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[ponpo]

Last night I discovered that Bemani Pocket is a thing! Beatmania, Pop'n, DDR, et al. have pocket devices from the 1990s and 2000s! The sound quality isn't the best, but pretty good for these devices I think.

beatmania pocket video
Pop'n pocket video (nico)

More rhythm games are welcome since that's a favourite genre of mine, but aside from that, what else interesting exists?

 

[Toad.T]

Nintendo released a system just for Pokémon spinoffs entitled the "Pokémon Mini".

The games are mostly shit, and the ones that aren't can be played in Pokémon channel for the Gamecube.

 

[bobawesome]

Nintendo released a system just for Pokémon spinoffs entitled the "Pokémon Mini".

I remember these. Even young me thought it was a terrible idea. But I still wanted one.

Spoiler

And I got it. Sorry, dad.

 

[Shun]

I owned one.

 

[bobawesome]

I owned one.

"Obscure"
"Tomagotchi"

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

One of the first of many competitors to get wiped out by the gameboy, the Watara Supervision. Cheap, but terrible motion blur and rubbish games killed it.

 

[wanders]

Do I have a site for you

http://consolasportatiles.info

Its in Spanish BTW

 

[Sylverstone14]

Nintendo released a system just for Pokémon spinoffs entitled the "Pokémon Mini".

The games are mostly shit, and the ones that aren't can be played in Pokémon channel for the Gamecube.

Funny you should mention that... it was the first handheld that I had really owned. It was also the first time that I visited what was then called the Pokemon Center in NYC (which obviously became the Nintendo World Store later).

I had played on a Game Boy Color before, but that was actually my sister's, and she got it stolen, so I had no real portable game time until I got the Pokemon mini as a gift from one of my dad's co-workers.

Anyways, I only had the one pack-in game they had (Pokemon Party mini), and I enjoyed it for what it was. It made for a good alarm, I used the stopwatch for races with friends, and I'd always do some high score challenges with friends. Never got to do any of the multiplayer games because where in the world am I going to find another kid in the island nation of Jamaica that actually owned this? Nowhere.

Unfortunately, the "Mini" lived up to its name - darn thing was so small, I lost it somewhere in the house I grew up in. Never found it to this day.

Of course, I didn't have to wait long until 2004 came around, and I got the DS during Christmas of that year.

So yeah, it was really something offbeat and rare from Nintendo, and it was one of my most fun gaming experiences as a pre-teen.

 

[ponpo]

Do I have a site for you

http://consolasportatiles.info

Its in Spanish BTW

Missing the bemani ones. Useless site!!!! (kidding lots of cool looking stuff there)

 

[LithiumSpade]

The king:

I actually owned a Gizmondo.

Spoiler

I lied. I owned two of the fucking things.

 

[thelatestmodel]

Ugh, remember when all machines had right hand turntables?

 

[Metallix87]

At work, so I can't go into too much detail, but I'll suggest an Atari Lynx. The second model is fantastic, and IMO it had a fantastic library that rivaled that of the black & white Game Boy. My favorite titles? Blue Lightning, Rygar, and Toki.

 

[CTLance]

I have an openpandora (CC version, aka the first one). Seriously obscure, there's like 7000 of these things worldwide.

They have a stepmania port, if that helps. Not big on that particular genre.

 

[Castef]

I actually appreciated the Gamate.

It was a little handheld which costed about 1/2 of a Gameboy and had a lineup of about 50 games. Several of them were quite nice, even though some were simply clones of well-known games.

Games came on slick, thin cartridges:

Among the games there were a nice clone of Bomberman:

You can get more information about the console here.

 

[Adam Prime]

Does R-Zone count? I owned a fucking R-Zone.

Wow. I "Googled" R-Zone and absolutely nothing came up. I had to Google "R-Zone Video game" before I got the images I wanted. Shows how far this thing has been forgotten in SpaceTime.

 

[Jackano]

Does R-Zone count? I owned a fucking R-Zone.

Wow. I "Googled" R-Zone and absolutely nothing came up. I had to Google "R-Zone Video game" before I got the images I wanted. Shows how far this thing has been forgotten in SpaceTime.

Relevant to topic, and funny ont he R-Zone subject:
http://cinemassacre.com/2013/09/06/avgn-tiger-electronic/

AVGN's video about Tigers games.

 

[Ban Puncher]

You got me to go searching through some boxes OP.

A Higurashi LCD game. Couldn't find any pictures online so took a photo myself.

Came with a magazine I bought at least 8 years ago. Survived a house flood but I've never actually played it or even opened it until just now. Just tried turning it on but of course the batteries are long dead. I'll see about getting some new ones and see if it'll still fire up.

 

[illmatic22]

Does the N-Gage count?

This thing was garbage. Terrible ergonomics as a handheld and even worse as a mobile phone.

 

[outunderthestars]

Ericsson Red Jade 64 bit portable

(Unfinished prototype shown below)

Supposed to launch in 2001 with GPS, PDA, digital camera, mp3, and wireless internet capabilities.

Never launched after a rumored parternship with Sony collapsed.

 

[Herbspiceguy]

That reminds me, I still have a Bemani Pocket 2 somewhere.
I think I was 16 at the time (1999) and was totally hooked on Beatmania 2nd Mix for PSX.
Through some IRC channel I got in contact with an American who was stationed at an Osaka military base. He wanted to start a webshop called The Friend's Toystore, selling Pokemon items and electronic toys. I offered to make it and he would send me Bemani Pocket 2. So I stole jpgs from the official Japanese Pokemon site and made the most basic, amateuristic, not even working properly front page and sent it to him. He probably thought the effort was cute and still sent me the Bemani Pocket 2.
One of my best early internet experiences.

Not rhythm game related but still pretty cool; I had an electronic TMNT game as a watch (yeah it's really meant to wear around your wrist);

Considering how tacky it looks, the game itself was actually pretty good compared to other electronic handheld games, which made me think the game was actually programmed by Konami. I believe it's quite obscure.

Not interesting to play/buy, but funny as hell; Ashen's video's of cheap, Chinese rip-offs. The GameKing showcase is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmbQXeH97NE

While on the subject, is anyone familiar with a really oldskool handheld with green (possibly backlit) Vectrex graphics??? I'm sure I played a bulky handheld, somewhat reminiscend of the Atari Lynx, with such graphics at a nephew's. But never have I found any info on the internet about it.

 

[Newline]

Does the N-Gage count?

This thing was garbage. Terrible ergonomics as a handheld and even worse as a mobile phone.

Yeah lol I still laugh at how the mic was on the top of the device, meaning people had to use their phone like this:

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

I have an openpandora (CC version, aka the first one). Seriously obscure, there's like 7000 of these things worldwide.



They have a stepmania port, if that helps. Not big on that particular genre.

I have one of these, they're great. The PSX emulator is absolutely fantastic.
Can't wait for evildragon to start producing the Pyra.

 

[Blue Volt]

Rhythm games you say?

I've still never worked out how this is official.

 

[Nikodemos]

Yeah lol I still laugh at how the mic was on the top of the device, meaning people had to use their phone like this:

The redesign (N-Gage QD) was slightly better ergonomically (had speaker and mic in standard positions) but had downgraded specs (dual-band instead of tri, no FM tuner, no native MP3 playback etc.)

 

[Metallix87]

The redesign (N-Gage QD) was slightly better ergonomically (had speaker and mic in standard positions) but had downgraded specs (dual-band instead of tri, no FM tuner, no native MP3 playback etc.)

It's funny how, looking back, a game system / phone hybrid isn't nearly as crazy as it seemed back then. Nokia was too early with the N-Gage.

 

[soxinthebox]

Does the N-Gage count?

This thing was garbage. Terrible ergonomics as a handheld and even worse as a mobile phone.

I had one of those and used it for a couple of years. The side talking was dumb but Tony Hawk and a few other games were fairly competent for the time.

Killed the phone by filling up the internal memory with messages and it wasn't able to reboot so it'd try restarting until I completely failed. Shame.

Sometimes think about grabbing another off eBay since there's no real emulator for it.

 

[Krejlooc]

Does the gp32 count? I got one shortly after it was released, before the flu or blu were released. My god I loved that handheld. I have a few actual retail games and they are actually good. Dungeon and garder is probably my favorite, or tomak save the earth again, which kinda reminds me of metal slug.

It was the emulation that was king, though. Full speed genesis emulation in my pocket in 2001?shit was incredible. I used the hell out of mplayer and the gamepark mp3 app. This thing was actually my first portable mp3 player lol.

True homebrew system. I remember having to shave down the corners of the thumbstick with a razer so it would hit the diagonals, it was a design flaw with the first units.

Got a tapwave zodiac and gpx2 and all that, but never liked or used any as much as my gp32.

 

[Riki]

The GamePark32 was a Korean handheld that actually had some really awesome games and features.
It was very ahead of the curve.

 

[Krejlooc]

Thats tomak save the earth again in the screenshot.

 

[Riki]

Thats tomak save the earth again in the screenshot.

Yup.
Always wanted one of these.
I know they were popular in Europe as well.

 

[solarus]

I have an openpandora (CC version, aka the first one). Seriously obscure, there's like 7000 of these things worldwide.



They have a stepmania port, if that helps. Not big on that particular genre.

I used to have one of these too, sold it for more than i bought it for. I remember the analog nubs being pretty bad.

 

[AbandonedTrolley]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode_Battler

 

[Lambtron]

There was a game based on the Rifts pen & paper RPG for the NGage. I'd always hoped there would be a video game based in that universe, but that's not what I had really hoped for. Maybe some day we'll get one, though I doubt it.

 

[DeaviL]

Yeah lol I still laugh at how the mic was on the top of the device, meaning people had to use their phone like this:

I had a QD, no more side talking and a bigger screen.
The games were kinda fun too. I never regretted getting one.
Someone stole it from me though :'(

 

[fwpx]

I had one of these :|

 

[Metallix87]

I had one of these :|

I'm sorry.

 

[Riki]

I had one of these :|

Game.com Active!

 

[Krejlooc]

Yup.
Always wanted one of these.
I know they were popular in Europe as well.

The day I got mine, I installed LittleJohnGP (the NES emulator) and GPEngine and threw some roms onto the thing before heading to my Grandmother's restaurant, which was a good 45 minute drive in Houston. I can't tell you how cool it was to play Ninja Gaiden in the car at full speed, it was honestly mind blowing.

The best thing about the GP32 was the community, it had real synergy with the Dreamcast Homebrew of the time, and a lot of experiments with cross-compatibility using homebrew link cables was done. The thing had an official SDL port! That made writing code for both it and the dreamcast a snap. I remember a killer port of Beats of Rage was released on the thing.

I always cringe when I hear the average person talk about the Ouya because I know they'd speak the same way about the GP32. To me, the Ouya grew way bigger than it was intended. Seemed obvious to me that the Ouya was supposed to be the next homebrew platform, a place for those who had dinked around with the GP32 and Dreamcast and GP2X and all that stuff to continue. People looking at the Ouya like it was supposed to be the next Playstation TV would have been like people looking at the GP32 like it was supposed to be the next GBA. Very different demographics, definitely not for everybody. As is, the GP32 is probably my favorite handheld of all time.

I had a QD, no more side talking and a bigger screen.
The games were kinda fun too. I never regretted getting one.
Someone stole it from me though :'(

The later N-Gage games, the ones that mainly weren't released in stores and only sold on the Nokia website (because stores gave up on the N-Gage in the first year) were quite good. Mile High Pinball and High Seas are probably the best games, followed by Glitterati. There are 2 ports of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and both are pretty good actually, with the 3D one, surprisingly, being the best of the two, not the side scroller.

I'm also partial to the 3D remake of Snake, which is unironically one of the best games on the system. Also, given that nearly all anime at the time was distributed in realmedia format, the built in real player was actually pretty useful for me. I remember you could rotate the display with a homebrew app to maintain the aspect ratio by just turning the entire unit on its side. I actually like the shape and feel of the QD, although the original Taco model really is awful.

I find the N-Gage fascinating, it's like a train wreck you can't turn away from.

 

[NYCrooner]

I had a QD, no more side talking and a bigger screen.
The games were kinda fun too. I never regretted getting one.
Someone stole it from me though :'(

I loved my QD. Wish it had better support (though it had a pretty good amount of games) but it was the best mobile gaming phone for years until the iPhone/Android takeover.

 

[Krejlooc]

There was a game based on the Rifts pen & paper RPG for the NGage. I'd always hoped there would be a video game based in that universe, but that's not what I had really hoped for. Maybe some day we'll get one, though I doubt it.

That's actually one of the best games on the N-Gage too. Much like the Atari Jaguar, there are actually a number of decent to good N-Gage titles, but they're mainly obscure while the really bad ones get all the attention. Probably the only game worth playing out of the launch window games (which, face it, is the only time anybody paid attention to the n-gage) was Tony Hawk.

 

[Plortch]

Behold the iBen L1 Quad-Core Android Game Console: Android 4.2, 7" 1280x800 IPS screen, 16GB storage, 2GB DDR3 Ram and HDMI out. Ships with 9 emulators installed.

 

[SmokyDave]

I still have my GP32. It seems to have progressively degraded in storage because I fired it up the other day and the screen is nigh-on illegible

Behold the iBen L1 Quad-Core Android Game Console: Android 4.2, 7" 1280x800 IPS screen, 16GB storage, 2GB DDR3 Ram and HDMI out. Ships with 9 emulators installed.

Ohmygodiwantitnow.

 

[Bomber Bob]

I had a Casio Magic Diary when I was kid

 

[Krejlooc]

I still have my GP32. It seems to have progressively degraded in storage because I fired it up the other day and the screen is nigh-on illegible

Mine still works, although I can't find any drivers to get the thing connected to my PC anymore. I have no CDs or anything, and virtually every website dedicated to the thing is dead. I wonder if I can buy a card reader and just drag and drop stuff onto the card.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Does the N-Gage count?

This thing was garbage. Terrible ergonomics as a handheld and even worse as a mobile phone.

They were really popular in mainland Asia, my gf had one. She used it as a phone though, she had no games. I bought and played through Tomb Raider for a bus ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. It was a horrible device, but the novelty of playing TR on a handheld was amazing.

...now I have all the PS1 TR games on my Vita.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Mine still works, although I can't find any drivers to get the thing connected to my PC anymore. I have no CDs or anything, and virtually every website dedicated to the thing is dead. I wonder if I can buy a card reader and just drag and drop stuff onto the card.

Try asking at Gp32x.com, or failing that, boards.openpandora.org- evildragon probably has the old drivers knocking around.

 

[Krejlooc]

Try asking at Gp32x.com, or failing that, boards.openpandora.org- evildragon probably has the old drivers knocking around.

I think I actually did that maybe 6 months or so ago when I decided to dig the thing out and see if it worked. Don't remember getting very far with it. I found this very old server with a bunch of zip files containing GP32 homebrew (and even some cracked games) and what was supposedly the transfer app and drivers but they wouldn't install on windows 7 x64. I actually have a spare windows XP 32-bit machine now so I suppose I could give that another go.

The transfer utility in the GP32 was janky anyways, though. Slow cable, and it would fail mid-transfer pretty regularly. Like I said, I wonder if I can just buy a card reader and write directly to the card, or if the transfer utility did stuff beyond just plopping things down on the MMC.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

I think I actually did that maybe 6 months or so ago when I decided to dig the thing out and see if it worked. Don't remember getting very far with it. I found this very old server with a bunch of zip files containing GP32 homebrew (and even some cracked games) and what was supposedly the transfer app and drivers but they wouldn't install on windows 7 x64. I actually have a spare windows XP 32-bit machine now so I suppose I could give that another go.

The transfer utility in the GP32 was janky anyways, though. Slow cable, and it would fail mid-transfer pretty regularly. Like I said, I wonder if I can just buy a card reader and write directly to the card, or if the transfer utility did stuff beyond just plopping things down on the MMC.

Email evildragon - I think he was one of the original european distributors of the gp2x, so he may know what its predecessor was capable of.

http://openpandora.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&Itemid=16&lang=en

His GP32 archive is linked there too.

 

[HideyoshiJP]

The GamePark32 was a Korean handheld that actually had some really awesome games and features.
It was very ahead of the curve.

Didn't that thing run Linux and have a bunch of emulators? I always wanted one... Talk about the golden age of niche portable consoles.
This one wasn't quite as obscure, but I always remember wanting a Wonderswan when I was in high school. Since they never came stateside, I remember constantly trolling eBay for a Final Fantasy bunduru.

 

[Krejlooc]

Email evildragon - I think he was one of the original european distributors of the gp2x, so he may know what it's predecessor was capable of.

http://openpandora.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105&Itemid=16&lang=en

Thanks, I'll drop a line

Didn't that thing run Linux and have a bunch of emulators? I always wanted one... Talk about the golden age of niche portable consoles.
This one wasn't quite as obscure, but I always remember wanting a Wonderswan when I was in high school. Since they never came stateside, I remember constantly trolling eBay for a Final Fantasy bunduru.

Doesn't run linux, that would be a number of its successors. Ran it's own custom OS on an Arm9(?) processor. The thing was awesome, though, and like I said, it had an official SDL port, meaning writing software for the thing was a complete snap.

I have a Swan Crystal. The word I'd describe them as is cheap - the entire thing is obviously meant to be as inexpensive as possible. Some good games on it, although I detest the button layout.