As some of you have gathered from my previous posts and even my journey into Gaming, i prefer to be portable in my gaming life, as i get older as I always seem to be going somewhere i find life easier to have something portable to play with. Each one of my systems has a story to tell and a journey to note and I am finally going to tell our story.
Special note: All handhelds pictured are my very own systems, all are well cared for and still playable today.
Special note: All dates when i got these systems could be off as i get older i tend to forget little details.
The Game Boy Color [1999-2002] : This were I started my handheld journey, one Christmas or birthday (i really cannot remember, what do you want this was over 11 years ago!) I got my Game Boy Color with Pokèmon yellow. I do remember wanting yellow over red or blue because i didn’t want to have to choose a starter and it closely followed the cartoon i had come to enjoy. I quickly grew to enjoy having this system with me, my family who traveled a lot to visit relatives over 3-4 hours away have a Game boy color became a nice way to pass the time. Eventually my brother would get his own GBC a teal one along with Pokèmon blue and we would battle each other along our journey. Coupled with the n64 (our first official Nintendo system in the house.) Pokèmon would go on to solidify its place in my heart, i fell in love for the first time with my long time friend over this system. This system also saw my first heart break, the death of my grandfather and the most impactful moment in both mine and America’s life. As my journey with Pokèmon continued with silver and then eventually crystal this system gave me comfort in those troubled times. I however never journeyed beyond the Pokèmon games with this system, i think it was more of the people i knew at the time did not really play the system so i only played what I knew.
Game Boy Advance [2003 3 months]: As news of a new Pokèmon game started to grow it quickly became apparent i would soon need to upgrade from my Game boy Color to a Game boy advance. I hesitated at first, just freshly off a two hand surgeries for carpel tunnel i had given the systems a break. Instead choosing to play console games with my brother (Namingly Twisted Metal, but that’s another story for another day). I was actually probably one of the few that sort of liked the new bulkier design for the GBA, but i yet had a real need to upgrade to it. My brothers new girlfriend (soon to be sister in law) at the time, surprised me one day with an old floor model GBA from the store she worked at. She had apparently won it and her sibling already had one. This poor little thing was already quite beaten up, it didn’t have a battery backing to it, so i used duck tape to hold the double A’s into the system. That vacation i picked up the spider-man skin for it, along with a spider-man light. ( i am not sure were the light is, i know it is in my room, i am just not sure were in my room). As pokèmon Sapphire launched it became apparent this poor little guy just wouldn’t suit the needs i had, but there was another a better option.
Game Boy Advance SP[2003-2006]. This one in my humble opinion was a huge jump forward for both Nintendo and myself. the first system to offer a rechargeable battery, back lighting and most importantly for me a closeable screen. As i started to travel more with my system bringing it to and from college with me having a gba whose batteries constantly popped out wasn’t a feasible option. At the time the friends I had recently made at an anime club at my college already had a few sp’s among them, so i wanted my new little GBA sp to look different then theirs. I wanted one one with the old Nintendo background on it, (which is weird for me because i have no real history with Nintendo up until my game boy color, I was a Sega girl.) The store didn’t have that one in stock but this tribal one was. To be honest now looking back on it I am glad I got this one. Maybe its because its been with me for over ten years but if i had to do it over again and my original choice was there, I think I might pick the tribal one all over again, there is just something about the design I really like. This one also launched me on a different journey for me. With these new friends they started to recommend other titles to me, and making a trip to GameStop with them was not completely unheard of. I started to play other titles such as Advance Wars, Wario Wear and Golden Sun, I still played my Pokèmon games but i enjoyed the different titles as well. This little one came every where with me, its small size rechargablity and the foldable feature made it perfect for me.
DS LITE (2005-2008) : This little one is actually my second ds lite. I never bought the original ds, I would wait until the ds lite and when i was officially at my four year school before I bought this one. It appealed to me because of its wireless capabilities allowing me to connect and play with the friends I left behind when i moved from a community college onto to a 4 year university. Even though its not pictured here, this would be the first system that i would purchase a grip for. Just before my first gba doctors discovered I had carpal tunnel in my hand, due to my muscles growing in a different directions, i had always had trouble gripping so after two surgeries to “correct” the issues, my hands would remain in pain. Carpal tunnel and gaming are not friends. (just FYI and the Surgery does not work, i am still in pain years later and have bad days were my whole hand just is ache)
Anyways I ramble, as i mentioned earlier this one wasn’t my original lite, my first one another white one (i refused to get a pink one!) I was talking to my roommate one evening when my original one jumped from its perch and to the solid floor below, its little hinge went flying off into another direction why the console went in another. To the damn things credit it, it still played and acted as if nothing was wrong. (Nintendo really builds these things to be beaten up.) After realizing i could not repair it, i traded it in for a new one. this one would remain my system for a good 4 years. It was this system i would truly explore other games with. I quickly became a fan of game series like Puzzle Quest, Professor Layton, and Ace Attorney. I would also pick up ds versions of Final fantasy 4 (which i loved), the newest sets of Pokèmon games including ones that would appear for the first time on the ds. I really enjoyed ranger a lot (although my hands beg to differ on that one) This little system open up so much for me and i think even today it was a ground breaker for me.
DSI: (2009-2013) I actually had no intention on buying the DSI , my lite gave me everything i could have asked for, but one Christmas shortly after I had completed college my brother asked me what i wanted for Christmas. I told him either a psp (to fill my need for portable twisted metal and final fantasy) or dsi (because my intrest was peaked with the new Nintendo handheld), to my surprise he actually got me the DSI. He picked it because I already had a good library in which to use it. At first i didn’t use it sticking with my well known and well loved DS Lite. Eventually however little by little i started to warm up to this new system. I gave it new little wings (the grips you see pictured with it and i started to download a few titles. without even realizing it this quickly became my go to system forcing my beloved lite into retirement. I continue to accumulate more titles including pearl, soul silver. i even downloaded a few titles as well, including a longer version of the paper airplane game which i had come to love from my old Wario wear title for the gba. It is funny it is also because of this system did i even return to the handhelds after the disaster.
Not pictured Original 3ds or
useless piece of crap.
When the 3ds was announced I grew excited, given my enjoyment of the previous ds models i thought i would enjoy this system as well. So over the course of the months leading up to its launch I traded in the PSP that i had bought (brother was right i just enjoyed my DS more) and a few dozen titles towards the purchase of the new 3ds. I put a little money aside every couple of weeks so the day of launch i would have it all paid off, treating the pre-order system at game stop as a layaway system. Paid off it was day of launch…but that 3ds started a 2 and a half year long break from Nintendo. I put a lot of hard earn money and time into getting the system only to on launch day have no titles i was truly into and 6 months later they would drop the price by nearly a 100 dollars. The games they gave me to compensate me was much of a compensation in my opinion because they were titles i had no prior interest in playing. it was a slap in the face for me i had given up a lot to get that system, including my PSP and beloved ds titles which i am still trying to track down again including my digimon game. This system itself was a disappointment as well, its battery didn’t last nearly as long as my dsi’s battery, I was hurt badly by Nintendo and even the newly release pokèmon black could not ease the betrayal i was feeling by Nintendo and i walked away from them for two years.
I filled my time in those two years with games on the android, from Mystery of the Crystal to angry birds, to most recently Simpsons Tapped out. AAA Homer i hope you never stop entertaining me. My android cell phone became a companion to me but it alone could not fill the void.
(2011-present) I also explored the world of MMRPG’s, being too cheap to afford something like World of Warcraft I look for Free to Play options, it was suggested to me to try Lord of the Rings Online even though i had never read the books or seen the movies. i was told i would be fine..and you know what i was. I went into the the journey online looking for new friends and a new world to explore and i got both. I have been playing happily now for almost 3 years now on the riddermark server. At the beginning of this month the kin i helped found celebrated its second year of being together. I do love the people i play with and admittedly i now pay for the game, i still found myself missing something. After three years of exploring middle earth i found myself dreaming of my ds again.
3ds XL (2013-current) On a Whim recently i broke out my old Dsi (the 3sd still very much in time out) growing bored of the often short cell phone games I started to play pokèmon black, a game which i had bought just weeks after buying the 3ds, but by then my heart was already broken. With my sudden resurgence to play my friends encouraged me to upgrade once again, this time however I was reluctant. after all i had burned before, but they persisted promising me the XL had better fixed the errors of the original. They both had a 3ds xl’s and after a while i gave in. Knowing I would never get over the hurt the original one caused i traded it in for a fresh start (and got a great deal for it, GameStop sent me an e-mail promising me more then what they were going to offer, i showed the e-mail and got that promised amount back on it, (Go older and wiser(ish)!) I got my new blue 3ds for half of the amount, with in days i found a new grip for it and i was off an running. They were right this ones battery is much better then the original and it feels different. It feels like a new start of me and nintendo, for the first time with access to the new store i found myself remembering how happy i was with my ds and DSI , i was both surprised and a little pleased to learn the two systems could talk to each other and i could import almost all the games i had bought for the dsi onto the 3ds. I think for the first time i felt like i had come to terms with the pain Nintendo has cause and was now ready to move on with them. Now with a pokèmon at my side (and a new one almost here) middle earth in my lap and homer…well doing what homer does. I feel like my adventure is bright with my handhelds, we might have hit a rough patch but portable is always the system..the home where i belong.
Well that’s my long winded and probably boring story.
next time, my top 10 favorite non-pokèmon titles…thank you for reading
Gamerwoman 