If you don't read Penny Arcade, we have to strongly suggest that you do. And we mean the kind
of strong suggestion that usually takes the form of a loaded gun pointed at a vital organ. Though the comic on its own
is usually brilliant, the accompanying and often scathing musings of Tycho are also well worth a read, particularly
when he resorts to words so large that if they could somehow materialize as physical objects, they would descend from
the heavens and crush small rural towns with a resounding crash. This week, Tycho's been looking back at some items of interest that popped up in gaming this year, and none is more interesting than the still ongoing battle between the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, a battle which turned out differently than he expected. He writes, "The games hitting the DS now in their major franchises aren't the filthy ports with a few bonuses tacked on I feared would dominate the machine - they're actually the legitimate sequels, definitive versions that replace the old ones in terms of features and I daresay fun."
I have to agree with the man - the PSP launched strongly (thanks to the wonderful Lumines) and is the sexier device, while the DS had an insipid launch (Mario 64 is 8 years old!) but quickly picked up steam with a phenomenal array of original games and classic franchises. Hopefully we'll still be saying the same thing next year.
