Good point on PSP's lack of dual analog. After playing Dreamcast vs the other 3, I'm not sure what Sony was thinking with the PSP and going back to single analog.
Maybe I'm thinking used. I do recall it wasn't really until they started using bigger storage capacities that games started being 35-40 bucks.
The Nintendo DS launched in 2004, with its Dual Screens it was a smash hit for Nintendo, selling over 150 million units. It's graphics subsystem is a combination of Nintendo's proven 2d tile based renderer and for the first time on a Nintendo handheld, introduced 3d graphics in hardware. How does it all work? In this episode we take a closer look.
The DS is a fantastic handheld and in my opinion it is better than the Switch in library and original ground breaking titles but we can't take away from the Switch's concept.
Maaaaybe the second screen. Of course if we didn't have the second screen we could have had a more powerful handheld.
If nintendo had done that it would have been nothing but a fancy gba and probably would have flopped, what made the ds special and such a hit was exactly because of all those features. At first devs really didn't know how to best use those features but by the end there were some incredible games for the ds, add in wifi multiplayer gaming that only needed 1 cart a lot of the time and things got even better. The ds was the last time a gaming device would ever get such a unusual & varied mix of software released the library of games was insane yes there was a lot of shovelware but there was also hit after hit, very unusual & fun games were released just because devs wanted to take a chance & experiment it was like going back to the heyday of the japanese PS1 where they used to take chances on experimental quirky stuff. It also had a library of what i class as utility software, the stuff that were not games like the cooking books and the exam studying revision carts and even stuff like teaching japanese kids how to learn sign language there were a lot of these pieces of software released. Even ones for nurses to take courses in how to look after the elderly, i love this side to the ds too it wasn't just a gaming device it also had other functions.
Naw, there were tons of B-level games on PSP well worth playing. (I still plug mine in sometimes for some of the PSP Minis I have on there, as well as a couple disc titles worth playing still.) Games like Crush and Gripshift and Gunpey and LocoRoco and Patchwork Heroes are plentiful, those kinds of games just never pulled out of the traffic of the mainline titles the way they managed to on DS (although the creators of Soul Bubbles or Henry Hatsworth I'm sure could look at their DS sales and tell you why you didn't see such unique titles tried on anything but the biggest-selling gaming platform of all time, and even then...)
At the time it was the only handheld with an analog stick though. I thought it was nuts even having one back then.
If nintendo had done that it would have been nothing but a fancy gba and probably would have flopped, what made the ds special and such a hit was exactly because of all those features. At first devs really didn't know how to best use those features but by the end there were some incredible games for the ds, add in wifi multiplayer gaming that only needed 1 cart a lot of the time and things got even better. The ds was the last time a gaming device would ever get such a unusual & varied mix of software released the library of games was insane yes there was a lot of shovelware but there was also hit after hit, very unusual & fun games were released just because devs wanted to take a chance & experiment it was like going back to the heyday of the japanese PS1 where they used to take chances on experimental quirky stuff. It also had a library of what i class as utility software, the stuff that were not games like the cooking books and the exam studying revision carts and even stuff like teaching japanese kids how to learn sign language there were a lot of these pieces of software released. Even ones for nurses to take courses in how to look after the elderly, i love this side to the ds too it wasn't just a gaming device it also had other functions.
even in 2021 i still play my ds as much as i ever did, i have been enjoying it ever since that morning it launched when i was online chatting to my friend in japan to keep him company as he waited at the toys r us near his house to open to pick up his and my launch unit. This was the start of my DS collection, i still kept the pics i took of when my launch unit arrived from japan and what games i picked up on it's release. I still have everything in this pic.
10 plus years later my collection exploded into this, this pic is a few years old now there's a lot more games been added since then. I passed the 400+ games point about a year back, even now i'm still finding games i missed. Also been picking up more hardware too as i want to make sure i have enough spare backups of various ds models & colours to last a lifetime. My collection is uncommon as i pretty much focused on japanese games but there are some euro & usa exclusives i never got around to getting i'll expand upon those regions at some point.
My most recent pickup was finally getting my hands one one of the single screen ds units used to relay the nintendo zone wifi service in games shops. As the servers are long gone i can't use it for that anymore however i can still use it as a ds download station with the complete usa set of demo download carts, would love to get the pokemon distro carts but they are just too expensive.
damn i miss talking about the ds since the official thread got sent into the archives and locked on here.
The Nintendo DS launched in 2004, with its Dual Screens it was a smash hit for Nintendo, selling over 150 million units. It's graphics subsystem is a combination of Nintendo's proven 2d tile based renderer and for the first time on a Nintendo handheld, introduced 3d graphics in hardware. How does it all work? In this episode we take a closer look.
