POLL: Which early portable console would you go back to today?

[mbd30]

Ok who set up this pro-Atari blinders on troll account?

 

One post after another and if you disagree, you get lack of charm school level responses.

 

On that four point bit on the Lynx, you can't be serious can you? More reliable hardware? 16bit console level output? Yay 2nd longest battery (which is still just a few hours)? Gameboy and Gamegear games having little to no replay value and aged worse??

 

 

I'm curious, what drugs are you on, and are the prescription or "prescription" type? I know those 4 points are opinion, but usually they have to be based in well you know, reality. Also if we're picking nits here, you left out the Turbo Express as it's a same period handheld too.

 

I've never played it, but the Lynx hardware does seem pretty advanced for the time. That doesn't mean that the games were better.

[Tanooki]

I have. First time is when Atari went on the road to national malls for a few months showing it off with unlimited play time with the launch window games. I put a couple hours on it, found the colors and audio nice, controls worked fine, but the games weren't that interesting in style to me or I already had something similar too, and the battery life when I asked was a turn off. Because of that I never have owned one but I've used them here and there. It's nice enough but the library just never grabbed me enough to put money on it. My snarking was more on the entire sorry conversation of propping it up as something it wasn't. History is nice, revisionist, not so much.

[NE146]

I still play GB & GBA games nearly every single day in 2018 since I keep a GBA SP 101 (w GBA Everdrive) in the crapper.. works great

 

And I’ve also played a Gamegear game this year since I played GG Shining Force.. although technically that was on the 3DS Virtual Console.

[zylon]

I got a Gamecube with GB player and a chinese supercard that lets me run any SMS/GG/GB/GBC/TG16 games I want. It's over, lol.

[+Black_Tiger]

TurboExpress. I got it shortly after release and it was much more enjoyable than Gameboy and Game Gear at the time, even factoring in battery life. I bought a rechargeable battery pack and AC and Car adaptors for it, so battery life was never an issue.

[Tanooki]

TurboExpress. I got it shortly after release and it was much more enjoyable than Gameboy and Game Gear at the time, even factoring in battery life. I bought a rechargeable battery pack and AC and Car adaptors for it, so battery life was never an issue.

That's how I was with a second hand Nomad I got in the mid 90s. That thing was a battery sucking vampiric nightmare, but when you'd use a model 2 sega AC adapter and just stretch out on the couch it was awesome. And since it has a port on it for a normal also for a sega a/v cable sometimes I'd just do TV play and use it like a fat controller which was equally as fine if not better due to the TV having a nicer screen. It went that way until I got handed a Genesis 3 sometime later, but I still defaulted to the Nomad. It would be nice to have one again but they're costly, especially recapped and with a nicer screen put in.

[spacecadet]

Voted none of the above. They've all aged poorly. If you put a gun to my head I'd probably pick either the OG GameBoy, because of its game selection and its really advanced sound chip (and not even "for a handheld"), or the Game Gear for its Master System compatibility. But I don't really find any of them to be pleasurable to use. Interesting from a historical perspective, sure. But I didn't like any of those handhelds at the time and I still don't. (And I own all of them, so I'm not speaking out my ass.) They all have pretty glaring problems that none of them except the GB were able to overcome in the eyes of market, and those problems haven't magically gone away over the years. They've actually just become more obvious, by virtue of them being solved in various later handhelds.

 

I had a GameBoy when it first came out (and didn't like it) and I kept upgrading it whenever new models would come out because some of the games were good and I kept hoping newer versions of the system itself would finally fix its various annoyances. I bought all the other handheld systems at various different times, some when they were current and others later. But the first handheld I remember really genuinely liking was the Neo Geo Pocket Color. There was nothing about it that I'd change other than the lack of backlight. This bothers me a lot more now, but I remember at the time using it mostly on subway rides that were brightly lit, so it didn't bother me back then. And at the time, the choice seemed to be washed out, blurry backlightining (like on the GG or Lynx) or a tack sharp, fast screen with no backlighting, so a person could reasonably prefer a non-backlit screen.

 

Handhelds are different than game consoles in that it's not just that graphics got better. Early game consoles aren't really any less *usable* than modern ones. But handhelds started out with a set of limitations and annoyances that were iterated out over time until we got where we are now, where we finally have handheld systems that work as well as they should. Controls, form factor, system size, comfort, screen quality and size, battery life and type, etc. all improved over the years, and increasing market demand for them reflects that. But those early systems were yecccch! Always were, still are.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I still adore the original Game Boy to this day. It was the very first game system I owned growing up and I have a special fondness for that pea soup green colored screen and it's 4 shades of gray pixels, motion blur and all. I also like how big and chunky the system feels in your hands, which (to me at least) makes it a lot more comfortable to hold than the ultra thin systems that are popular today.

 

I haven't played a Game Gear in probably 22 years, but my older brother had one when I was growing up and I remember spending a lot of time borrowing it to play Sonic 2 when he wasn't using it. Whether or not I'd still enjoy it today though is up to question. I don't think I'd mind the blurry backlit screen so much as the fact that the system sucks batteries like nobody's business, and even though I use rechargable AA's for all my handhelds these days I don't think I'd be too keen on having to swap out the batteries every 3 hours.

[Tanooki]

I had a game gear within the last couple of years, had it recapped and the CFL removed for an LED strip which made the battery life like 2.5x time. I still usually just ac adaptered it to a wall anyway. The screen on it in ways is just notably worse than the Gameboy which says a lot. The bluing and wash out are as bad if not worse than the GB blur effect, and at least on GB with the lack of color you could easier still see it coming which is sad. Nintendo at least corrected it with revisions and going to color and gba for display. GG just sucked unless you aftermarket mod it with a mcwill screen which isn't a cheap job. GG though if you're a fan is worth it, the games deserve to be seen right.

[+Black_Tiger]

That's how I was with a second hand Nomad I got in the mid 90s. That thing was a battery sucking vampiric nightmare, but when you'd use a model 2 sega AC adapter and just stretch out on the couch it was awesome. And since it has a port on it for a normal also for a sega a/v cable sometimes I'd just do TV play and use it like a fat controller which was equally as fine if not better due to the TV having a nicer screen. It went that way until I got handed a Genesis 3 sometime later, but I still defaulted to the Nomad. It would be nice to have one again but they're costly, especially recapped and with a nicer screen put in.

I bought a Nomad as soon as they were discounted and used it daily for hours while taking transut to and from work. At first I only had one Nomad recgargeable battery pack and a Game Gear pack, but I later found a second Nomad pack. I never needed much more than one. That was probably the most enjoyable portable experience I've had, as I got to play through RPG'ish games many times over. But it doesn't really count for the topuc.

 

The RF jack on my original TG-16 gave out and I didn't understand what the TurboBooster did. So for a year the TurboExpress was my only way to play Turbo games and I did every day.

 

When I finally mailed off my TG-16 to be repaired, NEC sent back a CIB unit that I now assume was refurbed, but looked and worked like new. I even had to peel off the logo films. The only difference between it and a retail edition is that the outer box was plain cardboard.

[DJ Clae]

You can use a Lynx battery pack on a Turbo Express. It takes 6 D batteries and provides a good amount of play time for either system.