My Top 10 Favorite Handheld Game Consoles

1. Game Gear

For me, the answer is "DS." The 3DS is too new to say for certain, but it's looking like it will be my favorite handheld ever. If you set that aside for the moment, though, the general DS line has definitely been my favorite. I started with the original DS, which obviously is obsolete now, then got a DS Lite (which is great and still plays GBA cartridges) and then a DSi XL (which has huge screens, relatively speaking). So the DS line is definitely my favorite. There are tons of great games for it. Ultimately, my favorite will likely wind up being an eventual revision of the 3DS and after that, who knows if I'll even keep buying handheld systems?

Oh, right... this is about lists of top 10 favorite handheld game consoles... I'll go ahead and put 3DS on the list, then:

1. 3DS
2. DSi XL
3. DS Lite
4. DSi
5. Game Boy Advance SP
6. Game Boy Advance
7. PSP
8. Game Boy Color
9. Game Boy
10. Game Gear

Whew! I managed to make a list of 10 handheld systems that I've actually played. I'm glad the list didn't call for 11 or I would have been screwed!

1. Tiger Game.com

Yeah, right...

Games for different systems notwithstanding my favorite is the DSi XL.

I have owned and played.

PSP
DS
DSi XL
Gameboy
Gameboy Color
Gameboy Advanced

1. Vectrex
2. VMU
3. PSP Go
4. N-Gage
5. Lynx
6. Game.com
7. Sony PocketStation
8. Neo Geo Pocket (no color)
9. Game Boy Advance (first version with no lighting)
10. Sega Nomad

...hm.

1. Gameboy Advance ("No, I'm playing Fire Emblem! No pokemon searches on my battery time! Bad! Bad!").
2. Game Gear. ("Woo, look at that guy who's playing with a fancy colour screen. Snobbish little.. myyyy screen looks nicer because it's black and whiiite, so there! Neer, neer").

...imo, the Game Gear was the most successful trolling attempt in handheld gaming history. Not all can be as successful as that one, sadly..

Hey Pickhut, why no Gizmondo love?

Too mainstream.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really love the PSP. It's got a sleek design, a really nice screen, superior Wi-Fi functionality to the DS, and the game library has some really nice gems like Ys and the Mega Man remakes. On top of that, the digital content is superbly done. Love playing "Front Mission 3" and "Wild Arms 2" on the go.

The Nintendo DS is nothing to sneeze at either. It has one of the nicest software libraries of any portable console, and I wish the PSP had that clamp design. Nintendo really needs to step up their game in the digital arena with 3DS, though.

1) DS Lite (it's the only DS I've used)
2) Game Boy Colour
3) Game Boy Advance
4) Game Boy
5) Game Gear
6) Virtual Boy (I know, but it was classed as a handheld)

That's my full handheld experience. Ha. I had a friend who owned a Lynx but I never tried it.

Would say the original Game Boy's my favorite, if I had to choose. It changed the way I thought about handheld games, making them feel like viable, weighted platforms. I miss the simplicity and lack of gimmick-driven ideas most of all, but I still love the GBA and DS for all the SNES-styled games and for not pushing towards making it look like current consoles until just recently.