More Handheld Nonsense

Since there is very little going on gaming wise at the moment, and there hasn't been any decent release lately, I thought I would post a bit more about the PSP and the DS.

Now that I've had a chance to check out the PSP a lot more I can honestly say that it is an excellent device. The only annoyance that I have with it, is a times the D-Pad can squeak but it's easy to fix that with a little upward push. I can't really find anything I dislike about it. One concern that I do have though is, even though the unit seems fairly solid, I wouldn't want to drop it. Say you happen to find it heading towards hard floor, maybe tiled, you are seriously going to brick it.

I read somewhere that the face of the PSP is supposed to be coated with a substance that is similar to what the new Blue Ray discs will use. It's utter crap, simply because my unit already has a few very small light scratches on the screen, which is what the coating is supposed to prevent. I did have a screen cover but it looked horrid, so I've ordered another from Play Asia, plus a copy of Lumines so that should be here soon.

Onto the Nintendo DS though. I recently got to play this a little more with Mario DS. No matter what, I just can't find anything to like about it. I know it has it fans, and that's fine, but unlike the Nintendo SP it just doesn't do it for me.

First of all it just doesn't look that great, it's a grey slab. It's just not impressive to look at, but I guess it's robust and suited for it's intended market. The D-Pad on it is awful, and much too shallow, it doesn't feel right and a little more travel would have been much better, it feels like it should go further.

The unit has two screens, which seems like a good idea, but they both seem too small. Maybe it's from using the PSP so much but the DS's screens just seem smaller than even the SP. The other thing, rehashing something like Mario 64, adding a few minigames, and the touch thing just isn't cool. It doesn't look too bad considering, but I really wouldn't get worked up about it, it's still very pixelated and the control for it is loose and uncomfortable.

I know I said I would post pics of my PSP, and I will soon.