It used to matter whether a portable video game machine could fit in your pocket. The Game Boy was a brick, but you could jam it in your jacket pocket. The Atari Lynx was a small log, but ridiculous ads on TV showed it too could fit in a coatāprobably as well as a smuggled carton of milk, if they were being honest.
We had the Game Boy Pocket, the Game Boy Micro and the ever-slimmer line of PlayStation Portables. The DSes were mostly pocket-compatible, until the Nintendo DSi XL emerged to threaten any tailorās best seams.
Today I believe weāre past the pocket question. There are more dire matters of fit over which to worry. The PlayStation Vita, the most impressive handheld gaming machine Iāve ever touched, may squeeze into my coat, but Iām not sure it fits into my life.
Iāve played the PS Vita twice, once in Los Angeles last June and again last week in New York. Both times, I cradled the surprisingly light Vita in my hands, admired the deviceās extraordinary screen, marveled at the systemās graphics, thought about how much Iād enjoy having one and realized how little I might play it.
I canāt fault the Vitaās engineering. The Vita feels great and runs well. I like that it has two, comfortable analog sticks. I am gratified that it has a touch screen. Iām pleased it has a gyro sensor and Iām intrigued by the rear touch panels. Iām amazed that Sony will sell the Vita for $249 when it comes out late this year or some time next, given the quality of the machine and the look of the games already running on it.
Let me tell you what itās like to play the Vita. Last week, at a PlayStation showcase in New York, I slipped through a small forest of Vita demo stations to a corner where one of the new Sony wonder-machines was running a seven-minute demo version of Uncharted: Golden Abyss
The screenshots for the game do much of the labor of selling the Vitaās value. Touching the game helps, too. I played the Uncharted demo under supervision of a lady from Sony who suggested which of the gameās controls I should use. She was giving me a tour of the hardwareās capabilities, really, in the disguise of a fun Indiana Jones-style game. I used the Vitaās control sticks to run the gameās hero Nathan Drake through jungle ruins. I tried tracing my finger on bricks on the ruinsā walls, to guide Drakeās climbing and clambering over them. I tilted the Vita and tapped the screen to make him jump from one hanging ruin to another. I moved the Vita through the air to aim a sniper scope, tickled the touch-sensitive back of the Vita to make Drake climb a rope, tapped on unsuspecting bad guys to perform stealth attacks, and swiped my finger on the screen to toss grenades.
I was, occasionally, disobedient, ignoring the Sony ladyās exhortations to tap or tilt the Vita. To get the same results, I discovered, I could usually press buttons or flick sticks. Thank goodness. If the only way to make Drake swing on a rope is to rock the Vita back and forth, then weāll have a ridiculous problem, but in the demo I played, there were two ways to do most things in the game: the World Without Buttons Way and the There Was A Reason Buttons Were Invented Way.
Throughout the demo I was dazzled by how good the game looked. Iād never seen a portable game look this lovely, not in the realism style whose reigning champ is iOS game Infinity Blade. The demo did its work and the thought was in my head: I want this.
I never owned a Game Boy but as a formerly-suffering owner of only 1990s Nintendo home consoles and PCs that were too primitive to run the latest hot games, I discovered an end to gaming scarcity via the Game Boy Advance One decade ago, I was valiantly angling my GBA to catch sunlight and actually see what I was playing. I was having a great time. I learned that there was room in my life for Advance Wars and handheld Castlevanias. I played a lot of GBA but even more DS. I played a lot of PSP when it first came out, especially Lumines
About a year ago, however, as I was marveling over the then-prototype Nintendo 3DS, I realized Iād all but ceased playing DS games. My PSP rested in a perpetual state of powerlessness. Iād gotten an iPhone, discovered the joys of listening to podcasts (shout out to the audio version of the PBS News Hour!) and stumbled across the fact that a man can listen to chattering about video games, pro wrestling or This American Life in his ears while playing the thinking manās Tetris, Drop 7āall on his iPhoneāand pretty much fill his subway ride up. The DS stayed in my bag. A year later, the 3DS stays in my bag too.
I really should go back to Ghost Trick or play some more Professor Laytons, but it took me a year to find the time to play through the last DS Zelda and the most recent DS Mario & Luigi. And I loved those gamesā¦ just not as much as I loved staying informed by listening to the News Hour
The pocket test used to matter for portable game machines, but so too did the the flight test. Could a DS or PSP hold enough battery juice to last a cross-country flight? I donāt think my 3DS can, but I donāt know if Iāll ever test it because Iām perpetually re-running that experiment in 2011 on my portable TV/book/comic/gaming device called the iPad. Planes were my favorite place for binging on handheld games. Not any more.
The Vita is sharp, but I just dontā know if it can wedge into my life, not while other portable gaming machines I have are already struggling to do so. And then thereās what happened after I finished playing Uncharted on the Vita. I walked over to Uncharted 3 on the PlayStation 3. That game was running on a big TV. A Sony rep was playing a portion of the game set on a storm-rocked ship. I was looking at something extraordinary. The ship swayed, the enemies inside stumbled, water spilled into rooms realistically. The action was big, fast and exciting. It blew away the little Uncharted I had just played in my hands. If I had to choose one Uncharted to play in the next year, Iād go with the PS3 one.
As an avid gamer Iām familiar with the concept of ignored excellence. Any of us who play games surely are. We find a game we love, a game we know is wonderful but that we also know is being shunned. We shake our heads at the fools who donāt recognize the glories of the games we play. We might deride their ignorance or their bad taste, but in a generous moment we might consider that they donāt have room in their life to learn just how superb our favorite hidden gem is. Iāve had this experience with games many times before, but never with gaming hardware. Iāve also never had this feeling about myself, never knowingly been that guy who was doing the foolish ignoring of something great, the guy who didnāt have room in his life for excellence. With the Vita, the amazing, amazing Vita, I fear I may be that guy.
Iāve played the Vita twice. I love the machine and I do have some jackets with big pockets, but I donāt see a Vita-shaped hole in my life.
For some equal-opportunity skepticism about the Nintendo 3DS, click here
https://lastchance.cc/where-are-the-3ds-games-5824847%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
