PSP, hands down. So many incredible games, it was a RPG powerhouse, that screen was great for the time and for me it was an “everything” device (I remember browsing the web and reading mangas on the PSP… Janky but incredible all the same).
The Vita comes close - nigh “home console” games on the go and the OLED screen to make those shine.
PS2 for sure. So many great games that made my childhood and its easy to mod and repair.
SNES is close second. Was lucky enough that I got one growing up (it was 10 year old console at that point) and the 16 bit graphics and the music always take me back.
Now that you mentioned this, I do recall in the early days of mobile games, back when the App Shops were first introduced, there were games that you would pay somewhere between $1 and $5, and you get the whole thing. No in-app purchases, no ads, and no lotteries for special characters or gear. I remember Square Enix had some really good JRPG games that were made specifically for the iPhone and iPad. Chaos Rings and DrakeRider were two games I recall playing, but they were much more expensive compared to the usual games I found. But, when you paid for it, you got the whole game and all.
I think mobile app developers have realized that they could get more engagement and cash from their users if they made games that had a gambling aspect to it. Kinda like the casinos in Vegas, the house always wins, but you keep putting in money on the hopes you get a jackpot.
That being said, there is one freemium game that I do find quite fun, and that is Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. The thing that makes this freemium game a bit different is that Square Enix is quite generous in their in-game currency. You can actually do quite well without making any in-app purchases.
I’m in the game industry. This is entirely person observation I have not studied this topic so can’t source anything
The people I saw going to early mobile market were a lot of handheld console and flash game devs and companies. They were adapting the closest existing game designs and brought with them a “small game small cost” philosophy. It also wasn’t really known yet how impulsive people are on phones. So it was an unproven market with smaller teams and people making yester era design choices. There also used to be a few bigger games with bigger price tags but people didn’t buy into those because anyone willing to spend that on a game at the time would have had a console or PC and could buy a better experience there for the same price.
The only mobile game experience I have was back in like 2012, smart phones were really taking off, and the market for mobile games was proven. The company I worked for we built a release ready game but it never got released. We couldn’t sell it to investors because the monetization was never aggressive enough for them (the investor money at that point was less about making the game and more to fund marketing and stabilizing the studio as a long term business). I quit when my job stopped being dev work and started being round tables about how to psychologically trick players into paying more. Anyway with so much focus on heavy monetization it stopped being economically worth it for a lot of startups to actually make good games when thinly veiled skinner boxes pleased the investors all the same
I’m feeling the same way about Minion Masters. I just play it on my Steam Deck, but it got an Android release recently. They gave away a few of their “DLC” packs (which is how I found it about it), so maybe my experience is a bit atypical, but I’ve just been playing for a week or so and I already have more than half the available cards and enough currency that I can craft any cards I really want to finish a deck.
I haven’t paid a cent. It’s so generous with its freemium model that I’m probably going to buy an in-game currency pack if I’m still playing once my Google Rewards wallet ticks high enough to buy one.
The lazy answer for me is PS2, since that’s how I was able to play all the PS1/re-released games I missed out on. Pretty much all the Final Fantasy games, Chronl Trigger, Chrono Cross, Star Ocean… And then there was also FFX and Twisted Metal Black, some of the PS2 highlights for me.
I think SNES still has my heart though. I feel like most of the major titles were better (more perfected) than their N64 counterparts. The Legend of Zelda LttP absolutely consumed me growing up and is still my favourite game of all time. Many years later I find I’m still interested in games that look like they could have been released on SNES.
Same for me. Lots of consoles have lots of great games, and I really like the idea of the PS2 library’s depth and quality. I bought a 1TB MicroSD card for my Steam Deck OLED and loaded it with a 1TB image of curated roms from a private tracker thinking I’d play a lot of the ones I missed…
…But the only non-Steam game I’ve played is FF5 for the SNES. I’ve wanted to play it since I found out Final Fantasy “III” was a lie. The Steam Deck is the ultimate SNES RPG machine.
That and my SD2SNES in my childhood SNES gets a lot of play time with my 6 y.o. son. He’s almost able to beat world 1 of SMW solo, but he prefers Kirby Super Star, where he can beat world 1 and most of world 2.
One small thing but I’m surprised nobody points it out - the charging port location. I like using my switch/steam deck in bed or otherwise laying down, and the fact that the charging lead is at the bottom of the console rather than the top sucks. It just gets in the way and stops you resting the console on you. Whereas the Steam Deck just has it on top where you can just plug it in while playing.
I know the technical reasons behind it because of the dock and all that, but it’s annoying.
In general, I think the steam deck is better than the switch in almost every way - The switch is just an expensive ticket for the right to play Nintendo games nowadays.
Yup. I’ve always loved having a handheld device as a companion to my PC. The first few months with the Switch were great, but as time went on I just wanted a better designed Switch that’s also just a PC, particularly after getting hardware-banned for trying to fix some of the issues myself with homebrew apps.
I never would’ve thought that we’d actually get to see a device that’s real so quickly (anyone remember the Smach Z?), is actually pretty good and how quickly it’s now becoming its own market segment.
Not counting PC since that is easy mode, I would probably say the Wii for me personally. I have had: n64, gc, gameboy (pocket, color, and advance), DS, and ps2 besides the Wii. But I think I put more hours on the Wii than any of those. Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Zelda Twilight Princess, smash bros, and mario kart wii. Very solid catalogue. Plus it had the virtual console and was what allowed me to play some old classics like Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country 2. I never had a snes growing up so that was pretty huge to me. I even cut my teeth on some FPS games like call of duty, world at war and conduit lol.
The Wii might be cheating a bit too since a lot of my fondness for it does come from its backwards compatibility with the Gamecube, and gamecube games were still very relavent during that time. Metroid Prime 1 and 2, part of the Trilogy of course. Smash bros melee. I even had the Zelda collectors edition disc which had GC ports of zelda OOT and MM.
So yeah Wii was definitely kind of cheating since in some ways in my nostalgia I mix it up with basically every Nintendo system that came before it heh. But even on its own it had a solid lineup IMO.
Yeah, it is basically impossible for me to use the stock switch for anything more than an hour handheld with my hands cramping up. I ended up having to get some rubber grips with a palm bumpout in order for it to be remotely comfortable.
The steam deck is a huge upgrade in that regard. Significantly more comfortable to hold. Plus, the steam deck is capable of emulating pretty much anything on the switch full speed :). On top of all of that is barely even costs more lol.
“It’s okay to fail” seems like it would have been a more valuable life lesson than “it feels good to beat a really hard video game” and it concerns me that you’re so okay with the amount of trauma this entertainment product caused him.
The fact that you’re sharing this story of years of repeated meltdowns caused by a video game and calling it an example of games being beneficial is pretty surreal.
My point is that I described the same distress you’re describing using the same terminology you did. I didn’t accuse you of anything, I just strongly disagreed with your takeaway that this story describes something positive.
It basically needs more ergonomic joycons to be usable for more than an hour in handheld mode for me. I’ve got a pair of hori split pad pros that work really well, but you lose the gyro which kind of sucks for aiming in games like zelda
If this is some kind of question like “you can only play this in your lifetime” I’d pick up a DSi XL or closely a 3DS, I enjoy the DS library more, so it would be a downgrade doing it there, unless things have changed since the last time I checked.
The reasons are simple, it has tons of great titles and many of them have a high replayability value.
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Aktywne