s not perfect, but still much better than 3 old games. The first 2 reviews I wrote for this year were only possible because of the Deck.
While not all the Cloud Saves come through (including a Commander Katarina Shepard I played in Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Dust: An Elysian Tail), it feels great when those come through came through. Tales of Arise had an expansion titled Beyond the Dawn last year. Said expansion got bonus for clearing the main campaign so when my save files from pre-Deck days came through, I almost cheered. Deck seems like a perfect to finally read Disco Elysium through so I installed the Final Cut. The save files from December, 2019 are still there. Consider me a member of the Gabe Newell cult, you all. And bye for I got a home stretch of Persona 3 Reload to run.
