It’s hard not to like the PSP; you just have to look at it running. I’ve seen many handheld consoles in my time, the original Gameboy, the Sega GameGear, the NeoGeo Pocket, the Bandai Wonderswan, right up to the GBA SP and the DS, and some of them have been acceptable and some have been arse-ugly but the PSP…well, it’s clearly got the iPod gene.

The iPod gene is that particular kind of gene that can be spotted simply by the effect it has on people. For so many people, what an iPod is is so much less important than how it looks. I know people without computers who have nevertheless equipped themselves with iPods, without ever realising that they wouldn’t be able to do anything with them. The looks alone were enough to make people worry about the practical side of things later; they simply had to have one.

The PSP has the same effect on people. When switched off, it looks great; sleek and expensive and with curves in all the right places. Switched on, and with Ridge Racer or Wipeout Pure running, and it looks even better. Forget about having to peer over someone’s shoulder to watch their game — you can see the PSP running from across the room. Great sound, great graphics, great presentation. Of course, there are problems; the battery life, the dead pixels, the unresponsive square button, but in the grand scheme of things this isn’t overly important because the PSP has the iPod gene, and an important part of that is causing people to overlook technical flaws and absent features because of the looks.

It just holds no interest for me.

It’s not you, it’s me.

The PSP has finally launched in the US, and is expected to launch in Europe sometime in the next few months. The excitement coming from the US has been fairly tangible, but though I can understand it, I can’t share it, because despite its looks, despite its power, it offers nothing new to me. The reason it offers nothing new to me is because I’ve been gaming for approximately 20 years. 20 years! No wonder I’m single! Imagine how different things would have been if I’d spent the past 20 years playing football instead — I might not have my searing wit and interesting collection of obscure science fiction novels but I might have a wife, a mortgage, possibly even some children. I might have a Mondeo. A narrow escape!

We can blame the parents for this, of course. It all began with a Christmas present for my oldest brother; a Commodore 16 with all the trimmings. It was set up in the living room and we played Hangman, marvelling at how much better the game was when you didn’t have to mess around with all that cumbersome paper. There were other games; Supergran which was some sort of side-scrolling game, and Punch and Judy, of which I remember nothing. Also included was an art package with the name of Rolf Harris attached to it, but seeing as the smallest brush size was a 16×16 pixel block…well, you weren’t ever going to be making anything recognisable.

I don’t remember when this happened, though I’m pretty sure it was before 1986…I was born at the end of 1978, so realistically it must have been around ’83–’85 for me to be able to remember the event, and I’m also pretty sure that this was around the time that my youngest brother, born in 1983, was being potty-trained (and there’s a few articles in that alone, believe me). Anyway, let’s go with Christmas ’84, which would give me a full 20 years of gaming. Phew.

I should point out that this is not an exact science; there’s also an Atari 2600 — the wooden variety — floating around in my head, but I’ve really no idea at what point that turned up; in my memory, it was just something that had always been there, with a 20-in-1 game cartridge, a couple of rock-stiff joysticks seemingly made of tyre rubber and a pair of broken paddles. I’ve also got a dim memory of a machine that had several sporty Pong variations on it — Squash, Badminton, others, in one- and two-player flavours, and there was definitely a multiplayer, battery-powered Pac Man toy. There may also have been a Donkey Kong Game & Watch…some Game & Watches anyway. I was born in the same year that Space Invaders was released, so there’s a Fact Amazing for you.

So, feel free to skip the previous four paragraphs of pointless drivel and just read this; I’ve been gaming for approximately my entire life. And that’s the problem; the PSP, gorgeous and powerful though it is, is just another level up of processing power delivering much the same types of game. Yes, Ridge Racer looks great and reviews have been very positive, but it’s just another driving game. Another driving game. Is it really doing anything that, say, Chase HQ, Outrun or Virtua Racing haven’t done already? Or even the original Ridge Racer of over 10 years ago?

Tony Hawk’s Need for Underground NFL Calibur Drive.

This isn’t a recent thing; the sort of games that are successful just don’t get played by me; the endless sports games (released once a year with minor updates), the half-arsed 3D platform games (why does everything have to be 3D, anyway? When was the last time a decent Sonic the Hedgehog game was released, eh?), the flashy beat-em-ups that can be walked through on a first attempt by simply mashing the buttons — very pretty, but where’s the depth? And this isn’t just about non-Nintendo hardware, either; I recently owned, for a good hour or so, Tales of Symphonia, a much-hyped RPG for the Gamecube that promised 80 hours of gameplay — 80 hours putting up with a tired, hackneyed plot and poor American trash-talking voiceovers in unskippable cutscenes? I think not.

Simply increasing the horsepower of any given console is no solution any more — at least, not for hardened gamers such as myself, who survived those awful days of 3D0s, CD32s and Jaguars. Increased power means increased complexity of sound and visuals, so the larger, mass-market companies such as Electronic Arts and Lucasarts will be the only ones who can afford the development. Increasingly, we turn to ‘retro’ gaming, buying up old NES consoles and Megadrives from eBay and playing old Marios and Sonics. Nintendo’s done very well out of this, with a huge amount of the Gameboy Advance back catalogue being made of of old NES and SNES conversions. Sega as well, with their compilations of Sonics (except for Sonic CD, goddamnit).

So, this is why Nintendo interests me and Sony and Microsoft don’t; the latter two simply offer more power, and power’s not what interests me. What interests me is gameplay, and it doesn’t need to come with a dozen lens flares, shadows and a million polygons. Nintendo promises power but also promises something different, simpler, purer. After 20 years of gaming, that’s what’s going to keep me gaming.