Shane R. Monroe

As a die hard classic gamer, I found the TRON port to be completely half assed. The sound is simply HORRIBLE. And who QAed those controls?

Anyway, I started a petition hopefully to get them to fix these issues. If interested;

http://www.petitiononline.com/alan1/petition.html

Okay, so I run a DS podcast ... I'll probably be immediately branded a fanboy (I own Mario related games ... I must be). I also own a PS2 (GOW + Guitar Heroes = own) and a Gamecube as well as a "whitebox" (what I've been calling the "media center PC" long before that phrase was coined) to handle all my multimedia needs.

I'll go on record as saying this.

I started off HATING Nintendo - yes, including the beloved NES (my C64 had almost all those games and better ones too). In fact, until the GBA SP, I wasn't even so much as INTERESTED in the company or it's products. When I got interested in the original GBA (when the Afterburner light came out - sorry, I don't play handhelds that aren't lit; the GBA caused an entire generation of people to need glasses) I said publically in my other online radio show what they needed to do to make the GBA a success. The SP was almost verbatim what I asked for. As time went on, Nintendo continued to align itself with my method of thinking (great gaming, no convergence, low prices - getting back to the BASICS) and I knew when I got the DS it would be a success. When the Wii was announced, I got all warm and fuzzy (as did a lot of other people that have almost given up on console gaming). How can you NOT align yourself with a company that basically seems to do exactly what you tell them and aligns almost completely with your line of thinking???

When the PSP was announced, I was interested. Hey, GOW on the go? Champions of Norrath on the go? Sounded GREAT to me! Then came the realization that I was going to have to drop nearly $400 to get a PSP and a nice phat stick of 'proprietary' memory. Dude, despite what the media would have you believe, not all game players are 30 year olds that still live in the basement of mommy's house with a part time job, 98% disposable income, with an RJ45 connector shoved up their ass playing Halo 2 online 18 hours a day. Some of us have families and ... *gasp* ... BILLS to pay. Hell, that PSP would have been a MORTGAGE payment. So, after a lot of soul searching (and trying to fudge my checkbook) I decided I wouldn't be able to get into the PSP.

Oh yeah ... my single, techie-poser friends got PSPs. It was like listening to parrots talk; "Lumines!!!!" ... "MOVIES!" ... "GTA IS COMING" ... "MOVIES!" "HAVE YOU SEEN HOW GREAT MOVIES LOOK ON THIS??" Funny - most PSP owners have like 2 games; Lumines, and something else. Oh, and LOTS of porn on their pro stick (have you seen "The Internet is for Porn" playing on a PSP? I have ... A LOT - it's like the Star wars movie on the iPaq when they first came out). I tried Tiger Woods on my friend's PSP. Then I showed him how you drove the ball on Tiger Woods DS. Sure, the PSP looked nice, but I can't imagine video golfing with a stick anymore.

The fact is - all of my PSP lovin' friends now have a dusty, black, fingerprint-smudged, unplayed PSP (aka 'the paperweight' - the seemingly synonymous term used for PSPs more than a month old) sitting in a closet and they all own Nintendo DSes and just friggin' LOVE them. One guy at work converted because he was tired of us throwing down great multiplayer games like Mario Kart and Tetris without him. :)

I don't believe in convergence. Everyone seems to think "it is inevitable" and "it's coming and you can't stop it". Yet luke-warm reception (PSP) and down right ice cold showers (PS3) prove to me that game players want to play GAMES on their game machines. Hell, I GOT an MP3 player (most people do). I GOT a portable DVD player (many people with a need for portable video already do - and what a bonus; you already OWN the movies in a format you can use RIGHT NOW on it). I got a hella fun game portable (the DS). And for emulation, I got the hella leet GP2x (for MAME, UAE, and everything else I want). If you were to go out and buy these devices I mentioned that match the quality/performance of the PSP, you're STILL talking about LESS THAN $400. C'mon man ... it is obvious to me (and apparently a lot of others) that convergence ain't the answer after all ... and obviously, the PSP isn't either.