Pictures are (hopefully) coming soon. Stay tuned.

Thanks to my side hustle of buying and selling ludicrous numbers of game consoles at unsustainably low profit margins, I have had the opportunity to own and enjoy tons of different handheld game consoles. In this series I’d like to explain why these are the ones I have chosen to hold onto. Initially I planned for this series to be one post, but then realized I’d written an article’s worth of content just for the PSP. The other consoles are coming as soon as I can write ’em, stay tuned.

Sony PSP

Looking back, the Playstation Portable is quite a quirky little console. It uses archaic and frankly horrible UMD discs rather than the traditional cartridges and has just as much of a focus on media playback as it does on gaming. That said, this is the only retro handheld that has managed to keep my attention after the novelty wears off.

Part of this is simply the design of the console. It is one compact brick, surprisingly ergonomic to hold considering the shape. It has one analog stick in addition to two bumpers and the standard d-pad and “▲ ■ ● ✖” buttons. The power switch can be flicked up to suspend the console in its current state or flicked down to lock all inputs (a very MP3 player-esque feature). It has dedicated brightness and volume buttons, and a very nice looking 4.3 inch LCD screen. All this is to say, the design is quite thoughtful and doesn’t get in the way when I’m playing a game.

The games are another thing that’s held my attention a little longer than other retro handhelds I’ve tried. On platforms like the 3DS, it seems like many games are cut-down versions of other titles, or at least made to be a little more simplistic with the knowledge they’ll be played on a handheld. This is fine, but it means that most of the games on the 3DS didn’t manage to hold my attention for very long. There is quite a bit of this on the PSP as well, but I have been able to find more games on the PSP that take themselves a bit more seriously. Gran Turismo and Armored Core 3 have been standouts so far, I might add AC3 to my backlog. It’s quite fun albeit incredibly janky, but I like to get weird bragging rights. Additionally the PSP can run most PS1 games and emulate all the standard stuff (GBA, SNES, maybe even some N64), so you’re never going to run out of things to play.

All this is to say, the PSP is the “retro” handheld that I’ve spent the most time using in the time I’ve had it, and a console that I can see myself enjoying for a long time to come.