Retro portable consoles!

Hey!

We started a company. It was a hard and very long process, but we're finally officially a company. What will this change? Nothing, actually. Just more paperwork.

Other than that, this new year started out pretty hard. A lot of work and bureaucratic shenanigans. Sadly Geril's GPU got a bit fried and Lussy's CPU is acting up because of a leak in our ceiling that took out the power for a few hours, so we have to buy some new hardware - what is not the easiest thing to do at the moment.

Also, Geril's obsession of portable gaming devices got to the point that he bought a Nokia N-Gage. And what is a console without games, right? So he got Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, Rayman 3, Ashen and Worms World Party. They are all fine games, and they work pretty well on the little Nokia gaming device.

What is really surprising about the machine is its multitasking ability. You can make a phone call while you're playing, or you can go back to the phone's operation system anytime while a game is running. Also, you can take screenshots - even if they are a bit chunky.

So in some ways, this device was ahead of its time. But where the real issue lies is the controls. No one wants to use a num pad to play a game. It just feels uncomfortable and unintuitive. But playing an Elder Scrolls game on this four centimeter portrait screen is weird, in a good way. I can't recommend the device to many people, but if somebody like curiosities, this is certainly one.

Other than the N-Gage, we got an Atari Lynx, which is a very powerful portable console (I'd rather not call it a handheld, because it's really heavy). Geril had the most fun with Blue Lightning and Hydra, but Rampage, Rygar and Crystal Mines are fun, too.

Our biggest disappointment was the Sony Xperia Play. We got an old Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Z1i - the one with the sliding control-panel - thinking that we could play some cool older mobile games with an actual, physical controller. Sadly, that's not possible anymore, because they shut down all of its support last November. Even to jailbreak it, it would need a few applications that are no longer available. Too bad, we wanted to try the Android version of Dead Space and Mass Effect: Infiltrator and a few other old rarities.

Next month we'll try to assemble a working GameGear out of two barely working GameGears. Wish us luck.