What handheld systems do you play?

[DanielMack]

I think a lot of people these days like to play games on their smartphone. What do you guys like to play games on when away from your gaming system and computers?

[twiztor]

i've never really been a handheld gamer. i own a 3DSXL, so i guess that wins. but my playing on it has been sporadic since i beat Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds.

[RetroDefense]

3DS anymore - my PSP recently died for whatever reason. Never smartphone or tablet beyond trying something every now and again. I've not fond of touchscreen controls or the free-to-play business model so stay away from that stuff.

[RobertDuncan]

Before I played 3ds and Vita but with my smartphone I find that I like playing retro gaming with emulators because of the options they have that for some reason companies don't give like fast foward,replay,rewind,co-op and cheat file support.

[KHANV1CT]

3DS for sure. These days its the only handheld that isn't struggling. I wanted to get a Vita but I couldn't justify it with the small library of games.

[baphoon]

I play 3DS, PS Vita, and Nvidia Shield. I play my Vita more than the others for all the RPGs and Trophy support. I think Vita gets a bad reputation mostly because of Sony they honestly gave up on it too soon. Its a powerful handheld with poor support.

[KHANV1CT]

Okay, so I got a Vita. I picked one up at a pawn shop for $70, so that helped a lot with my decision lol. I bought a ton of PSOne Classics with the Essentials Sale that was on the PS Store. I think the only actual Vita game I bought was Tearaway.

[kitsunebi]

I have a regular DS and PSP (in addition to an old-school Game Boy), but I don't actually use the hardware much to play games anymore. I just find emulators more convenient - bigger screen, improved graphics, save states, etc. That applies to all other older handhelds as well - emulators all the way. The DS is the only system where I almost always use the actual hardware, especially since my favorite games on the DS are rhythm games like Taiko no Tatsujin and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, and playing that sort of game well using a mouse to simulate the touch-screen is pretty much impossible.

[baphoon]

I recently picked up a Playstation TV / Vita TV on clearance at GameStop for 60 bucks. It came with a DS3 and Lego Movie game so it was a decent deal. I use it to play a few of my Vita games like Sword Art Online, One Piece, Freedom Wars ect. It does a ok job with PSP games some of them the text can be really muddy and hard to read. One nice thing is I can just swap my memory card from the Vita to the PSTV and it works perfect so all of my game saves are there without using the cloud. My cloud storage is always full from the PS4.

[DPsx7]

I don't believe in those gimmicky phones so just a Vita and 3DS. I have many others but haven't used 'em in a while. I agree the Vita gets a bad reputation for no good reason. Nin does well without third party support so why does the Vita need first party? The system has rewarded me with a lot of unique games and that's exactly what I want in these days of excess ports and sequels. Probably have about 30-35 physical games for it including the first 3 imported games I've ever gotten. I'm also trying not to buy all the RPG's because my backlog isn't too compatible with long games.

[miketheratguy]

I've got a hacked white Star Wars psp that's got a 32 GB memory stick and something like 300 classic games in emulated form (as well as digital copies of all my official psp games). I love that little machine, it's an emulation paradise.

I had high hopes that the same could eventually be said for the Vita, but apparently Sony put more effort into preventing the device from being hacked than they did in developing a game library that consists of anything other than JRPGs. My friend bought his Vita from another friend for 35 bucks because the guy was desperate to get rid of it. After a few months my friend just gave it to me for free. I've got...let's see......three games for it?

[pablumatic]

For dedicated handhelds all I play these days are a New 3DS XL and (rarely) Vita.

I do game with my smartphone sometimes, but since its touchscreen only I limit gaming on it to turn-based RPGs and Pac-Man variations.

[Kain]

. I've got...let's see......three games for it?

Something tells me that's the way it's going to stay as far as PS Vita titles are concerned. The PSP was good, it had some steam but i can't count more then 10 really great games on it. At best 15 as far as i'm concerned maybe even less.. As a big MGS fan i only bought the PSP for MGS Portable Ops, and i had to wait a few years after to play Peace Walker, so for me two main games to use the psp. I've played others but those two were the main reason for me to get a PSP back in the day. and the MGS games were great. Had the PSP came out at around 2002 and competed with the GBA and vita around 2008, it might have been better as far as sales and things like that go but at the end of the day they both needed the software, and that is the killer of sony handhelds. Another killer was the UMD format for the PSP. That thing was a joke from my point of view. Sure there are nice titles but not system sellers like pokemon for Nintendo.

[KHANV1CT]

I got an awesome deal on my Vita. I'm pretty sure this thing is at the end of its life though. There's nothing but a lot of obscure Japanese stuff and RPGs coming out for it, not a whole lot I'm interested in. It's a great system, I love the graphics and the build quality(same for PSP, I was blown away by it compared to Nintendo handhelds) but for me, the STUPID proprietary memory card they went with has turned me off. $80-100 for 32gb is outrageous. The 16gb is almost within reason when it's on sale but even then that isn't enough room for very many games. It's the same thing they went through with PSP and the MSProDuo and THOSE overpriced cards. They keep saying they will continue supporting the Vita, but I just don't see it. My local Walmart has 4 games for sale for Vita. They don't even sell the system or it's accessories lol! Target has nothing related to Vita. Its just dead, which is a damn shame because I think it is superior to 3DS in almost every way.

[RobertDuncan]

I bought the vita to play ps3 port because I prefer carts over cd for durability purposes heck I like downloading files I just hate cds. Anyway Sony dropped the ball with their property based SD card ugh and those babies are expensive to. I regret buying it now should have got a smartphone but if Sony didn't force people into buying their brand of SD cards they probably would have had more content on their beautiful oled screen. I own a 3ds love their content but hate the clam shell design, favorite handheld from Nintendo is the gba see through clear version. I now game on smartphones playing emulators,arcade games and some mobile games like pokemon shuffle I'm sorry but mobile gaming will win. Why? Well emulators unlike Nintendo store has gamegenie,online link,fast foward, replay etc etc. Heck you can stream your gaming on a beautiful 4k tv. As for the touchscreen simple solution my friends-blue tooth wireless controls. There's just so much options in gaming on a smartphone although I will say they are now experiencing battery issues like the handhelds due to graphics,4k and other gimmicks.

[miketheratguy]

Something tells me that's the way it's going to stay as far as PS Vita titles are concerned. The PSP was good, it had some steam but i can't count more then 10 really great games on it. At best 15 as far as i'm concerned maybe even less.. As a big MGS fan i only bought the PSP for MGS Portable Ops, and i had to wait a few years after to play Peace Walker, so for me two main games to use the psp. I've played others but those two were the main reason for me to get a PSP back in the day. and the MGS games were great. Had the PSP came out at around 2002 and competed with the GBA and vita around 2008, it might have been better as far as sales and things like that go but at the end of the day they both needed the software, and that is the killer of sony handhelds. Another killer was the UMD format for the PSP. That thing was a joke from my point of view. Sure there are nice titles but not system sellers like pokemon for Nintendo.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. My favorite PSP games are a ragtag bunch of unique titles such as The Warriors, Sid Meier's Pirates, Castlevania, The Sims 2: Pets, Silent Hill, Fight Night, Burnout, WWE SVR 2006 and Star Wars Battlefront II (special mention goes to Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble which wound up being a crazy fun game that I only discovered by accident).

The titles it had were good, but kind of few and far between. I first asked my girlfriend for a PSP for Christmas of 2006 because I thought that it was a sleek system with great potential and a couple of huge games (the recently released GTA: Liberty City Stories being one of them). It was only through happening to stumble upon an exploitable glitch in GTA that I learned that the system could be exploited to allow emulation, and I quickly found that most exciting of all. Within a few years the emu scene for the PSP had become so thriving that you could play games from pretty much every major system up until the Nintendo 64. It was a handheld NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, PS1 and little arcade all in one. It replaced my imported GP32 Blu and then some.

Hacking the PSP also allowed for easy conversion of my UMDs into digital copies by connecting the system to a PC through its USB port and ripping them, 1 2 3. I would imagine that this could have been crazy for pirates but for me it was a simple matter of convenience - I only had about a dozen games for the machine and I hated carting them around, especially since everything else on the machine was convenient digital emulation, so being able to place both all my emulated games and all the stupid UMDs onto a 64 GB memory stick was incredibly handy. All I needed is the PSP and a charger and I was good to go.

The UMD thing was dumb (it reminded me of Nintendo's stubborn cartridge policy in the face of increasingly practical cds) and I absolutely despised the fact that the system had just one flimsy thumbstick. Whoever thought that this was a good idea must have never played a video game from like 2000 onward. But the screen was great and that PC connectivity really opened a world of possibilities, so for me the PSP ultimately redeemed itself as an incredible system.

I got an awesome deal on my Vita. I'm pretty sure this thing is at the end of its life though. There's nothing but a lot of obscure Japanese stuff and RPGs coming out for it, not a whole lot I'm interested in. It's a great system, I love the graphics and the build quality(same for PSP, I was blown away by it compared to Nintendo handhelds) but for me, the STUPID proprietary memory card they went with has turned me off. $80-100 for 32gb is outrageous. The 16gb is almost within reason when it's on sale but even then that isn't enough room for very many games. It's the same thing they went through with PSP and the MSProDuo and THOSE overpriced cards. They keep saying they will continue supporting the Vita, but I just don't see it. My local Walmart has 4 games for sale for Vita. They don't even sell the system or it's accessories lol! Target has nothing related to Vita. Its just dead, which is a damn shame because I think it is superior to 3DS in almost every way.

I agree with everything that you said as well. The proprietary memory sticks were a terrible idea and at the moment there's hardly anything worth playing on the system unless you're a hardcore fan of JRPGs and other random Japanese titles. They had such ridiculous priorities for the system, concerning themselves more with gimmicks like a rear touchscreen than with developing a solid library and really utilizing the potential of the system. The Vita had GREAT potential - I imagined it as being something akin to a portable PS2, with all the emulation possibilities that would go with that, but it doesn't seem like it's ever going to pass. Aside from Minecraft, Mortal Kombat, and a version of Dynasty Warriors I don't use the Vita for anything other than web browsing because I don't own a cell phone. That's literally it. The emu scene appears to be at a dead stop because Sony was feverish about combating it, and I don't foresee any great games on the horizon. The Vita was the little system that could, but it seems like the company behind it didn't even want to try.

I bought the vita to play ps3 port because I prefer carts over cd for durability purposes heck I like downloading files I just hate cds. Anyway Sony dropped the ball with their property based SD card ugh and those babies are expensive to.

This is yet another thing that I hated about the Vita: After getting mine, and realizing that there were less games that I wanted to play on it than fingers on my one hand, I shrugged and thought "but hey, at least I can play portable versions of my PS3 games like GTAV and Shadow of the Colossus. That will be awesome". But nope, it turned out that this was yet another aspect of the Vita that had potential but which Sony completely half-assed. It turned out that in order to play PS3 games on the Vita the games in question had to have the technology built into them, and this was apparently completely left up to the developers to decide. As a result there's literally something like fifteen PS3 games that can actually do this, and I don't even remember if any of them were any good.

With this, the prohibitive memory crap and the overly aggressive stance against hacking it's almost like Sony produced a system they were so proud of making that they didn't want anyone to actually touch it.

[metroid]

I've never really been a handheld gamer, the concept of playing a gme in a small screen holding it close to my face never clicked on me.I've always liked to play games on the biggest screen possible and never have the need of play a game when i'm not in home.

That said i have a ds and have played a few game that i really liked but i would love to play then in a tv.

The gameboy player is awesome too, i'm glad that i have one.

[shadefaster]

Enjoyed playing on 3ds but not recently since not many games have come out for it that interest me.

[nutznboltz2003]

I stick to my New 3DS but will occasionally break out the old PSP for some classic RPG action.

[wtc1973]

I don't have the best eyesite, so portable gaming isn't something I do much of but I do have one of those genesis portables from ATgames. I like that I can use a SD card and port more games on it. The bad part about this little system is that you can't save your progress so Phantasy Star II and other RPG's are not practicle on it. It's still great for a game of golden axe on the go.

[jdoll]

just my 2ds these days and my galaxy s6 though i'd love to upgrade to a nice 3ds and or vita i had to go the cheap route including a ps tv in the vita's place

[dc2142]

I usually play my 3ds for Monster Hunter, Pokemon and Zelda. I also have a hacked PSP so I can play GBA and Playstation games that haven't been and probably never will be released on the Playstation Network.

[Intersurf]

Really like playing with my 3DS, going to get into the Fire Emblem series.

[lalilulelo]

currently playing mobile on may PS vita and my android phone, usually some older gen emulator during some time off.

[Depressor]

Bandai WonderSwan\Color\Crystal. Bought all of them with about 20-30 games.