Gaming

I immediately wanted a Playdate when I saw it. It’s a little yellow handheld with a crank designed by Teenage Engineering and made by Panic, who’s also published Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game, and a bunch more games recently.

I’ve had it for a year and still use it daily, the screen works great most places I’m waiting in line and I have a book light for the evenings.

One thing I really like about it is that it’s not an emulation device. It comes with 24 games +2 free on the Catalog and the community has made a ton (over 1000 on itch!). They’re mostly bespoke little titles that aren’t available anywhere else. The Lua and C SDKs are easy to use and encourage homebrew, I’ve got a pomodoro timer launching in the on-device storefront next week and am currently working on a little suika-like. Definitely recommend if you’ve got the spare cash!

Plus it’s got a pizza case! I love it so

I kick-started the Ouya, years and years back. Played a few games on it, but it was just too underpowered.

The GCW Zero was another similar story; just an underpowered handheld console.

I really like the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro. It's a non-major console that is 1000% worth the money.

I have a bit of an obsession with handheld systems. I've always been on the lookout for cool handhelds. Probably started with some leapfrog devices I had when I was a kid.

Some of the more interesting ones include a piboy. A raspberry pi 4 stuffed into a gameboy dmg like shell to emulate games. More recently I've been very into my analogue Pocket. I play a ton of stuff on that as it can accurately recreate a ton of older systems. I'm also quite interested in getting a playdate at some point, but have yet to justify it.

I also have some modded GBC and GBA systems. With USB c charging and nicer screens

I recently got myself an Anbernic, it's the one which looks like the GBA, see through plastic and all. It's a surprisingly competent little console. It even comes preloaded with a shed load of retro games. I've been enjoying playing games from systems I missed out on growing up.

I had a Sega GameGear as a kid. Yeah it was a Sega system, which Sega was major back then, but the GameGear was nothing compared to the Gameboy. Very cool system, in that it had a full color screen and was backlit.

Now that was at the expense of being heavy as all hell and a monster eater of AA batteries. 6 of them at at time!

I think that was basically the only non-major system I had.

souljiaboy game console is my jam :D

Jokes aside, I experimented with making my own pi handheld, but didn't gave me the same satisfaction as I did emulate those games on my phone.

I played so many games on my Palm Pilot back in middle school. My Palm Tungsten T3 was great, and there were a shitload of freeware or shareware games released over the years.

The 3DO.

I didn't have many games for it, and emulation I think is kinda sketchy last I checked (I think the main emulator is all in Russian?) But it was full of FMV's and all the fun that came with them.

Twisted: The game show is one of my favorite titles, but parts of it are definitely a product of its time (specifically the trivia)

I don't know if the Atari Lynx counts as non-major. Anything from Atari should probably count as major, the thing supposedly sold 2 million units, but I can't remember the last time I've seen anyone mention it and that's still less than 2% of the Game Boy's 110m+.

I got the original model as a hand-me-down towards the end of the 90s and I wasn't super fond of it. The thing looks and feels like a brick and ate batteries for breakfast, the internet says 5 hour battery life but I remember getting like 2. The "left-hand mode" is a cool concept but putting two pairs of A/B buttons on the device feels like something they could've done better. It had color, a couple of arcade ports were really great games and there was Chip's Challenge, but younger me got exhausted just using the damn thing.