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Usual answer, bill: it depends on what you want. Both the DS and PSP have games within their library that I'd consider essential - it's not an either/or question, as far as I'm concerned, as much as a 'which one first' question.
Benefits of the PSP would be that it can be used as an MP3 player (not such a great idea), a movie player (utterly pointless, and UMD as a viable format was abandoned by studios quicker than Betamax), a web browser again, not so great, because it's very clunky) or a streaming media player. I've had some use out of the last of those.
It'd be nice if Sony would get around to making it compatible with RealPlayer or something along those lines, because at the moment its internet radio functionality is limited to pre-defined 'stations' that aren't actually stations.
Modification. If you want to fiddle around with the thing, you can mod it to make it emulate older games consoles and to extend its media player stuff. Me, I'm scared of mucking about with it, but the option's there.
You can also run the new, slim PSP through an HDTV, if the fancy takes.
The benefits of the DS would include things like having a broader range of applications available officially. Cooking Guide, for example.
The DS's portability is better than the PSP's, thanks to the clamshell design. That's something to bear in mind if you're wanting something to play on the bus or train. I'd be scared of carrying my PSP around with me, because of the potential horror of finding that you're smashed the screen to smithereens. The fact that DS games are cart-based, rather than disc, is another thing that makes Nintendo's machine the better choice for playing on the move.
One downside of the DS is that its wireless functionality is picky about the kinds of router that it'll be compatible with, so you might want to check that out first, if online gaming is your thing. Although, to be honest, neither machine has much going for it as a portal to the world of online videogames.
Other than those things, the choice has to be down to the games that you want to play.
Beyond those two machines, it's always worth considering a GBA SP. The DS will play GBA games, but it won't play original GameBoy or GameBoy Color games. The SP will. There's a later SP revision that comes with a backlit screen, rather than the front/side-lit screen of the original model. I'm currently on the look-out for one myself, because I hate the original SP and always have - the positioning of the light washes out the colours on the screen to a terrible degree. The backlit model is virtually impossible to find online, however, and I'm fairly sure that it was never released in Europe. Japan and the US definitely got it.
Avoid the original model GBA, as its screen is impossible to see unless you've got fluorescent light directly above it.
GP2X is the successor to the GP32, which was a homebrew-happy handheld that built up a small cult following. The 2X is much the same, only more powerful. I own a GP32 and really like it - the 2X has been on my list of things to buy for a long time, but there's always something else to get first. The only real reason to pick one up is that it's got a wealth of emulators available, and because it's officially a home for homebrew software you don't have to worry about fucking around modifying it to get that software to run.
It's also quite a decent media player, apparently.
One thing to be wary about with any GamePark Holdings hardware is that the company constantly releases new revisions, often incompatible with older ones. Imagine if the first DS games didn't work on the DS Lite.
Oh. I just checked the site and it seems that they've decided to stop manufacturing the GP2X in favour of their Pandora vanity project. I suspect that they might be going bust fairly soon - can't see Pandora making much of a splash, myself.
Also worth serious consideration is the NGPC. It's a fantastic little machine, possibly my favourite bit of handheld gaming kit ever. A precursor to the GBA, it should have seen SNK worrying Nintendo's domination of the market, but thanks to the utter stupidity of the company's US arm, it instead saw them going broke.
But while it was alive, it had some wonderful games released for it, and it's a lovely bit of kit. The screen isn't lit, unfortunately, but it's surprisingly clear regardless - a bit better than the GB Color's, if that's a meaningful comparison for you. The teeny, micro-switched joystick is a joy to use.
Games were mainly based on recognisable SNK properties - a number of surprisingly effective fighting games (including exclusive versions of King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown and Last Blade), a couple of Metal Slugs, some puzzlers. it also, thanks to being in direct competition with the GB Color, attracted Sega, to the extent that the machine plays host to what remains the most enjoyable handheld Sonic game in existence.
This was around the time that Capcom and SNK forged a partnership, too, allowing elements of each others various IPs to appear in the other company's games. On the NGPC, this resulted in a great beat 'em up - SNK vs Capcom: The Match of the Millennium - and what remains the single greatest card-battling RPG ever set to silicon, Card Fighter's Clash (SNK-Playmore later revisited the latter on the DS, but fucked it up spectacularly, and even managed to perform so little playtesting on it that it shipped with a game-destroying bug).
It's also a machine with an interesting history, especially after its official death. While the US releases were saddled with crappy, GameBoy-style cardboard boxes as packaging, the UK versions instead came in miniature versions of the NeoGeo clamshells, complete with snap-lock clip and a snug little clamshell inside this, holding the game cart. Plus, full-colour manuals, one for each language. The UK releases, in other words, were joyous.
They also became hugely sought-after after SNK collapsed. The very last games released - some of which were the machine's best - only got translated releases in the UK, bypassing the US entirely (thanks to the aforementioned mismanagement of the company), and then in ppainfully limited quantities. At one point, certain UK titles - Last Blade, Faselei, Picture Puzzle - were fetching upwards of a ton on eBay. The most desired - Pocket Reversi, an NGPC version of the board game Othello - was heading towards £200 at one point.
Then, somebody discovered hundreds of unboxed games in a warehouse and flooded the market with them. The weird thing about these was that the majority of them (possibly all, I forget) were clearly US versions, and US versions of those games that never made it to the US originally.
The upshot of which is that it became very easy to get hold of NGPC games for a long time, but that the boxed UK versions retained their value, thanks to the sheer desirability of the packaging. Honestly, once you've seen a UK NGPC clamshell in the flesh, you'll find a love that lasts you a lifetime.
Games don't seem to be as easy to find at the moment, boxed ones impossible, but the unboxd ones that do show up are ridiculously cheap, as is the machine itself.
I could quite happily spend the rest of my life locked in a small room with an NGPC and a copy of Card Fighter's Clash. |
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