Which Handheld System do you think is the best ever made?

So far, I'd say the Gameboy Advance SP just on the number of quality games (Ports and originals).

I'd have to say, the Sony PSP.

It's definitely the most ambitious handheld ever made.

Hell, it's about the only system I play these days.

B-

I totally voted for the Gamecom. The LCD on that thing is so sweet

I wanna say GBA but since PSP can emulate that too, I vote for PSP.

This is no contest.

Which ages old portable console played the entire cart catalogue of a system?

The PC Engine GT!!

It was so ahead of it's time and had an amazing screen.

Ok, so the Nomad did this too, but it came later and I hate the design.

For this, I'm going for what games were released on it. I'm not going to count if it's backwards compatible or if it can play teh ROMz.

That said, GBA. If only for Astro Boy.

OG GB in second.

Very tough to compare. There's a selection of them, in there, that actually have a good reason for a vote. Heck, from a straight technological build-quality point of view, I would even still vote in the Neo Geo Pocket Color. These are my opinions for my choice.

1. Best controller I've ever used on a pocket system. The click stick has given me flawless control where others falter. Yes, even the rather nice Nintendo ones.

2. Battery Life. Heck, I can't find any technology with any kind of pocket-sized aspect that can beat the Neo-Geo Pocket Color for battery life. And while today's technology of rechargable batteries have improved to allow a good battery life for higher speed processers, Neo-Geo was way ahead of its time. It was using a 16-bit processor and practically ran on Potatoes. Who else, for any device that has a screen display and plays music or videogames, could ever claim to take 2 AA batteries and get 40 hours out of it. Not only that, it was the plain honest truth in practice.

3. Good screen for its time. While not as impressive as Lynx or the Nomad, it understandably stuck with the main competition (Gameboy). Most likely that, and some good use of lower-power-consumption hardware, is why they could squeeze a lot more out of it. It also was sized to compete, not being too bulky.

Nowadays, the competition is pretty fierce. Hardware-wise, it's kind of crazy. Still, my vote would probably go out to some of these Palm devices. They're kind of like the Personal Computers of the pocket industry. They've grown to have many utilities like a full blown computer of yesteryears, have impressive processors in them, and generally do more than the console equivalents can do, in total. While most lack in good gamepad controls, they do just about everything and (without going through hoops) support some good emulators for your old-vintage gaming needs. Of course, just like the fullsize PC/console comparison, the console ones are generally cheaper but less accomodating to homebrew.

From a console perspective, the PSP has an amazing amount under the hood. I think the hardware is impressive and has some good multimedia capabilities. I do like the widescreen, but oddly enough, it still seems the Palms still win in the multimedia aspect. They currently have better multimedia software (that anybody using them can install) and can run longer. However, for the price, the PSP is a great buy if you use it for everything it can do. Sadly enough, it's game selection leaves a lot to be desired, but its potential is immense.

Of course, once a real quality realtime Dungeon Crawler comes out on a pocket system. That will change the climate a bit. Right now, the few selections we do have are extremely watered down versions of the Dungeon Crawler aspect. It's like they make the PC ones, water down the full console ones (but to a more acceptable and still fun to explore degree), and then water them down further for the pocket systems. It's to the point that because you don't really see much in good things coming, that it's not even that fun to explore in the pocket Dungeon Crawlers.

bloodhokuto said:

This is no contest.

Which ages old portable console played the entire cart catalogue of a system?

The PC Engine GT!!

It was so ahead of it's time and had an amazing screen.

Ok, so the Nomad did this too, but it came later and I hate the design.

Click to expand...

I agree 100%. At the time it was insane. The ability to play your home system games on the go was incredible. The sega nomad would come in #2 imo. The gameboy has held the gaming community hostage for so long its retarded. It was crap technology that the turbo express had whooped several years before and since its inception the advancements have been pretty minimal. You can pretty much go get a gameboy from 15 years ago and put it next side the ds and they are remarkably similar, and thats over how many different generations and redesigns? The gameboy, gameboy color, gameboy advance, gameboy sp, and now the ds. I like the PSP alot more than the ds personally, but the PSP could be alot better as well. I just can't give nintendo my money over and over for the same hardware. Which is why i won't buy the gamecube 1.5 or wii as some of you like to call it

In order of preference:
Turbo Express
Sega Nomad
Neo Geo Pocket Color
Sony PSP
Gameboy Advance SP
Nintendo DS
Sega Game Gear
Atari Lynx
Gameboy Advance
Gameboy Color
Gameboy Pocket
Original Gameboy
Tiger Game.com
Gizmodo

For me I dont consider turbo express or sega nomad since they were systems that did not really have their own games, they just played what was avalible on the main console.

So excluding all thoes here is my ranking for the top 5

1) Gameboy Advance / GBA
2) Neo Geo Pocket Color / NGPC
3) Playstation Portable / PSP
4) Gameboy (B&W) / DMG (Dot Matrix Game)
5) Nintendo DS / DS

Why that ranking?
GBA was awsome even tho it had tons of crap.
NGPC was again a great system but lacked serious 3rd party support.
PSP is third because it has so many amazing games and it just keeps piling them on.
GB is forth because of Tetris, Mario Land series, Wario Land and zelda. Enough said
DS is last because while there are some nice original software, alot have been games that just are no where as good as their predisesor as well the system is turning into a joke and a novelty (Seriously, Japan is getting a fucking ds program about bartending).

bloodhokuto said:

This is no contest.

Which ages old portable console played the entire cart catalogue of a system?

The PC Engine GT!!

It was so ahead of it's time and had an amazing screen.

Ok, so the Nomad did this too, but it came later and I hate the design.

Click to expand...

That's a pretty good choice, unfortunately I've never had the pleasure to play one of those (Turbo Express). So I picked the LYNX, it's probably the best thing Atari ever did really. Being at heart an Arcade gamer, the LYNX was the ultimate, delivering a very large amount of authentic arcade ports which rarely lost their gameplay elements from the transition to the handheld. Not to mention how awesome the graphics and audio turned out most of the time. There are few 'bad' ports IMHO.

It's a large unit, but it also still has the largest screen ever for a portable, unless the PSP surpassed it (not sure). It offered a Tate mode for other games, the only portable to do that (works great for Raiden), a total lefty flip option and was capable of linking up to 32 LYNX's for multiplayer, even though no game ever used that many AFAIK.

The LYNX was and still is a total bad ass gaming machine, and it wasn't a total flop either, as is evident by a readily available amount of them on Ebay and other places. I'll bet Atari sold a few million of these. Anyone know?

GunstarHero said:

That's a pretty good choice, unfortunately I've never had the pleasure to play one of those (Turbo Express). So I picked the LYNX, it's probably the best thing Atari ever did really. Being at heart an Arcade gamer, the LYNX was the ultimate, delivering a very large amount of authentic arcade ports which rarely lost their gameplay elements from the transition to the handheld. Not to mention how awesome the graphics and audio turned out most of the time. There are few 'bad' ports IMHO.

It's a large unit, but it also still has the largest screen ever for a portable, unless the PSP surpassed it (not sure). It offered a Tate mode for other games, the only portable to do that (works great for Raiden), a total lefty flip option and was capable of linking up to 32 LYNX's for multiplayer, even though no game ever used that many AFAIK.

The LYNX was and still is a total bad ass gaming machine, and it wasn't a total flop either, as is evident by a readily available amount of them on Ebay and other places. I'll bet Atari sold a few million of these. Anyone know?

Click to expand...

I might have to look into one of those. Didn't realize they were so nice.

my fav

The best is the Tiger R-Zone. It goes on the head so you can play while your in school and whatnot. http://www.vidgame.net/TIGER/HEADGEAR.htm

I'm gonna say the DS Lite. Not the original DS, though. The DS Lite is the first portable since the NGPC where I really thought they got things "right." The screen is great, the games are fun, it plays all the GBA stuff, and the batteries last plenty long enough. It also helps a lot that it's even smaller than the NGPC and the clamshell design keeps the screen from getting all scratched to hell.

Before that, I'd have called it the the NGPC. It was powerful enough to do fighters properly (they felt "right"), even if the graphics weren't that great and the batteries last forever.

I agree the TurboExpress was a great system but it had the same problem other handhelds of its time had: it was too big, too expensive, and the batteries died too quick. The same goes for the Nomad.

The original Gameboy was ok, I guess, but all the games I ever played on it felt "compromised" in that they were stripped down way too much to make them playable on the GB. The later games were better but it just never really impressed me.

NGPC by a land slide.

No other system came close to the ratio of good games vs released titles. Just jaw dropping awesome.

PSP easily, I wasn't much into handhelds until this sexy little beast showed up.

Normally I don't choose favorites, but due to all the emulation / multimedia features of the PSP, I'll have to go with that. I mean hell, you can play practically anything on it. (not to mention compressed vids etc.)

PSP, then DSLite. Both great system.

I chose the NGPC-for a couple reasons: Battery life, joystick, games

That said I also tend to like systems with loads of power and terrible battery life (PSP, Game gear etc)

Of course its hard not to like the Gameboys I got alot of play out of my GBC/GBA/GBASP

The GBA was an horrible handheld. Shitty quality screen, shitty colors, no backlit, shitty shoulder buttons.

The SP was a lot better and it sould be the first release of the GBA. The GBA is rushed to hell

best Handheld ever made? Tie between DS Lite, GP32x and PSP

I went for the DS. Mainly because it also plays all the GBA games. I think the GBA gives the best combination of power and battery life, with an excellent range of games. The Micro is probably the best original GBA model, but if you think of the DS as a GBA with a bit extra added on, then it's hard to fault. It is quite tough to pick the best model, though:

GBA: No light
SP: Cramped hand position
Micro: Short battery life
DS: Bulky
DS Lite: GBA games stick out

Voted PSP.

Some nice systems there, but if I had to pick one, this would be it, no doubt. Just got my 4GB memory stick, which is a lot of space for games, music, etc.

DS Lite is a decent system, but hardware wise it doesn't come close to the PSP, and lately the software is drivel.

Shame there is no option for the GBA Micro. That is a sweet little handheld. I'd probably put that second. Tiny, great little screen, looks simple but sexy, and a great software lineup. Shame it only surfaced right at the end of the GBA's life.

So many on the list I love. I tried to be objective and put nostalgia aside.

The newer backlit GBA SP is the single greatest handheld to grace the planet Earth. Period. Those who said PSP are drunk....give me your keys, you shouldn't drive.

Almost voted GBA SP, then I added DS Lite because I actually went back and used my GBA SP last week and I realized I prefer the lite.

Bobak said:

Almost voted GBA SP, then I added DS Lite because I actually went back and used my GBA SP last week and I realized I prefer the lite.

Click to expand...

really? Do you have the older model SP or the newer one?

gameboy micro cause it is actually a handheld