Hand held gameing

[xeroatticus]

Hand helds are a big part of gameing today. I actually play my hand helds a good bit more than my big platform systems. I own a Nintendo DS Lite, which is by far the best choice for hand held games, in my opinion. Along with my NDSL, I have Gameboy Micro, and I plan on getting a PSP sometime soon. For you hand held gamers, which hand held system would you say is the best?

[Rob]

I like the Nintendo DS Lite, which I've yet to use myself but my kids use the most. The colors are bright, the images are detailed, the batteries last a good long time, and the two screens works out really well. The second screen helps eliminate a lot of clutter. For example, in a race game, one screen might show a first-person or third-person view of the race, while the second screen shows a full-map, radar type view. It works out much better than sticking a transparent radar type view in the corner, as might be done with a single screen system.

The PSP has its good points, but it takes a very long time to load a game, like a minute or two. It can play DVD's, but they have to be special mini-DVD's for the PSP.

I'm not sure about game selection between these two hand-helds. Of course, the Ninentdo DS Lite has all of the Mario style games, and nearly all of those are excellent.

There's a theory that game platforms will move in two directions. One is the PC multi-player online game. And the other is handhelds. Leaving game consoles and single-player PC games to fade. I can see the logic of it, but things will probably play out in a way that's actually much more difficult to forsee.

[xeroatticus]

That's what has seemed to happen in the past at least.

But even then, the DS has a wireless feature that allows you to play online with, so maybe handheld games will becaome even more popular because of this feature.