PSP, then.
Finally, Sony have seen fit to release it's much hyped PSP handheld in Europe. We've been waiting to get out sweaty hands on one of these for months now.
But, of course, PSP's are new. I'm not writing about new stuff, really. What is great about the PSP is that hundreds of hackers and bedroom coders around the world have found a way to get homebrew software running on the console.
Sony have naturally tried to counter this by updating the console's firmware, but so far to no avail. Each time a new way has been found. And the people who benefit most from this are those that love old console games, because emulation seems to be the name of the game in the homebrew community at the moment.
My brother had the good sense (and money) to import a PSP some months ago, so I've had a chance to check out some of the emulators available. Consoles such as the Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, Wonderswan, SNES, NES and Gameboy are already emulated to very accurate degrees, with the software being improved upon all the time. The Megadrive emulator DGen has gone from something that could barely run a game to almost perfection in the space of two months. And there's very little that can be compared to seeing Road Rash 2 running on your shiny new handheld - surely a game that oozes quality even today.
The main benefit of having emulators running on a console such as the PSP (there are other handhelds, such as the GP32, that have had their own emulators for some time) is that you no longer need to have a PC close to hand to play emulated games. In the case of the PSP, you just need a suitably large memory card - though even this isn't absolutely necesarry if you're mainly emulating consoles like the Master System. Even a laptop PC pales in comparrison to having your emulator slip (relatively) easily into your pocket. Now you can grab a quick game of Sonic The Hedgehog on your bus journeys, or Zelda: A Link to the Past while on your lunch break.
And once the upcoming PSP version of MAME is running full pelt (and you can bet that won't be far off), there'll be no turning back for the PSP emulation scene.
So, it seems that new technology is allowing gaming to come full circle. It would be interesting if it's the draw of playing old games in new ways that keeps the current generation of handhelds high on people's shopping lists.
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