A History Of The Portable Gaming War

Mobility in gaming is not a new concept. In fact, it’s how the commercial gaming experience began. Arcade classics like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Pong were ported to home-users via portable game devices. Even industry giant Nintendo had its beginnings via the Game N’ Watch series, a product line that merged the concept of a watch with gaming features which brought us the likes of Mario Bros., Donkey Kong and a slew of Nintendo’s most beloved properties.

In the years that followed, portable gaming evolved. You didn’t have to buy separate gaming devices to play another game anymore. All you had to do was to buy a portable gaming system, and you could change games by purchasing cartridges. The progenitor of this type of gaming experience is, again, Nintendo, and the product is what is fondly remembered as the Gameboy. The Gameboy was a bundle of delight. Though everything was rendered in black and white, it nonetheless kept the excitement of its games intact.

But even the Gameboy had to grow up. Succeeding years introduced us to its various incarnations. First we had the Gameboy color, which, as its name implies, renders graphics in 4 primary colors and palettes containing a mixture of them. A few years more and we were able to avail of the Gameboy Advance, which is still popular to this very day. It’s a 32 bit system, but technically performs at 24 bits, which gave us games that are slightly better than Nintendo’s second generation machine, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

Indeed, for more than a decade, Nintendo was king of the hill when it comes to portable gaming. It met some challenges from systems like Wonderswan and Nokia’s N-Gage, but none was able to topple it from its lofty perch.

But then, the announcement of Sony’s Play Station Portable (PSP) was announced. It is a small machine that packed as much power as the Playstation 2. Additionally, it is a mini-multimedia hub that could play movies and mp3s, as well as store videos, photos and music via Sony’s proprietary memory stick technology. Software companies lined up their games for the system, and it was assured of a library of great games, some of which would be ported from Sony’s other blockbuster machines, the Playstation and the Playstation 2.

Now, Sony at that time has overtaken Nintendo and Microsoft in the console war. It was the current king of the roost in the video gaming industry. Hence, it was poised to succeed in the portable gaming market as well.

Not to be outdone, Nintendo unveiled its most powerful portable gaming system yet. The Nintendo DS was launched. DS stands for Dual Screen, because the little machine is exactly that. It had two screens that provided a revolutionary gaming experience. Think of it as a girl’s makeup kit. You open it up to play, and the dual screens are revealed. Close it, and the dual screens would be protected. One screen would be used as the main monitor for the games. The other screen can be used as a complementary monitor for in-game statistics. But that’s not all. The top screen also utilizes touch screen technology, and with the Nintendo DS’ 64 bit processing power, it could easily act as a personal digital assistant.

And so the new generation portable gaming war began, this time with more competition than ever before. With rich libraries of games, and a whole lot more quality software in the horizon, the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS are engaged in a tight battle for consumer shares. The ultimate winner, of course, is the video gaming public. Competition always brings out the best from the competitors, and we stand to benefit from the fantastic things they’ll bring to the plate in the years to come. the more competition the cheaper the price becomes.

When I am looking into buying the latest video games I always go to EBay as they always have a few sellers selling these games, sometimes before they are available to the public.