1/24/2026

Needed another post, so why not "port over" a post I made on my Cohost account?

I did not have an original Game Boy, and I do not believe my family ever had the original big grey brick. I had a Sega Game Gear as a kid. I had a Sega Genesis, the NES and SNES were my Grandparent's and Uncle's, respectively. I mostly remember playing Super Monaco GP 2, Sonic 1, Deep Duck Trouble starring Donald Duck, and that weird port of G-Loc. Last time I tried to play my Game Gear, it didn't work, and I felt like it wasn't worth the effort to fix it when I can play them on my completely legitimate Vita. I do remember someone from elementary school bringing a Game Boy to class. Funnily enough, I never thought it was a lesser console because it wasn't in color like all the advertisements for the Game Gear, I thought, oh cool, Mario is on it. Also, it did not eat up batteries in 2 hours like the Game Gear, but I didn't really notice that as a young one. For completion's sake, I never had a Nomad and I never even seen one in person.

I did remember holding a Game Boy Pocket in my hands and playing Link's Awakening on it. I believe it was my Aunt's, I don't remember if that ever became my own. Because I do not want a paragraph with two sentences, I will just say that I should mention I had the Virtual Boy, and my eyes will never forgive me for it.

I knew I owned the Game Boy Color, and I still have it. I played Pokemon back when I was still in the target demographic for Pokemon, which was a very brief moment in time. I only played Pokemon Red and Pokemon Yellow, didn't even get to play Gold. I also remember playing Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and enjoying it even with all of that screen crunch. One aspect I do remember and do not miss is the infamous snake light, because the Game Boy's long battery life did not allow for backlit screens.

Speaking of which, the Game Boy Advance. That one has a special place in my heart because it was the first console I ever had that was imported from Japan. I got it for my birthday, and I was the coolest kid in middle school for a day, lugging around a copy of Super Mario Advance a month before anyone else in class could. Thank goodness the GBA was not region locked, so I got to keep it when the games actually came out in the US.

When I heard the Game Boy Advance SP was going to have a lit-up screen, that was the killer feature. It did not matter that it needed an adapter to hook in headphones, I could play with that screen even on a long car ride in the dark. It was also the first Game Boy that one can just hook to the wall, no need to buy a bunch of batteries. Goodbye, snake light, nobody will miss you.

I never bought a Game Boy Micro. The SP was good enough, and while the original DS had its issues, there was no need for my large hands to grasp a tiny portable no matter how pretty the screen was. My hands are cramping up just thinking about using one of those.

I had an original DS near launch. I'm going to admit: I honestly thought this was Nintendo's big mistake at first. This thing was ugly, the launch titles are bad, it was bulky, and the PSP looked like the Nintendo killer. I remember that image of the DS really wanting people to play Pokemon Dash while the PSPs were playing Ridge Racer. I did eventually get a PSP, and it felt like it ran circles around the DS. Eventually, I figured out that the DS was good at its own kind of games; Brain Training, WarioWare Touched, Meteos, that weird Point Blank port, the PSP could not do those. Having an actual new Mario game, something the GBA could not get, was just a bonus.

The DS Lite was such a great looking console, especially my original all white one. In a way, the late 2000s and 2010s felt like a dream era compared to today, and I can associate the DS Lite with that. It just looked so clean, it is a shame that Nintendo seemed to be allergic to all white consoles after the DS Lite, at least in the US. The thing I remember the most is that screen was so much better than the original DS or the GBA SP I was used to. Sadly, I dropped it one day and it broke into two. I ended up buying a colbalt blue one, which I still have to this day.

I never bought a DSi or a DSi XL, because I never found the point to owning one and I was still playing some GBA games. I missed out on Flipnote Studio and, from what it looks like, not much else. The only "game" I have that uses DSi functionality is the KORG DS-10, which uses it to double the amount of sound channels. Good news: playing it on a 3DS does the exact same thing.

I did get a 3DS at near launch, so that means I have those Ambassador Games. Let's just say there is a good reason why Nintendo gave us those Ambassador Games. The original DS had a really bad launch, but at least it had a cool version of Super Mario 64 and a demo of that Metroid game to hold us over. The 3DS? Uh, it had a Ridge Racer game that I did not remember being as good as the PSP one? The Street Fighter port was great, but I only ended up buying that when the 3DS store went down. The 3D was pretty cool, but I eventually saw it as a gimmick and I would eventually just turn the 3D off most of the time. Also, it had a horrible snap when you opened it. I can't really say much about the 3DS XL except that I had one, it felt better in my hands, and it still had that snap.

For some reason, Nintendo felt that Americans wouldn't want the normal New 3DS. They may have been right because I never bought one even when they did release one in the US. I did get the New 3DS XL, and I did not think it was going to be such a big deal. First, the games loaded a lot faster. Second, the 3D eye tracking made the 3D a lot more comfortable and made me want to use the 3D more often. Third, for a time, it was the best way to watch YouTube videos in 3D back when one could still access YouTube's website on the 3DS's web browser. I still have my New 3DS XL, but there's a big black hole of dead pixels on the top of the screen. I have considered fixing it, and considering how much New 3DS XLs go for these days since it's the one old handheld that can't be replaced by one of those emulation devices, maybe that's still something I could consider. I am still holding onto the possibility that 3D will become cool again, and we'll get better glasses-less 3D screens.

Even before the dead pixels, my New 3DS XL started to turn off at random moments, and I didn't really want to troubleshoot it, so I ended up buying a New 2DS XL. My initial thought was that it was cheaper, I barely used the 3D anyway, and it seemed to look more stylish on the box. Really, it's just a cheap version of the New 3DS without the 3D. As for barely using the 3D anyway, in the immortal words of Cinderella, the band, not the princess, you don't know what you got 'till it's gone. I really wish I would have bought that Galaxy Style New 3DS XL when I still had the chance. On the plus side, you don't have to pull out a screwdriver to take out the SD card (great for Colors 3D before I ended up with an iPad, an Apple Pencil, and Procreate), and it's the only 3DS that doesn't have that horrible snap when you open it. Now that I think about it, maybe that snap was because of the 3D screens. Who knows?

The age of the dedicated handheld, at least from the major first parties, was officially over when Nintendo released the Switch. Just showing off Fast RMX, a port of an already impressive looking Wii U game, shows how much better it is than the 3DS as a portable. Because of 2020, it became more of a weaker regular console for me, but whenever I needed to go on a long car ride, with someone else driving me, of course, the Switch was always something good to have. It is the console where I have the most games, at least outside of emulation devices.

It feels like the Switch 2 hasn't even started yet. It has a really good Donkey Kong game that I still need to finish, but other than that, it just feels like a Switch 1 Pro. I wanted a Switch 1 Pro, and there is nothing wrong with Nintendo not fixing what was not broken. It has a decent port of Street Fighter 6; if I did not already have it on the PS5, I would be playing it on the Switch 2.

And that's it for Nintendo handhelds. I would be curious to see if Nintendo will just keep making upgrades for the Switch for the foreseeable future. Maybe they'll see the big prices on the 3DS and think about reviving that concept. That was one of the "pie in the sky" ideas that I was thinking of back before they announced the Switch 2, and I'll take 120hz screens over glasses-less 3D. Both would be nice, though.

1/17/2026

I wanted to make a new page for the new year, even though I only written four posts for 2025, just to keep things organized. I do not want to have to keep editing the old pages to add links to the new posts, so I'll try to think of something.

I want to get back into anime this year. I do watch Toonami, but I have not really broadened by horizons since I last had my Crunchyroll subscription in the 2010s. I got into some interesting shows back then, along with the big hits like Sword Art Online and Kill La Kill, I was watching Sparrow's Hotel, the short anime about a ninja girl at a hotel that looks like it was straight out of the 90's, and Crime Edge, which starts like if they made an anime based on Freaky Fred from Courage the Cowardly Dog. There's a lot of interesting anime just this season alone, and while there are plenty of old anime I have not watched yet, I should at least get familiar with the anime that's on now.

Being a man in his thirties, I decided to watch something that is the most appropriate for me: the recent anime adaptation of Hana-Kimi, an adaptation of a 90's romance manga made for teenage girls. Okay, sorry, I didn't want to get back into anime with a "protagonist gets isekaied into a fantasy world and finds out he's some uber-powerful god with tons of potential wives" anime, so I decided to watch a shoujo instead. This is an anime about someone sneaking into a space for the opposite gender specifically to get close to someone of the opposite gender. Since it's a girl trying to get close to a guy, sometimes too close as she tries to kiss him while he's sleeping at one point, it's okay. Jokes aside, it seems like a decent romance story, and half of the reason to watch it is that one blonde classmate who has to constantly reaffirm how straight he is despite being clearly in love with this new student. Maybe a bit problematic, but one has to remind themselves it was the 90's. While I did not read Hana-Kimi back then, I am familiar with that one clip from one of the dramas. Not sure if that scene is in the manga, but I'll find out if I keep watching!

The last anime I tried to watch on and off over the last few months was also an old shoujo, though in this case the anime was also old. Yes, 2000 is old, people born that year can drink, deal with it. I do not know how I found out about Daa! Daa! Daa!/UFO Baby, but I watched about 50 episodes of it. It's a cozy romantic comedy show, skews a bit young with its focus on slapstick and weird alien schenanigans, but it's cute. Also, one of the characters is a character based on the mangaka herself, who happens to have something close to an orange on her head, so that's certainly appealing for me! I did not drop it because it was an anime made for pre-teen girls about childcare, it's because the English subs got struck off of YouTube. These uploads had been up for years, with comments about how romantic it is and asking when the two are going to kiss, and now they're gone. I was assuming it was the anime equivalent of "abandonware" since it was up for so long, but I guess it's not abandoned! I felt guilty because I downloaded some of them with YouTube Premium's download feature, and I could not help but think I snitched. We do seem to be in some sort of shoujo revival era with Magic Knight Rayearth getting another adaptation very soon, we got a lot of "reincarnated as the villainess" stories recently, and the aforementioned Hana-Kimi being an anime adaptation of an old shoujo manga being released this year. Maybe the powers-that-be caring about UFO Baby enough to strike episodes down is a sign that it will get some sort of revival soon, even if it's just the old 2000 anime. I can just imagine someone thinking it's DanDaDan Season 4 and being very confused.

Someday I'll watch something that isn't an adaptation of an old manga, or, gasp, actually watch something made for dudes. I did rewatch Golden Boy recently, and that's still good. Study, study, study!