The lost world of the portable console.

While I was growing up, there was one thing that still had some level of "in vogue" to it before the world of portable gaming became sexy... before anything could really be described as "portable."

Yeah, you had Game Boy Color to play your Kirby, Mario, Tetris and Pokemon on and not long after was the Gameboy Advance.

The real unsung gem of that era, however, was the Sega Nomad, what boiled down to a handheld Sega Genesis system that ran off of wall outlets, 6 AA batteries, a car charger and probably other potential power sources. Ignore for a second that it consumed these batteries en masse like it was some sort of device made to consume batteries (and that rechargable battery technology was nowhere near perfection), it was a system you could play any "Sega" game on anywhere. And when you were, say, at a family friend's shorehouse and didn't have the gual to bring your whole system with you, you could hook the Nomad up to the TV and play on the big boy screen. The box even had a second controller port for second players if you so desired.

More recently (though none too recent), Sony released the PSone, a smaller, white, extremely compact Playstation system*. What's more, the system was prepackaged with a fold-up LCD screen, allowing you to plug the system into wall ports in an airport or use a cigarette charger to power you on the fly for a FF9 (because FF7 and 8 are awful games and you should be ashamed for liking them) speed run on a long family car ride across the country.

Now we have behemoths like the PS3 and Xbox360 (and motion sensitive Wii; good luck playing that in the back of an Oldsmobile). We have the Nintendo DS, PSP and iPhone as compact, pocket size, non-cirgarette lighter-charged systems that are almost on par with (even at times outstripping) PS1 graphics. We also have mods to let you play games like Sonic 3 and Knuckles and FF7 on the fly.

So what happened here? Nomad was poorly marketed and released at a time when the Genesis was ending its lifecycle, but the PSone was around well into the age of the PS2 and other last-gen systems, even offering a lower price tag to keep it competitively priced and well-moved from shelves. One was a potential success marred by timing issues, the other a success despite timing. We cannot get "current gen" specs running on a DS. And while we have laptops, there's a lot to be said for controlling Dante on a touchpad.

We're in an age of behemoths and little gnomes that fit in your pocket, but it seems there's no space open for something in between. I remember the fun, but maybe I'm one of the few who do, when systems like the Nomad only sold 1 million units (total).

*Special note: mine did not have a phone.