You can buy portable hard drives which are placed in classic NES game cartridges. Need an extra 500 GB to store all your Nintendo hentai? Well then you can buy a hard drive in Star Wars, Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 2, Dr. Mario, and Castlevania cartridges. Perhaps you’re favoured Metroidvania series is Metroid instead of Castlevania. If that’s that’s the case, you’re in luck because you can also get 1 TB drives in Metroid, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, and Bionic Commando carts! I wish I had the funds to get another HDD, I would totally love to get the Metroid or Super Mario Bros. cartdrives.

That controller seems too big

I wonder how long it is until those craft and nostalgic handy-men/women turn their N64 cartridges into art projects. At the very least, the N64 seems like a good (and much more portable) alternative to the NES harmonica. Also, if someone makes a Gamecube fit inside an NES cartridge, I’d love them. Sadly, I’ll probably need to settle for a Gamecube inside an old NES console.

I think the saddest thing about the disc based systems is we won’t see stuff this cool in twenty years. How will you turn your copy of Crash Bandicoot into a working console?

Welcome to the honeymoon trap.

In most single player games while the second playthrough can never recapture the thrill of discovery and the novelty factor of the first playthough, if the game has good moment-to-moment gameplay that can be enough to keep you going beyond the honeymoon period. If it does not have quality moment to moment gameplay, its stock will drop like a rock on the second playthrough.

No game that I can think of illustrates this better than Batman: Arkham Asylum.

With really good single player experiences, the second playthrough reinforces my high opinion of the game in the first playthough– but with Batman AA I felt like the second playthrough exposed the lack of substance behind the shiny veneer of the first playthrough.

Don’t get me wrong, Batman Arkham Asylum is a really good game and is clearly the best Batman game ever (which is not saying a lot) — but it’s still overrated. However it’s not easy to see why until you make it past the honeymoon period of the first playthough.

A game needs some freedom/leeway in the gameplay to really keep bringing you back– and this is the main thing Batman AA is missing.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

JUMPING

In Super Mario Bros. basic jumping was fun because you completely control the height and direction of Mario’s jump and a mistake can kill you.

You can also do stuff like slick jumping turning hit the ground and slide type moves because of that leeway in the gameplay. And stuff like that is what keeps you coming back (and not the harrowing tale of rescue of the damsel in distress).

In Batman, if you want to jump over a ledge just hold ‘X’ and forward and Batman automatically runs toward the ledge and jumps over it perfectly every time — there’s no technique to employ– no timing, no lining up the jump, no skill necessary.

CLIMBING

Take a game like Infamous. When I climb a building there’s a million different ways to climb the same building (including wrong ways that can result in you falling all the way back to the bottom and thus making you pay attention) — I can climb up a ladder, shimmy across a ledge until I find a handhold to climb up, climb a pole, climb up windows, ect– thus climbing is fun.

In Batman, if I want to climb I need to find a designated spot that allows me to look at it and be prompted to press R1. When I press R1 and Batman shoots his grapple hook thing, he’s always going to climb up the same way– seen it once, seen it a million times.

Thus climbing in Batman is not fun– it’s not annoying either– but not fun– just meh. It’d be nice if there was more variety to it somehow (and/or if they found some other area of gameplay to flesh out to make up for this lost ground).

FIGHTING

In Batman AA, there are a lot of offensive attack moves that are “hotspot” oriented– ie. the vertical takedown, the crashing through the glass, the simplified fighting scheme– that reminds me of Def Jam: Fight for New York.

In Def Jam Fight for New York there was a bunch of “hot spots” (ie. if you press a certain button when the enemy is near a car you’ll do a prearranged sequence where you smash their head in the door of the car) — it was awesome the first time you see each hot spot move but it gets more and more boring and you yearn for the variety and complexity that earlier incarnations of the Def Jam engine (ie the AKI wrestling titles) had.

Likewise in Batman the fighting is fun but you eventually yearn for the added complexity of fighting in games like God of War and Ninja Gaiden.

To be fair, there’s plenty of variety in the gameplay itself, but the problem is the lack of any one gameplay mechanic that by itself is fun to do over and over. The fighting comes closest to this, but it’s not quite up to par with some other games.

To make an analogy– take MLB the Show. The default batting mechanic makes you as the batter have to locate the ball as well as time it to get a hit. If you want to make the game really easy to play so your little sister can play it, you can alter the settings so that all you have to do is press X at the right time– thus making it all timing and taking away the skill in recognizing pitch location.

In Batman, it’s like it’s set up for your little sister with the way that the reversals are all pure timing based (tap triangle and Batman does the rest, no matter where the enemy is), and the striking is all button mashing based. There’s a little bit of skill involved in fighting guys with knives or stun batons in that you need to either hit them with a batarang and then press R2 and triangle to ground and pound, or press x to jump over them and attack from behind, but that alone falls short of gameplay that would keep me coming back.

So a lot of things feel like auto-pilot (ie. the Batarang is auto-aim, reversals are all pure timing as I stated above, the jumping and climbing as stated above).

Like I’m playing Gran Turismo with all of the assists on– which is fine for people that like that, but I wish there was an option to turn these assists off.

It feels like the gameplay in this game is halfway between a game like KOTOR (where it looks like I’m really playing and swinging the lightsaber but I’m really just supervising) and games like Super Mario Bros and Infamous and Twisted Metal 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (where I really am in full incremental micro level control and not just macro level control).

CONCLUSION

Too many single player games are like a disposable razor: use once and throw away. Granted, lots of games offer things like trophies, treasures, branching paths, ect, to give you a reason to come back and play again, but that stuff, while appreciated, only serves to kick the can down the road. The big factor that extends a game’s replay value indefinitely, the renewable resource you’re left with when the fossil fuels of story and presentation are exhausted, the thing that separates the games that come and go from the true classics is the  gameplay. In Batman AA, the basic moment to moment gameplay isn’t enough by itself to keep the game entertaining– the greatness of the game really depends on the story and presentation and atmosphere (which all lose their novelty on the second playthough) combined with the deceptively shallow, automated gameplay (the shallowness of which becomes much more apparent after you’ve beaten the game).

All the most memorable stuff that happened in my experience with Batman AA was scripted– in a game with deep gameplay you should be able to create your own memories via creative stuff that the game allows you to do– and the prospect of creating new experiences like that on the fly is what keeps you coming back.

What I remember about Super Mario World was how much different stuff Mario could do with a turtle shell (ie. carry it around, kick it up in the air, kick it forward, have Yoshi eat it and gain powers, ect). It’s not the story that sticks out in my mind, it’s the gameplay, and how little things like playing with a shell were fun.

A mega hyped, shiny new video game is like a hot woman in a dark nightclub who starts sweet talking you while you’re drunk– you might be head over heels in love that night– but you don’t really know what you have until you see what you wake up next to in the morning.

Image credit: Tony J. Case

Probably the most famous glitch in video game history comes from Nintendo themselves. The original Super Mario Bros. is very well known for its Minus World glitch. This world is accessed by breaking a few bricks at the end of World 1-2 right above the exit pipe and jumping at just the right spot allowing you to go through the wall to the Warp Zone area. And if you just go down the first pipe without moving any further, you will be taken to the  Minus World. This world is basically just a never-ending version of World 7-2, but the game calls it World -1, thus getting the title “The Minus World.”

Some people spend countless hours on games trying to exploit these unintentional little bugs to make a game more enjoyable. Some glitches can cause a player to cheat; such as The Spire Glitch in Metroid Prime Hunters which allows Spire to hide inside the wall in Alinos Gateway. This glitch is was a cheap but easy way to win the match back when the game first came out. But now, almost everyone knows about it, making it much harder to get away with.

One Nintendo franchise that is no stranger to glitches is The Legend of Zelda series. Ocarina of Time had many glitches that made the game that much more fun! Remember how you could turn any of your weapons into bottles? Sure, you end up losing most of those items for good, like I once did with my bombchus, but it’s still fun! And don’t forget the Unlimited Gold Skulltula glitch where you can keep going back and collecting the same Skulltula from the grotto by Hyrule Castle. All of those glitches, although unintentional, were just added bonuses to the game. And Twilight Princess is another prime example of Zelda glitches. I know people who have said that the most enjoyment they got out of that game was from exploiting its glitches. I can’t say that I’m one of them myself, but to each their own right?

But then there are the evil glitches. You know, the annoying little bugs that plague some of your favorite games. Well, today was the day I had the pleasure of encountering one myself. You may have heard of this happening before. Hell, maybe it’s even happened to you. But it is a very annoying glitch that will haunt Spirit Tracks players for years to come. I’m talking about the Stuck Behind Zelda glitch.

This pesky little bug is achieved while fighting the final boss, Malladus. By getting hit by one of his fireballs in just the right spot, you’ll be knocked back off the screen behind Zelda, leaving her and yourself helpless. Once this happens, all you can do is either die or restart the game. So when this happened to me, I pulled out my crappy old webcam and began recording. Here’s the video of how it all went down.

You can download the full version of the Song of Storms Remix here!

The artwork used in the video can be found here and here!

Although Tanner has the ability to roam freely around the streets of San Francisco, this latest installment of Driver will focus on the movie style car chases. Reportedly, there will be upwards of 100 vehicles to chose from, and plenty of road to keep the chases flowing. There will also be a large amount of classic vehicles thrown into the action, and this should make for some never before seen chases.

This latest version of Driver will also include the option to play online. This mode will offer fans some pretty exiting chases as well. The screenshots from Driver: San Francisco detail some excellent graphics, and these new added features will offer some unbelievable game play. Driver: San Francisco will be available for Playstation 3, X-box 360, Wii, PC, and Mac.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!

Donkey Kong is at it again! After arriving late to the grand opening of Mario’s latest theme park and not receiving a free Mini Pauline toy, he decides to take the real Pauline instead. Now it’s up to Mario and his minis to stop the big ape once more.

In this third installment of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, you guide the minis through the puzzle-based levels by placing girders, springs, conveyor belts, pipes and ladders in different locations with your stylus. You can also create your own levels for other players to play and rate via the internet. Aside from Mini Marios, there are also Mini Toads, Mini Peaches, and Mini Donkey Kongs. And this game also brings back the Super Guide from New Super Mario Bros Wii.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! will be out just in time for Christmas!

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

When Professor Layton receives a letter from his apprentice, Luke 10 years in the future telling him how London has been thrown into chaos, he realizes that only he can save his beloved city from it’s troublesome forthcoming. The game features over 165 different types of puzzles that fit perfectly into the storyline that will put your mind to the test. If a puzzle seems to be to complicated, you can use a “superhint” that will point you to the solution. You can also download extra puzzles for a short time after the game is released.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future will be coming to your DS on September 20!

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs

In the third Pokemon Ranger game, you team up with Ukulele Pichu (a Pichu who carries a Ukulele) to stop the Pokemon Pinchers.  The game relies heavily on the Nintendo DS’s touch screen. You can capture Pokemon with your Capture Styler by cycling them. And you can also summon legendary Pokemon to help you progress by drawing their Ranger Signs. The game is also WiFi compatable for teaming up with people all over the world for certain missions.

You can expect to see Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs to arrive at a store near you this Fall!

FlingSmash

FlingSmash is a completely new concept from Yoshi’s Island DS developer, Artoon. The best way to describe the game is that it’s something like a sidescrolling Arkanoid. In FlingSmash, you use your Wii remote with Wii Motion Plus to fling Zip, to smash through enemies and obstacles to progress through the level. Zip is a spherical creature that bounces all over the screen breaking through blocks and other things. You can also get different powerups, such as Split, which gives you 2 more Zips to guide, doing more damaging and racking up even more points. If you have a friend and an extra Wiimote with Wii Motion Plus, you can team up with Player One controlling Zip and Player Two controlling his buddy, Pip.

FlingSmash is set to be released around the 2010 holiday season.

PokéPark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure

PokePark Wii stars Pikachu as he is summoned by Mew to set out and find the missing Sky Prism Pieces of PokePark. As Pikachu, you make your way through the park by using the Wii remote held sideways. Throughout the game, you meet up with other Pokemon who will help you on your quest. But of course, you must fight other Pokemon as well using different attacks from Pikachu’s “shocking” arsenal. PokePark Wii also features a variety of minigames that put your skills to the test. In these events, you can choose any of the various Pokemon that you’ve befriended throughout the game. If you liked Pokemon Snap on the N64, you’ll love the photo feature that allows you to take pictures of different Pokemon to save to an SD card.

You can expect PokePark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure to hit store shelves this Holiday season.

Samurai Warriors 3

In Samurai Warriors 3, you can choose from over 35 different samurai; some of which are based on actual figures from Japanese history. Each character has their own takes on the story, which will have you playing for a long time if you want to know everyone’s motives. You progress through the game by fighting armies of enemies on foot and on horseback. SW3 also has a variety of play modes such as “Murasame Castle” mode which has you teaming up with another player via broadband Internet access and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. This mode  is based off of the classic Famicom Disk System game, The Mysterious Murasame Castle. The game can be played with all of the Wii’s control options including the Gamecube controller; so you can choose which is best for you.

Samurai Warriors 3 will be in stores on September 27.

Another addition to the 3DS is the Slide Pad, which works as an analog stick. This is something they should have added a long time ago. Although the positioning of the D-Pad looks like it would be a little awkward to use – But we’ll know in due time. The 3DS has some very impressive graphics, right on par with the Wii. Another new feature in the 3DS are motion sensors that allow the system to know when the handheld is being tilted or moved in different ways. And last but not least are the two side-by-side cameras placed on the back of the system. The duel cameras make your photos into 3D images, which is pretty impressive, I must say.

Upcoming 3DS Games

Nintendogs + Cats

Nintendo also announced a few games for the new handheld. Nintendos + Cats will be a lot like the original Nintendogs games, but they’re adding cats into the mix. It would be fun to see how the dogs and cats will interact. And of course, with the new 3D screen, it will be like you can reach down and pet them with your hand.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

When Nintendo announced that their new subdivision, Project Sora was working on their first title, I was expecting a Nintendo/Kingdom Hearts crossover. (I can dream can’t I?) But I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Pit fly across the screen and say, “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Oh Pit, you have no idea. Kid Icarus: Uprising is the third installment in the series and the first Kid Icarus game in almost 20 years. Uprising marks the first time Pit has ever got to move around freely in a completely 3D environment. The game allows you to battle on ground or in the air. The video shows off Pit fighting different enemies including Cerberus and a few other bosses. This game alone has me sold on the 3DS.

Other Confirmed Titles

• Animal Crossing
• Mario Kart
• Paper Mario
• PilotWings Resort
• Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike
• CODENAME: Chocobo Races
• Dead or Alive 3D
• DJ Hero 3D
• Hollywood 61
• Kingdom Hearts
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
• Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D “The Naked Sample”
• Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Ridge Racer
• Samurai Warriors 3D
• Starfox 64
• Steel Diver
• The Sims 3
• Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter: Cell Chaos Theory
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon

Mario Sports Mix

We’ve seen numerous sports games in the past staring Mario and friends. From tennis, golf, soccer, basketball, a couple of crossovers with Sonic the Hedgehog in the Olympics and even NBA superstars, our favorite pudgy plumber has proven himself to be one hell of an athlete. Mario Sports Mix looks to be the ultimate games for anyone who loves a good competition in the Mushroom Kingdom. We’re not sure just how many different sports the game will feature, but the video shows us basketball, dodgeball, volleyball, and hockey – which is played both on the beach and on ice.

Wii Party – Wii

Take Mario Party and switch anything that has to do with Mario with Wii Sports elements.  Wii Party is just that. It’s a party game, much like the games in the Mario Party series, but played with your Mii characters. The game features plenty of minigames to keep you and your friends entertained for hours. Most of which utilize all of the many abilities that made the Wii romote and the other Wii series titles so popular. Just like its Mario counterpart, Wii Party has players moving from space to space through a board game-like area where you battle it out in the various minigames.

Just Dance 2 – Wii

The popularity of music-rhythm games over the past decade has proven one thing. People love music. And with countless songs out there waiting to be licensed out to video game publishers, sequels are very fast and easy to bust out. If anything Guitar Hero has shown us that. With Just Dance 2, you and your friends can find out just who has the sickest moves and look like a true dance queen while doing so. With over 40 tracks and up to 8 players, Just Dance 2 is a must have for anyone loves busting moves and doesn’t mind looking like a fool while doing so.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn – DS

The Golden Sun series first began on the Game Boy Advance. Almost a decade later, the latest installment comes to us for the Nintendo DS with some impressive visuals. The game utilizes both screens for the cut scenes and requires the stylus to solve puzzles and for completing other tasks. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is surely going to be one of the best titles in the series.

Golden Eye 007 – Wii

If you grew up playing the Nintendo 64, you know what Golden Eye is all about. The original is one of the most beloved games in video game history and is regarded by many as one of the greatest first person shooters of all time. This brand new title features 8 classic James Bond characters, 16 different game modes and a multiplayer mode with all of the elements that made the original so great. But this time you can go online! Golden Eye 007 is being developed by Activision exclusively for the Nintendo Wii.

Epic Mickey – Wii

Designed by Warren Spector of Deus Ex and System Shock fame, Epic Mickey delves you into the magical world of Disney. The game features Mickey in his older image; beady black eyes and all. The game is a platformer with some RPG elements, and has you meeting up with plenty of classic Disney characters from your favorite animated films. Mickey’s primary piece of equipment is a paint brush and paint thinner. You can use the brush to “paint” in parts of the scenery to access new areas and the thinner can be used  to destroy obstacles blocking your path or even enemies. But this time around, Mickey isn’t just your everyday good guy. Depending on the actions the player takes throughout the game, Mickey can be praised as a “Hero” or feared as a “Scrapper.” Epic Mickey looks to be a must-have title for any gamer who loves Disney.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii

After seven long years, Nintendo is finally giving our favorite pink puffball his own game on a Nintendo console. But this time, things are a little different. It still has the classic gameplay elements we all know and love, such eating enemies and stealing their powers in a side-scrolling environment. But now there’s so much more! As the title implies, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is all about sewing… Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. The environment, enemies and even Kirby himself are made out of yarn and fabric. To get through certain areas, Kirby must use a string of yarn to unzip zippers to reveal hidden areas or grab certain points to swing like Donkey Kong and even fold sections of the landscape over to make large gaps smaller. The yarn is also used to lasso around enemies and apparently a new buddy character to grab onto and throw. Kirby can also transform into different vehicles such as a submarine, UFO, and a even giant tank.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies – DS

The ninth title in Square-Enix’s epic Dragon Quest series offers many new elements into the mix. Taking a more Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles approach, the game is made primarily to be multiplayer via co-operative wireless gameplay rather than being WiFi compatible. Another noteworthy difference about Dragon Quest IX is that there are virtually no random encounters with enemies other than when you’re sailing. One great thing about this game is that you can customize your characters in many ways including their gender, clothes, hairstyle & color, body type, face, eye color, and even skin color. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies will be released in just a few short weeks for the Nintendo DS!

Metroid: Other M – Wii

Nintendo didn’t have much new for us in regards to Metroid: Other M other than a new trailer. The game does look great with amazing visuals, dark settings and of course, the classic eerie Super Metroid music. The game is set to be released on August 31!

Donkey Kong Country Returns – Wii

The name says it all; Donkey Kong Country returns! Retro Studios, the company who brought us the Metroid Prime trilogy takes on yet another beloved classic. But this time they stay more true to the series’ roots. Donkey Kong Country Returns looks a lot like (only better) the Super NES classics. Donkey Kong finally goes back to starring in the latest sequel to the games bearing his name. Just as it was 15 years ago, Donkey and Diddy run, jump, collect bananas, swing, and ride mine carts through the land of the Kongs. Donkey Kong also has some new moves strait out of the Super Smash Bros. series such as punching and pounding the ground. It is unknown as to what Diddy’s abilities are, but I have a feeling he may be concealing a weapon under that t-shirt of his somewhere. One of the best things about this game is, NO NEED FOR BONGOS!

The reason the game is called Skyward Sword is because you can gain power by holding the sword towards the sky, which in turn allows you to shoot a beam of light by swinging it.  Spin attacks are achieved by swinging both the remote and nunchuck in the same directing – not by spinning your whole body in a complete circle, luckily. At one point in the demo, there is a door with an eyeball on it. If you try to slash at it, the eye closes, reflecting your attack. But the eye is usually following the tip of your sword. So what you must do is spin your sword (remote) around in complete circles until the eye gets dizzy causing it to loose focus, allowing you to slash it, which unlocks the door.

Another returning enemy to this game are Deku Scrubs. Much like the past games, you need to use your shield to reflect their projectiles. But this time, just blocking them won’t reflect them back. You must thrust the shield(nunchuck) just as it hits to bounce it back into the enemy. The another returning enemy are Bokoblins who use their swords to block your attacks. So what you have to do is swing your sword in a way that goes around theirs.If their sword are guarding their face, you need to slash at their waist. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Dark Nuts in Zelda II.

You don’t use many buttons for this game. The A button allows you to run, and while you are holding it, you can roll by shaking the remote. And of course, the Z button is for targeting. The Minus button is used for bottles while the Plus button is your map. The B button is for your other weapons. For instance, if you press B, the item menu will come up. Point to the item you want, and let go of B to equip it. If you have the Bow, you just need to point to where you want to shoot, then hold down C while pulling back on the nunchuck to pull back on the bow. Letting go of the C button fires the arrow. One of the new items in the game is called the Beetle. This is an item you shoot and then guide using the Wii remote. The Beetle flies around and allows you to pick up otherwise unreachable items. Another new item to the game is the Whip. With this, you can go Simon Belmont on your enemies and attack them from a distance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work on all of them, such as Bokoblins, but it seems to work great on those annoying Keese.

One thing that caught many fans off guard was the fact that the game is once again cel-shaded. But it’s not bad at all. Link looks like the hero we know from Twilight Princess but with a brighter tone. The world around him is a lot like the world in Wind Waker, but he fits right in. The best way to describe the look of Skyward Sword is to say it’s a mash-up of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. And personally, I think Nintendo has found the perfect style for the franchise. It really is a beautiful game.

The Handheld Battle

It seems so long ago, but in the 8-bit era we were lucky to have the LCD dot-matrix Game Boy. No one was crazy about monochrome, but it worked. The competition’s handheld gaming used a static, painted backdrop.

We saw pre-molded LCD caricatures in which movement was defined by disappearing from one part of the screen to appear on another part; comparatively, the 8-bit yellow-and-green dot matrix LCD screen of the Game Boy worked.

Not only did we now have a handheld video game system that actually created its own backgrounds and allowed for actual fluid motion, but we got a handheld that had interchangeable games (as novel as that sounds)!

Still, it was only monochrome, or as Sega called it in their Game Gear ads, “creamed spinach-colored”. So, many of us – myself included – could only wonder what Super Mario Land would’ve looked like in color form on our NES.

We waited, hoping Nintendo would be generous and give us an enhanced port of the game, but it was for naught.

Sega ramped things up substantially when they delivered their Master System in the form of a handheld: a device known as the Sega Game Gear. Full color and a built-in backlight! Sure, it sacrificed battery life, and ni-cads offered HALF the life of alkaline batteries, but it was full-color.

16-bit Era

The years moved on. Nintendo moved on from the NES to SNES, and Sega moved on from the Master System/Master System II to the Genesis. The handheld market stagnated. So many systems fell by the wayside. Among them were the Turbo Express, Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket, and ultimately, the Sega Game Gear.

In 1998, Nintendo decided to take a big leap forward. Even though they had total dominance over the handheld market, they recognized the need for handheld gaming to go live with color. The GameBoy Color came into the world.

It was fully backwards-compatible with all previous GameBoy games, allowing button-combinations to change screen pallet color, and boasted a specially light-reflective screen. Unless you were in total darkness, chances are you could easily see games on your GameBoy Color screen without much trouble.

Nintendo also gave new life to two classics: Super Mario Bros. and Link’s Awakening in the form of Super Mario Bros. DX, which had some additional content added rather than a straight port of the old game, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX, which added new content and was backwards compatible with the old Gameboys!

Nintendo Innovations

Nintendo wasn’t done yet. Far from it, in fact. Just a few small years later, the GameBoy Advance came to life. Yes, it was incredible. SNES graphics in handheld form. In fact, it was so incredible, even Nintendo didn’t realize its full capabilities! Around its release, Nintendo stated the system was lacking the Mode 7 technology and wouldn’t be able to handle 3-D graphics the way the SNES could.

They had to admit they were wrong when games like Star-X, Top Gear Rally, and Hotwheels Stunt Challenge came to be. Star-X came very close to Nintendo’s Star Fox. The graphics were quite close. Actually, one who didn’t pay attention to the fact none of Nintendo’s trademark characters weren’t anywhere to be seen could think it was Star Fox.

Alas, time marches on. While the GBA could give gamers SNES-level graphics, Nintendo moved from the Nintendo 64 to the GameCube, Sony moved from the PSX to the PS2, and Microsoft unleashed the XBox. Some looked at the GBA as being “antiquated”.

Whilst the consoles were boasting the fully 3-D Grand Theft Auto III, the GBA could only replicate the old-style top-down GTA gameplay. Some of us didn’t mind; we liked the classic “back-to-your-roots” gameplay. Others weren’t so pleased. It seemed that as with previous eras, no handheld could ever come close to console-level graphics. It was like the comparison of a home console to arcade machines in the 1980’s. It seemed as though every time a new console hit the market, the arcade world just reached its next level.

Dual Screen’s Bring New Success

It was time for a revamp to the handheld market. At E3 2004, Nintendo unleashed its “third pillar” known as the Nintendo DS. Not so much a “handheld portable” as a system that just simply did more than previous handhelds had done.

With dual-screen action, a touch-screen, a microphone, and Nintendo 64-quality graphics all made this a system worth looking into. I remember watching Nintendo’s press conference at E3 2004. While I was also quite excited about the new games they’d shown coming to the GameCube and GBA, I was mostly excited about the DS.

I didn’t know what was bubbling down below in the Sony world. It would be the biggest change to hit conventional handheld gaming since the original GameBoy: the Sony PlayStation Portable, or PSP. It wasn’t an alternative, per-se, to the DS, but an augmentation.

I’ve always felt that, to get the most out of handheld gaming, one must own both a DS and PSP. The DS provides a unique gaming experience, whilst the PSP can emulate the console experience, albeit a little stripped-down in some cases. The PSP has managed to pull off a solid replication of console gaming. It’s not perfect, but many of the current-generation games released for the PSP have come off without a significant hitch.

The Sony PSP

In the year of the PSP’s launch (2005), Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories came into being. It actually looked like Grand Theft Auto III and, more importantly, it manged to play like Grand Theft Auto III.

Since this time, the PSP has had many more multi-system games released on it, and in more faithful translation than previous handhelds. Resistance: Retribution is remarkable. It puts the game in third-person view instead of first-person, and it’s not a “port” as a parallel story to the PS3 games. Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines has a few minor flaws because of the lack of a right analog-stick, but it holds up in gameplay.

Even more incredible is Dante’s Inferno; the maps are identical to the console version’s maps. The layout is exactly the same. The only difference being the PSP game’s gameplay graphics are a little stripped-down, and the non-playable cutscenes have been simply recorded, and play in a digitized manner instead of relying on the system’s hardware to render the cutscenes, resulting in a small loss of quality and the inability to perfectly segue from gameplay to cutscene and visa versa.

There’s No Time Like The Present

So, here we are now. The DS is an excellent system, and I recommend it to all, but for anyone looking to capture the world of console gaming in handheld form should really give the PSP a try.

Sony has some excellent bundles on the market, and included in said bundles are all the things you’ll need to get started. Standard bundles usually include: game (based on your bundle), 1GB memory stick, a special-edition PSP, and the essential AC adapter and rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

The only DS bundle that is currently on the market is the DSi bundle which includes a white DSi and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.

How do YOU feel about the progress of handheld gaming? Discuss it below in our comments section!

[Editor's Note: If you liked Bone Meal's short history on the handheld, read his Top 10 Games for the PSP.]

Image credits: Damien Lopez, broccoli, cinefil, xcassiegotto, diodoro