Best Handheld

[Fin]

I swear the list of options has changed 10 times over

Still looks 50/50 between Atari and tendo

[tomwaits]

I really like the N-Gage and NGPC, but the GBA has such a huge library of games and homebrews that I had to vote for it.

[Bobinator]

It's got to be the Game Boy Color for me. The Advance, while a pretty cool system with its later models, really kind of skirts the edge of 'retro' for me. The Game Boy just has such a huge variety of games and genres. I mean, sure, we could compare screen size, and number of colors, but in the end, for me, it all boils down to what you can and can't play on it. The GBC, while never quite as appreciated as its gray-scaled counterpart, has a lot of good exclusives to it, too, and since it can play original Game Boy games, too, basically automatically wins this vote for me.

[TL]

[align=center:28tvweq6][/align:28tvweq6]

[DreamcastRIP]

...The Advance, while a pretty cool system with its later models, really kind of skirts the edge of 'retro' for me.

Agreed. We're ranking a handheld released a full year after the launch of PS2 against handhelds released in 1989/'90 - a time when the Atari 2600 was still in production, the Neo Geo was just launched and at least two years prior to the SNES being released in Europe!

That just doesn't sit well at all with me either. From the time of Atari Lynx launching it took Nintendo approximately twelve years to release a handheld, in the GBA, that finally bested it. Even then, I'm not sure the GBA has all the hardware tricks the Lynx was capable of. Yet we're ranking the GBA against the Lynx? Bizarre.

[Bobinator]

DC, just wondering... is it mostly the hardware about the Lynx that you prefer over the Game Boy's, or is there a certain game or such that the Lynx only has you really like? I know it probably sounds sarcastic, but it's an honest question. I'm just trying to figure out if it's more the hardware or the games people love the Lynx for, really. I mean, of course there's some good exclusives on the Lynx, but if it didn't have the color screen... would anybody have talked about them like they do now?

[Mire Mare]

The Gameboy is my favourite handheld for lots of reasons. The PC Engine GT is the best.

[DreamcastRIP]

DC, just wondering... is it mostly the hardware about the Lynx that you prefer over the Game Boy's, or is there a certain game or such that the Lynx only has you really like?

The capabilities of Atari Lynx were far in advance of Nintendo's GameBoy and it had a great selection of games too.

I had/have a GameBoy too and found it just about passable as a budget handheld. GameBoy was more rugged, the rechargeable battery pack I bought for it made it more practical and, erm, it had Tetris. I had zero interest in playing twee RPG-lites such as Zelda, massively pared down versions of Super Mario Bros games from the lowly NES or kiddie nonsense such as the later released Pokemon games. Yes, there were a few GB games I enjoyed in addition to Tetris such as Top Ranking Tennis but there weren't many.

Your argument re: "if it didn't have the color screen" seems bizarre, imo. Being in colour was critical but so was the massively more powerful capabilities of Lynx in terms of pushing sprites, etc., too. Lynx games were NOT of the same incredibly rudimentary standard as most GB games but with a lick of colour! Your point, to me, sounds the same as someone saying "If PS360 games weren't in colour then would they be much better than what was on the ZX81?"!

[TrekMD]

DC, just wondering... is it mostly the hardware about the Lynx that you prefer over the Game Boy's, or is there a certain game or such that the Lynx only has you really like?

For me the hardware beats the original GameBoy not only because of the color screen but because of the screen size, the backlight, the processing power (the Lynx is a true 16-bit system vs the GameBoy's 8-bit), and sound.  It also has a very good game library.  Yes, the GameBoy has more titles thanks to how Nintendo had done their licensing at the time but it's still an inferior piece of hardware.  There aren't many titles to compare head to head but take a look at Lemmings on both systems.  The differences go beyond just a color screen:

[align=center:38hrjror]Lemmings Atari Lynx
(the sound is a big off due to issues with the emulator being used)

Lemmings Gameboy version[/align:38hrjror]

[AmigaJay]

I don't know why people are moaning the GBA is here as retro, the ws, ngpc, and gbc were released in 98/99 and the gbc had games releasing until 2003, the GBA came in early 2001 I wouldn't say the gap was big enough to say one is retro and another isn't,  and yet the ngage is here which came out in 2003... 

[DreamcastRIP]

I don't know why people are moaning the GBA is here as retro...

I've not questioned whether the GBA is retro or not.

[Alberto 2K]

GBA gets my vote, it has a huge library of classic and awesome games, if the Dreamcast counts as a retro console for it's library I don't know why the GBA shoudn't do it.

I also think consoles like PCE GT or Nomad should count, even when they came from home consoles they're handhelds and retro!

PCE GT was great!!!

[AmigaJay]

I don't know why people are moaning the GBA is here as retro...

I've not questioned whether the GBA is retro or not.

No, but you agreed with Bob that it 'skirts the edge of retro' so by that definition the gbc does as it was still being sold then.
Also i don't the problem comparing the two, the power of said machines has nothing todo with it, its about which one in your opinion was the best handheld, doesn't matter which decade it came from or how powerful it was.

[Fin]

Chilax guy  :15:

[Bobinator]

I'm just going to go ahead and say that when it comes to the age of consoles and handhelds, I'm personally more concerned about when it came out, not when they stopped making games for it. So, yes, I would consider the GBC retro. They were still making games for it when the Advance hit, like Shantae, so it was an older handheld by then.