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The puzzle itself is good, but the music and video really make it shine. This clone does not have that, so IMO it won't be a fun to play.

It doesn't have the video, but (if you're not using the GBA Movie Player v2) it does have custom soundtracks. Use GSM tools for GBA to make a gsmsongs.gba file, copy it into Luminesweeper's folder, and then you can edit the skins to use your music. All is described in the readme file.

Unless you want to market games on a really unique and proprietary platform

...or even if you are marketing your casual game on a proprietary platform, it'll get cloned. Just look at what happened to Lumines; there's now an accurate GPL'd clone for GBA.

The only thing that almost interests me on the PSP is Lumines.

You can drop even that now.

The device that can still be made to run homebrew but requires additional stuff

If "additional stuff" is not available brick-and-mortar, then to many people, it's not available period.

or the device that will no longer run homebrew but did back then without additional stuff?

It might still be relatively easy to find a used PSP with <= 2.00 firmware at a brick-and-mortar pawn shop, especially once you realize that you've played the notable PSP UMD games before on the PS2 or on a GBA emulator.

Where's Meteos

Meteos got an "honorable mention".

aka The DS Lumines?

If you want Lumines for GBA or DS, try this.

My point was even the SNES is a hell of a lot easier.

Not especially. They use almost the same CPU, and for scrolling-background type code, the programming model is nearly the same. In fact, it's harder to get sound going on a Super NES because you have to learn two instruction sets and communicate between the two through a really narrow channel.

Most people who are "developing" for the NES are just hacking existing ROMS

Sure, the ROM hacking community overshadows the original development community, but it still exists. Heck, I've made a Free tetris clone for the NES.

Yes, my beloved Tetris. Though, I'm very picky about what version I play. I don't like ones without art, ones with the "slow drop" mode with holding down the drop key, and I only like the JKL-space controls.

Once you get tired of Spectrum Holobyte's Tetris, here's what you can do if you really like the classic control scheme but are looking for a new twist on the concept (pun intended):

1. Go download VisualBoyAdvance and Tetanus On Drugs. Both are free software under the GNU GPL.
2. Make the following control bindings in VBA:
   • D-pad left -> J
   • D-pad right -> L
   • D-pad up -> Space
   • Button B -> K
   • Button A -> I
   • Start -> Enter
3. Now start your game.

Detectig and studying non-luminous objects like Buffy is a lot harder than luminous ones like Sirius B.

What about detecting and studying Lumines itself? And, if you value Freedom, what about Luminesweeper?

Unfortunately, the one good game* on the PSP that isn't a PS2 port (Lumines) probably would have been a PS2 game in the first place if

...SCEA didn't have this anti-2D stance, where it seems that the only 2D games allowed on the PS2 are reissues of arcade games.

That said, so many reviewers have complained that Lumines could have been adequately done even on less-powerful handhelds. In fact, it has been ported to the GBA, and now it's open source.

but Sony probably paid Q Entertainment to make it for the PSP and PSP only in a scheme to sell PSPs.

It would match Sony's known m.o. Previously, Sony had offered Namco a deep discount on the manufacturing (which normally runs roughly $10 per disc) in exchange for making Soul Calibur III a PS2 exclusive.

The skins were really awesome though, I'd like to see that kind of thing spread to a real* puzzle game like Tetris Attack.

Meteos is a spiritual sequel to Tetris Attack, developed by the same people behind Lumines, and it has 32 different skins that the player can unlock.

AC wrote:

Look for the kind of jobs that *are* available in your geographical area and adapt those skills?

By the time I've gone to school to learn those jobs, they won't be in demand anymore.

Work on some homebrew projects with an interesting idea focusing on the above skillset

I already have worked on homebrew projects, but despite my homebrew projects, employers don't want me.

adding a few more projects to your resume even if these are your own ideas that you have or will implement (think java, j2ee, c++, large scale systems, sql, oracle, async messaging etc.)

How can I work with enterprise level projects if I don't already have an enterprise level budget to buy a single-user license for some of these? I can afford PHP and MySQL but not Oracle. What exactly are "large scale systems"?

Get published, initially a few articles here and there would suffice, this gets you noticed better than anything else.

What subjects? Print or online? I've already written a few articles about GBA sprite memory management and present and future Nintendo DS modding methods. And if you count everything2, I have nearly 400 articles posted.

Move to a better and more technology friendly area, if you can.

Moving costs money. My job as a clerical volunteer for the VA hospital in Fort Wayne pays $0.00 per hour. Even minimum wage employers such as restaurants and mall stores don't want to hire me. What should I do?

AC wrote:

Look for the kind of jobs that *are* available in your geographical area and adapt those skills?

By the time I've gone to school to learn those jobs, they won't be in demand anymore.

Work on some homebrew projects with an interesting idea focusing on the above skillset

I already have worked on homebrew projects, but despite my homebrew projects, employers don't want me.

adding a few more projects to your resume even if these are your own ideas that you have or will implement (think java, j2ee, c++, large scale systems, sql, oracle, async messaging etc.)

How can I work with enterprise level projects if I don't already have an enterprise level budget to buy a single-user license for some of these? I can afford PHP and MySQL but not Oracle. What exactly are "large scale systems"?

Get published, initially a few articles here and there would suffice, this gets you noticed better than anything else.

What subjects? Print or online? I've already written a few articles about GBA sprite memory management and present and future Nintendo DS modding methods. And if you count everything2, I have nearly 400 articles posted.

Move to a better and more technology friendly area, if you can.

Moving costs money. My job as a clerical volunteer for the VA hospital in Fort Wayne pays $0.00 per hour. Even minimum wage employers such as restaurants and mall stores don't want to hire me. What should I do?

AC wrote:

Look for the kind of jobs that *are* available in your geographical area and adapt those skills?

By the time I've gone to school to learn those jobs, they won't be in demand anymore.

Work on some homebrew projects with an interesting idea focusing on the above skillset

I already have worked on homebrew projects, but despite my homebrew projects, employers don't want me.

adding a few more projects to your resume even if these are your own ideas that you have or will implement (think java, j2ee, c++, large scale systems, sql, oracle, async messaging etc.)

How can I work with enterprise level projects if I don't already have an enterprise level budget to buy a single-user license for some of these? I can afford PHP and MySQL but not Oracle. What exactly are "large scale systems"?

Get published, initially a few articles here and there would suffice, this gets you noticed better than anything else.

What subjects? Print or online? I've already written a few articles about GBA sprite memory management and present and future Nintendo DS modding methods. And if you count everything2, I have nearly 400 articles posted.

Move to a better and more technology friendly area, if you can.

Moving costs money. My job as a clerical volunteer for the VA hospital in Fort Wayne pays $0.00 per hour. Even minimum wage employers such as restaurants and mall stores don't want to hire me. What should I do?

There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get right out of college in IT.

I've looked, and despite sending my resume for every IT opening located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that I can find on CareerBuilder and Monster, I can't even get a ******* interview anymore. After having tried for 30 months, what am I doing wrong?

Stop gaming and write code for fun instead.

If you write code, then it won't even run without a modding method because almost all the major consoles and handhelds (PStwo, Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, DS, PSP, but not the GBA SP) have a secret bootloader. Fortunately, there are a multitude of modding methods for, say, the Nintendo DS.

In existence... Connected to a TV and actively used though, not many. Ultimately the people who routinely buy games have long upgraded to a PS/2 or XBox.

Then why can't a PS1 game be made to reach both those who have a PS2 and those who still have a PS1? Or do you think the upgrade treadmill is a good thing?

Where are you going to put a track ball such that it's comfortable to use while sitting on your couch?

Grab a Dual Shock controller, an Xbox controller S, or a GameCube controller. Remove four buttons where one is X. Place a trackball there. Then use the left analog stick for moving.

Also I don't think you get quite the precision movement out of a trackball that you get out of a mouse.

Some people who swear by a trackball claim that switching from a mouse to a trackball is a matter of practicing, just as it took Goldeneye veterans a while to learn to play PC shooters.

As for a touchpad I don't think that'd be much better.

A properly calibrated touchpad (that is, one that uses a customized acceleration curve instead of the default curve built into most laptop touchpads) is probably a lot better for shooters than an analog stick, and it even fits inside a handheld game system such as Palm or Nintendo DS.

Or get a Revolution controller and just point and shoot.

[GP2X] launched earlier this month, I believe

Where can I pick up a GP32 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, if I don't have a credit card or debit card? A lot of the target market for handhelds is in the same situation: children of parents who are afraid to buy something online.

with no commercial games, but apparently has a pretty strong homebrew scene.

Isn't most console homebrew (full disclosure: including my own projects) just clones of commercial games and emulators that primarily play questionably legal copies of games for other platforms?

1: it would have to be quite bulky and/or not enclose the cart

A frontloader could be made that's no bigger than an original PS2. The cart would slide in where the disc slot goes. As for a toploader, "not enclos[ing] the cart" seems to be acceptable, as the cart stuck out of the Famicom, AV Famicom/NES Toploader, Super Famicom/Super NES (both revisions), and Nintendo 64.

true but just how good are those PD roms?

Go play my contribution to Garage Cart and see for yourself.

And yes, if you're programming a volunteer job counts equal to a job experience.

VA NIHCS won't let me touch the computers because I'm a volunteer. I keep checking the job board, and I've even applied for one job ("Medical Laboratory Aid or Medical Technician"), thinking it was similar to what I had already been doing as a volunteer, but it turns out the position was misdescribed: they wanted an ER phlebotomist.

Have you tried the usual suspects (Monster, Dice, Craig's List)?

I've tried CareerBuilder and Monster, but not Dice or Craig's List.

Have you posted your resume at company hr sites?

How should I go about looking for companies with an office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that I would want to work for while I gain experience living away from my parents' proverbial basement?

I know in particular Amazon has been hiring like crazy this year.

Not where I live, and right now I don't have enough money in the bank to be able to afford the cost of relocation.

When in doubt if you're qualified for job X due to 1 or two requirements but are otherwise a close fit, send a resume anyway.

I've been doing so, but all I get is "Sorry, we've filled this position."

Perhaps my resume is crap. Could you care to take a look?

How could you not at least get into grad school?

Not-rich parents, for one thing. They don't even have money to microchip their cats. I graduated $30,000 deep in student loans, and I doubt that banks would offer to lend me even more money given the down economy in my specialty in the United States.

(I would have taken this conversation private already, but your profile says "(email not shown publicly)". Please reply here.)

No, the proper model is not Moore's law but Bono's law. If it takes 300 years now, then it'll take 320 years in 20 years, and most of the time will be spent waiting for exclusive rights to expire (if they ever do). For instance, indexing a literary work that's out of print and not widely available at libraries requires getting a new copy, and those aren't available until the copyright runs out.

sadly, if a console is open, you can bet that the openness will be used 95% of the time to play pirated games, not homebrew ones.

There is a middle ground of legal emulation. If you own a copy of a Lucasarts adventure game, and you use your right under 17 USC 117 to use ScummVM DS to install it onto a CompactFlash card and then put the CF card into an adapter on your Nintendo DS, you can still play commercial quality games without piracy.

Quite simply because commercial games are of much higher quality than any homebrews!

Not always. Would you rather play Tetris Worlds for GBA, which actually breaks the concept, or would you prefer Tetanus On Drugs for GBA? Would you rather play Lumines on a PSP and Minesweeper on a Pocket PC, or would you prefer Luminesweeper on a GBA SP while your backside is cushioned by a wad of cash?

I believe the DS sells better then the PSP as the PSP only recently launched in Europe.

And whose fault is that?

The DS is far inferior to the PSP

In graphics. How else? Ask your doctor if the PSP is right for you.

and unless they can do better then a backlight they won't be getting money from me unless it can do at least the same as the PSP.

What does the PSP do other than games? Music and movies. With a GBA flash card and the GSM Player, the DS can play music. There aren't a lot of movies on UMD Video, especially G-rated titles (Toy Story is pretty much it), and due to the DMCA it's a felony to format-shift your DVD collection onto Memory Stick. But if you happen to have video that is compatible with fair use, try the Play-Yan adapter.

I believe the DS sells better then the PSP as the PSP only recently launched in Europe.

And whose fault is that?

The DS is far inferior to the PSP

In graphics. How else? Ask your doctor if the PSP is right for you.

and unless they can do better then a backlight they won't be getting money from me unless it can do at least the same as the PSP.

What does the PSP do other than games? Music and movies. With a GBA flash card and the GSM Player, the DS can play music. There aren't a lot of movies on UMD Video, especially G-rated titles (Toy Story is pretty much it), and due to the DMCA it's a felony to format-shift your DVD collection onto Memory Stick. But if you happen to have video that is compatible with fair use, try the Play-Yan adapter.

It can only be rational if you drop the "VS" thing.

Changed. Now does the comparison look less biased?

Move?

How? If I can't find a job in town, not even a part-time minimum wage job, then how can I save up $2000 for bus fare, rent, and food? How can I best leverage the six months of experience working for $0.00 per hour that I have? Even then, how can I make sure that I will actually find a job in the town to which I move?

Get friends who have one or the other who let you borrow it?

What's the most polite and most effective way to find people in town who 1. have a PSP, 2. are willing to become my friend, and 3. are willing to let me play their PSP?

I bought my PSP in Japan

Do you run into problems with UMD Video region coding? Unlike DVD Video, UMD Video is said to put Europe and Japan in separate regions.

It's quite apparent that you like your DS and have no interest in knowing what the PSP can do.

It's quite apparent that you have more money than most people. If you want this to turn into a rational discussion, then please read my analysis of the pros and cons and respond publicly or privately (through my contact page).

It's quite apparent that you like your DS

I can't afford a DS nor a PSP. If I want to buy two PSPs (one for homebrew and one for commercial games), and CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, and Dice.com list no entry-level IT job opportunities in Fort Wayne, Indiana, then what should I do?

It's quite apparent that you like your DS and have no interest in knowing what the PSP can do.

It's quite apparent that you have more money than most people. If you want this to turn into a rational discussion, then please read my analysis of the pros and cons and respond publicly or privately (through my contact page).

It's quite apparent that you like your DS

I can't afford a DS nor a PSP. If I want to buy two PSPs (one for homebrew and one for commercial games), and CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, and Dice.com list no entry-level IT job opportunities in Fort Wayne, Indiana, then what should I do?

And that wav sounded pretty decent.

It was a 30 kbps GSM file made with GSM Player for GBA. At that bitrate, a 2:00 loop would take 450 KBytes of space in ROM. If you're willing to devote 1/4 of the 64 MiB on a current DS card to background music, you can fit a full CD length soundtrack. And as for the CPU hit, the GBA decoder does take a bit over half the CPU on the GBA, but the Nintendo DS's CPU is clocked four times as fast.

Bottom line: Using a studio recorded soundtrack in a DS game is feasible.

Lots of polygons, lots of pixels. You can compress things to an extent; however you start trading off quality and CPU cycles to do so.

.the .product will make you happy. This demo by Farbrausch is only 64 KB in size, but it demonstrates the kind of procedural generation of content that programmers can produce if they put their minds to it. And you have to trade off CPU cycles in order to get to that sweet spot where the NOW LOADING screen is neither disc-bound nor CPU-bound.

(These aren't simply FMVs, either; Star Ocean 3 has a lot of large areas, voice acting, etc.)

Do RPGs released in Europe have voice acting in multiple continental languages, or is it just English or Japanese with subtitles?

The ability to play my own video from memory sticks isn't too bad, though, although I've never used it.

You're feeling the chilling effect of the DMCA, right?

However, I do find considering the entire handheld race won this generation because of something that's basically a tamagotchi to be a bit silly.

As I understood it, the point wasn't that one brand had "won this generation" as much as "won as of September 2005".

Hot Shots Golf rocks; don't bash it, people have bought PSPs for it, and I've spent far too much time in the past two days learning why. It's fun, and excellently implemented, with huge long-term value.

How does Hot Shots Golf compare to Mario Golf: Advance Tour?

This is like anything else entirely dependant on what you like to play.

I bought a GBA, and I'm considering buying a Nintendo DS, in part because of the ability to play a game called devkitARM where the object is to make your own game and brag about it on the Internet. Sony Computer Entertainment has shown itself to be much more proactive about thwarting homebrew than Nintendo is.

the PSP has the better screen and homebrew possibilities.

The supply of PSP units with 1.50 firmware on the used market is dwindling fast as homebrew players snap them all up on eBay, and the 1.51 or later firmware is not cracked to my knowledge. The most common Nintendo DS firmware, on the other hand is fully cracked ("PassMe" and "WiFiMe"), and even the new version in Chinese units and some Japanese units has a preliminary crack for it.

The DS is cheaper, but the PSP can play movies.

The Nintendo DS plus a portable DVD Video player is $250 just like the PSP, and there are a lot more lawfully available feature length movies on DVD Video than on a PSP compatible format. In fact, Disney/Pixar's Toy Story is the only G-rated movie available on UMD Video in North America. Read More...

theres a major major difference when you switch from midi to cd quality in game music.

Is there a bigger difference from MIDI/MOD to say a 32 kbps MP3, or from a 32 kbps MP3 to Red Book CD audio?

on top of that the psp also allows you to play from custom playlists.

Are all PSP games required to support custom soundtracks, as is the case on another company's next-gen game console? If so, how would custom playlists work in a music game such as Frequency or Beatmania, or even Lumines (which needs the speed of the timeline synchronized to that of the music)?

i would like to see a company give you the option to download the soundtrack to memory stick and save you the trouble of needing to read from UMD.

Download the soundtrack? Companies would rather sell you another copy on CD and then sell you the privilege to copy it to a Memory Stick.

lets see the DS 'emulate' that...

Want a CD player emulator that works on the Nintendo DS? Start here.

Control is not everything. There is still processing power that governs how many enemies can be on screen, and how intelligent they are.

Starcraft's system requirements included a Pentium CPU at 90 MHz. Throw in the fact that the Nintendo DS has hardware acceleration for tile and sprite displays, and you might be able to squeeze it into the 67 MHz of the main ARM CPU.

And then the screen lets you see more on the PSP.

In practice, you need to see enough to tell one type of unit or terrain from another. This was doable in Warcraft 1 and other RTS games of that era, which ran at 320x200 pixels, with 256 horizontal pixels used for the playfield and the rest for the status/command bar, part of which would move up to the top screen.

Bigger UMD allows more levels, more enemy types, in game voice, better music.

Current Nintendo DS games are up to 64 MiB in size. Starcraft was ported to N64, at a size of 32 MiB (256 "megabits"). How big was the spawn install of Starcraft for PC? Audio fidelity doesn't matter as much as it would on a console or PC title, as you typically don't use Sennheiser headphones on a handheld, so you can probably get away with some form of lossy waveform compression on the audio.

An all around better gaming experience.

NOW LOADING is not gaming.

Point is, if you can't easily tell your units what to do, especially in the rapid clickfests of advanced play, the rest doesn't matter. True, good control won't save a bad game, but bad control will wreck a good one.

It's the beginning of the Legend of Ganon.

Almost. Another source claims that Zelda and Link will become dancers along with Mario in Super Step Bros., the sequel to DDR Mario Mix. This game will continue the Legend of Max.

why have you been told not to move?

I have never lived alone, always with family or a college roommate. I have never learned to drive, although that might not be as much of a problem in Europe. The vocational rehabilitation agency I'm working with is limited to the State of Indiana, and my case worker is not sure that I would qualify for vocational rehabilitation assistance under the different rules that apply outside Indiana and especially outside the United States.

let me know if you'd like my help. i can set you up with people who can help you find a place to stay and maybe even be able to get you a job directly.

If you really mean it, then please e-mail me through my contact page.

they won't reject anyone with an education

"An education" meaning a B.S. in computer science, or meaning a master's?

Tetanus on Drugs, anyone?

"Tetanus On Drugs simulates playing a Tetris® clone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs."

The author lurks on /. somewhere... I can't seem to recall his nick just at the moment, though...

The guy's clearly a raving Nintendo fanboy, and all semblance of balance has long gone.

Is my buyer's guide more or less biased than Zonk's articles?

Or just play hundreds of old nintendo games on an emulator on my computer for free.

I hope you're talking about homebrew games for Nintendo platforms, such as Solar Wars and Bombsweeper and Tetanus On Drugs and Luminesweeper. Otherwise, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. If you want to compare unauthorized Internet copying of 1980s video games to something, compare it to unauthorized Internet copying of 1980s movies.

Wake me up when I can download (for free) the Generation NEX development kit

To make NES compatible software, you just need CA65 or another 6502 assembler, a tile editor supporting NES format, and your favourite programmer's editor.

you come out cheaper with the psp.

What about the time you spend waiting for a particular movie to come out on UMD Video? Currently the PSP has zero UMD Video titles rated G. It takes time to build up a library that comes close to approaching the DVD Video library in a given Region, and time is money.

as far as music is concerned unless you are talking about the pretty useless [for me anyway] ipod shuffle, you will have to shell out more than the PSP itself.

If you already have a GBA flash cart, you can use the GSM Player to put music on your GBA.

once you talk about emulators and homebrew, you will need a flashcart, or one of those awkward looking passthru devices for your ds. there goes the form factor right there.

And no, an F2A or EFA flash cart for GBA homebrew doesn't kill the form factor of the Nintendo DS any more than an official GBA game does. And for DS homebrew, once you've used the PassMe adapter once to flash your DS's firmware, you can keep the PassMe at home and load the DS homebrew from a GBA flash cart.

So you're going to walk around with your MP3 player, your DVD player, and your DS all in your pocket?

Somebody with the time to sit and watch a feature film is probably carrying a backpack. As for music, if you have a GBA flash card, you can use the GSM Player for GBA in your GBA, GBA SP, or Nintendo DS.

You do realize that pretty much every game made in the last 5 years has featured compressed or CD audio?

At least the WarioWare series (currently two GBA titles, one GameCube title, and one Nintendo DS title) uses MIDI because it needs to vary the tempo of each individual song from 140 BPM to over 300 BPM. And not many GBA games use compressed audio, even though the software decoder is available and permissively licensed.

If the game ships on DVD, it has roughly 9.4GB to work with. Put a quarter of the DVD towards compressed audio

What you say may be true of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 but not of the GameCube and PSP. GameCube discs have about 1.5 GB of space; PSP UMDs have 1.8 GB. A quarter of that for music will get you roughly 400 MB. Now the consoles' built-in wavetable synths use some form of ADPCM (4 bits per mono sample with predictive filtering) as a native waveform encoding, giving only 2.5 hours at 44100 Hz stereo (352 kbps). Compare this to the typical play time of an RPG. Or were you planning on using Vorbis decoded in software, which eats a lot of CPU time compared to ADPCM decoded in hardware? Even then you get only three times that.

At the cost listed in the article, let's say $800 per minute, [42 hours of] music would cost over 2 million dollars.

What is the budget of a Square Enix RPG?

I'm happy with my Lumines

I'm happy that you're happy. I'm working on a project that will make even people who haven't upgraded from the GBA happy.

These are lists of all available games for both platforms

All? You forgot this list of DS compatible titles. Sony, on the other hand, neglected to put back-compatibility with PS1 games in its handheld, even through a USB version of its Walkman CD player.

But for crying out loud please stop the stupid anti-PSP FUD

Anti-PSP? At the end of my DS vs. PSP article, I identify several groups of players who would be happy with a PSP.

(the page you link to in your sig is so one sided Microsoft would be proud of it).

I'd be happy to make it more accurate, and I like to read constructive rebuttals. Could you please refute some of the specific points that my article makes? Take it private if you wish.

the PSP is the first handheld to have the power to do decent ports of non-portable games.

The Super Mario Advance series was decent ports of a few Super NES games, right? What about Mario Kart Super Circuit, the worthy sequel to Super Mario Kart? There are all decent ports of games for the Super NES console. Or check Super Mario 64 DS to see an example of a worthy N64 port.

Or did you mean "current gen console"?

Console games are popular because they're good, now I can take them with me. Cool!

NOW LOADING is not generally something you want to take with you, especially when you'll typically be playing your "omg it's a console" handheld for ten minutes at a time. Players who are frequent passengers on car/bus/plane trips are the exception, and even in my allegedly one-sided article, I do recommend the PSP for such players.

And you can buy one DS game that is worthwhile (Metroid) and at least 3 that are good on psp!

Which are those three PSP titles? For every Lumines on the PSP, there's a Meteos and a Polarium on the Nintendo DS, as well as a Tetris and a Puyo Pop on the GBA (whose games run natively on the DS). Or how do you tolerate the excessive loading times of the two major racing games? They don't seem to fit in to the typical handheld game system use case where the system is on for 10 minutes at a time.

I think we agree that DS is weak and psp pwnz0rs and that's the important bit.

There are specific, limited use cases where a PSP is superior. For most everybody else, a solution involving a GBA SP or a Nintendo DS is more affordable. For instance, you can buy a GBA SP and a portable DVD player for $220, which is $30 cheaper than a PSP and has a boatload more titles available. Dare to compare.

the psp does have native mp3 support.

The GBA does have support for compressed music, albeit not mp3.

My PSP plays PSP games, GBC games, NES games, SNES games, SMS games, Genesis games, MAME games, movies, mp3's, and anything the homebrew writers can create. Does your GBA do all that?

The GBA doesn't support all platforms you mentioned, but it does support a lot of them. Full list here. As for PSP games, what exclusive games are there that aren't already on a PS2 or something? Lumi-what?

I know for certain that Linux ended my computer fun. WHERE ARE THE GAMES?!

VisualBoyAdvance runs on GNU/Linux, and both Tetanus On Drugs and Lumi-what? run on VisualBoyAdvance.

StepMania runs on GNU/Linux if you have 3D working.

There is plenty of stuff coming out of the DS homebrew community too

And don't ignore the GBA homebrew community, especially if you're planning on getting a PSP just for Lumines and/or the music player. A usable music player has been ported, and as people who have read the rest of the comments to this article know, Lumines is being cloned.

You say PocketNES works great, but can I fit 900 games on the EZCart?

I don't think 900 NES games were ever commercially released in North America or in Europe. But if you get a 1 Gbit (128 MB) or larger flash card, or you get a SuperCard (adapter for CompactFlash or SD memory), then yes you can fit hundreds of NES ROMs and/or GBA multiboot games (such as Tetanus On Drugs) on one cart.

Is there a GBA SNES emulator? If so, how do I use the X and Y buttons?

SNES Advance has been ported with sound to the Nintendo DS. Details are in parallel threads at pocketheaven.com and gbadev.org.

Also, I can't say I've ever seen any lumines clones.

There's Luminesweeper for GBA, and that page lists four other Lumines clones (but only Kaikai's is any good).

Maybe you're one of those people that sees a game that involves blocks and thinks every one is tetris.

Can you name them all?

I guess you're forgetting that nintendo is re-releasing all of their old games in the NES classics series

Well at least the GBA SP and Nintendo DS can emulate Nintendo's classic systems. The same can't be said of the PSP to the PS1.

There's simply more options with the fact it plays movies on UMD or encoded on the memory card, views photos, and can play back music.

Any GBA with a flash card can display photos and play music.

Friends of mine who have a DS constantly complain about the lack of more mature types of games for the platform.

Mature in what way? Blood and guts? T&A? Some would say that smacks more of "immature" products designed for high school and college students.

And from a hardware perspective, the PSP's screen is pretty impressive.

If a larger screen meaks you can't afford any games, is it worth it? The price difference between the PSP and the Nintendo DS is about the MSRP of three DS games.

PSP or DS? A lot of it is personal preference.

Darn right. I don't prefer loading times, and I don't prefer any of the exclusive titles (no, Lumines is not exclusive anymore), and I definitely don't prefer overdrawing my checking account to buy a handheld game system.

and with Rockstar's involvement on the platform the prospect of a handheld Grand Theft Auto is just too compelling. ;)

It's too bad that all the Europeans who want to play handheld GTA have already bought Payback, a Europe-only gangster sim with impressive 3D graphics for GBA.