Tech Lust for the Handheld Minded

Late last month, as a result of some Christmas offers(€_€)and because my aging GBAs graphics and game release schedule don't seem so impressive as of late, I decided it was time to get me a new handheld system. At first I was a bit divided between three pieces of hardware, all great machines, mind. This triangle was composed of the Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation Portable and Gamepark Holdings GP2X-F200.

These are all very different machines, with different focuses, albeit similar price points. Here's what your considerations should be if you're undecided, like I was.


First, let's talk about the NDS. The available model on sale right now is the slim model. An attractive clamshell design with two screens, one of which tactile. The DS focuses on games. It has every franchise known to man and its appeal in this field is unquestionable. Everyone and their mother is developing for the DS right now. Plus, it has all the exclusives you would expect from a Nintendo handheld, like Mario games and Zelda. Also, battery life is very impressive.

The downside to the NDS is its hardware. While capable of providing a 3D experience, it's extremely rough around the edges... Think Nintendo 64 with better textures and you get an idea of what to expect. Some games were even ported from the N64 for the NDS. In terms of multimedia functions it's also pretty weak. This is a machine built only for commercial games, and it shows. The extras are all kept to a bare minimum.

There is a homebrew scene for the DS, but with such limited hardware, the results are hardly worth mentioning.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, there's the GP2X. This was built specifically as a homebrew-enabled machine. It has Linux as its OS, so it pretty much runs anything you want it to in terms of multimedia. It also has a very active developer community, constantly coming up with both new applications and entertainment content. What I mean by entertainment content is both games and emulators. The amount of emulators is just staggering. There's one for everything. Even arcade systems like the NeoGeo. Because of this, the sheer amount of content (read games) is huge. The downside to it being an open system? No commercial games. Yes, the GP2X has NO commercial games.

In terms of the hardware itself, it sports a big tactile screen in the F200 version. Also, the D-pad is no longer an analog nub like in previous versions, but a REAL d-pad, making it easier to play games requiring complicated motions like Street Fighter 2. One downside of the GPX2 is that it seems to have something of an oddball architecture on the components side that prevents the developers from breaking free of some bottlenecks. But what absolutely kills this machine in my opinion is the fact that it still requires AA batteries to work. This is completely ridiculous for this day and age and there are reports of it depleting the batteries in 30 minutes.

The middleground here is the Sony PSP. The model on sale now is the very attractive PSP-2000, AKA PSP slim and lite. It's just a beautiful machine. It has a huge lcd screen and the recognizable square, triangle, X and circle face buttons. The screen itself isn't touch sensitive but to make up for this, the PSP has a normal D-pad AND an analog nub, so I guess it's ok. This is marketed as a multimedia machine, and understandably so. You can watch movies, listen to music and store your pictures in this.

The hardware is pretty powerful, as it's essentially a modified ps2 in a small case. One look at games like God Of War Chains of Olympus or Wipeout Pulse will make you wonder how this can be achievable on a handheld system. Very impressive. This comes at a cost, however. The battery won't last long. Maybe 5 hours of gameplay time. It's the only real disadvantage of the system.

There's also the CFW, or Custom Firmware. The psp is sold as a closed system. This means that out of the box, you don't have access to homebrew applications or games since the official firmware locks the system to these types of programs. Things get interesting if you install Custom Firmware. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your machine. Since the PSP has a small but pretty active community of coders, it has a huge library of homebrew applications, games and emulators. You get access to features like watching youtube videos through wifi, drawing programs, security programs, file explorers, you name it. And you still get genesis, sega cd, snes, psone, neogeo, cps1, cps2 and even n64 emulators on the go.

The Veredict

I finally decided to get a PSP. It's hands down the most complete of the 3 machines. While this isn't the case right out of the box, it can easily be achived through some simple (yet somewhat risky) firmware updates. It completely balances the the homebrew side and the commercial side of entertainment. I love it for it.