- cross-posted to:
- games@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- games@hexbear.net
Switch (and to a greater extent Switch 2) is brilliant hardware, don’t get me wrong. I like it. It’s well built, great screen, suspend works great, docking is awesome, etc.
But I don’t like that it killed (or at least marked the end of) the old handheld gaming paradigm. Some of this is undoubtedly nostalgia, but I think there’s things that were objectively better about the old way.
Around the time of 3DS launching smartphone gaming was taking off, and for a moment it looked promising which really hindered sales of handheld consoles. There were tons of innovative, fun experiences available at low prices. This pushed companies away from handhelds. It’s a lot tougher sell when people have smartphones now.
But then smartphone gaming turned into a barren hellscape of ads and fremium mtx ridden slop. I don’t know about you, but despite owning high end smartphones I have literally no games on my phone. Not to say that no good smartphone games exist… But they have such a huge uphill battle - nobody buys mobile games because they assume they’re trash, and they don’t have the necessary advertising budget to fight the big names in mobile gaming. So the selection is small and hard to find.
Then there’s the ports like Minecraft and Fortnite/etc, which are also loaded with mtx nowadays. But smartphones seem like the absolute last choice platform for these titles. Nothing I hate more than playing a game designed for a controller on a touchscreen.
So say I go to pick a friend up from the airport and I have 20 minutes to wait because their flight was a bit late. What to do? I could play a game on my Switch. Totally a feasible option. Except, I almost certainly didn’t bring it. Why would I? It’s a fairly large device. And with the big exposed screen and analog sticks I’d have to case it up too. I’m not grabbing that thing “just in case”. So I grab my phone and doomscrool. Not because I want to, but because… What else am I gonna do?
But let’s say I had a 3DS… Pocketable (or easily fitting into a modest sized purse). I can take it without thinking. No case needed, it’s a clamshell. May as well keep it on me. Plus I can grab some Streetpass passes (when that was a thing) which basically gamifies the action of taking it everywhere. I’d probably spend those 20 minutes playing something on the 3DS.
That’s the thing. Tablet sized portables like Switch/2, Steam Deck, etc are technically portable, but I have to plan it. If I’m going on a road trip yeah awesome those consoles are insanely good. But in my day to day life they never leave the house. The extent of portability really means I might play them in bed instead of the living room. The Switch Lite is definitely an improvement, but it’s still not the size it would need to be to become effortless to bring around.
And the games. Switch/Switch 2 games are mostly just home console games that can be played on a handheld. We don’t get nearly as many of those smaller games designed for 10-30 minute play sessions. The type of games that used to be developed for handhelds. This is 10x as true on PC handhelds. I mean, such games do exist no doubt they’re just a lot smaller part of the market. We don’t see big studios putting money into them like we’d see them do for dedicated handhelds of the past. That’s not to say there weren’t big epic stories meant for long sessions on old handhelds, but they weren’t the main type of games on them.
I understand why things are the way they are. I get it. But I don’t like it. Some might ask why I don’t just carry an old handheld - I have been! With the modern modding scene the 3DS is insanely good. I’ve had a blast with it and have been playing a ton of games from the library I never got around to back in the day plus emulators for older consoles etc. You can even play online again with community servers. But it would be really sweet to have new games to look forward to, and an active community and support.
Then there’s new like, boutique handhelds out there like the Ayn Thor etc. They look awesome and I’ll probably pick one up one day, but honestly it has the same problem as my 3DS. No new exciting stuff coming. No big community.
I don’t forsee things changing anytime soon… But I feel like if things were just a bit different they could. Like, graphics have kinda plateaued in the past 2 generations of consoles. Developers can’t really say their games are held back by graphical limitations much anymore. Let’s say the Switch 2 has an 8 year lifecycle - the Switch 3 could be a dockable handheld clamshell the size of a 3DS XL. Skip the 2 screen thing. With advances in processing/battery tech, I think in 8 years they could do that and still have graphics marginally better than S2 (but maybe not as big of a leap as S1 -> S2) and with a lot more RAM/vRAM assuming the RAMpocalypse ends by then. It could be a pocketable handheld that can still do 1080p gaming on TV while docked, keeping the single device benefit for development cost savings that the Switch brings.
I don’t actually think that’ll happen, but a person can dream eh?
Anyway thanks for reading my rant.
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I adore my RETROID Pocket Flip v2
This could be blamed on game developer brain drain. These are low-powered devices, and they need people writing game logic to have some idea of hardware-level efficiency, not let a 500-feature engine do the work for them.
There’s no way to remake these devices without them taking up oodles of power, thus burning a hole in your pocket. Phones come close (it’s damn impressive what visuals Gacha games can achieve on phones) but even they are losing efficiency with time.
Same for phones.
All of this could be so easily fixed if only we had linux phones. I’d like to just have my entire steam/gog/itchio libraries just on my phone as I’ve already bought those games and I should be able to just play them on the devices I already own.
That’s cool and all, but but I don’t get the relavence.
It’s a pocketable Linux phone.
For phones I recommend emulators. Games from 30 years ago were less likely to have microtransactions, DLC, and all that bullshit
You kids and your microtransactions and Deal-Cs.
When I was your age, we would go to the mall with a roll of quarters and feed them into into big TVs with plastic guns hanging off the side. You’d shoot at the screen and the screen would shoot back. Every game cost a quarter. So we’d say “3 lives for a quarter”. They would sell you blue soda in these big cups called “Freezies”. And you could get a pretzel the size of your arm for a dollar.
Can’t do that anymore. On account of the woke.
Others have covered various points with better words than I can, so I’m going to share a website that is covering mobile phone games releases. not affiliated in any way
Is was developed and maintained by a youtuber covering mobile games. Although he haven’t uploaded to youtube in a year. And I don’t usually check the site so it could be outdated.
And I see mobile ports of pc games are taking more care in translating physical controls to touch screen controls. Still not the rule and definitely the exception, but it is out there. Latest one I remember off the top of my head is balatro and ballxpit.
I’m pretty sure someone made pants to make the Steam Deck or similar pocketable…
Jokes aside, if they were pocketable, you couldn’t run modern AAA games on them, then gamers would non-stop whine about it. You can still get some pocketable handhelds with Android OS (or a Chinese fork of it), and likely that will be my next portable device if Google will go through with closing down the Android ecosystem, and my S23 Ultra will go bad.
My steam deck lives in my backpack and yes, i would have taken it to the airport.
My kid is a Nintendo Game Boy Advanced SP connoisseur. I’ve looked into modern versions like the Miyoo, but after getting two broken in a row trying to get a Christmas present together I gave up. GBA-SP still works thpugh!
But then smartphone gaming turned into a barren hellscape of ads and fremium mtx ridden slop. I don’t know about you, but despite owning high end smartphones I have literally no games on my phone.
this is the real shame imo. I don’t need another pocketable device, I just want decent games on the thing I already have.
I think the other problem is I’m not a fan of touchscreen as a primary gaming interface
There are pocket-sized controllers intended for mobile device use with varying degrees of tradeoff
sure but there is a wide variety of grips, clips, and controllers out there. You’d lose some of the portability advantage having to carry something like that around, but it would still be less expensive, redundant, and wasteful than a completely separate gaming device.
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be the change you want to see, how much did you spend on portable games back in the day, why aren’t you spending the same amount on devs that make ad free no micro transactions games? Don’t shy away from that game because it’s 10 bucks, that’s a quarter the price you used to pay for gbc games.
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get yourself a Bluetooth controller, or physical controller adapter for your phone, they have buttons you can stick on your phone, and then you’ll appreciate how nice the screen interfaces are these days.
I can never find a good source for what those games are, and more often than not they’re a game I already have on PC that just happens to have a mobile port. Like what am I going to do, buy Slay the Spire a third time since I already have it on PC and Switch?
Despite having a smartphone for over 15 years, I’ve found maybe a handful of games that are mobile games primarily that are also full fledged games that aren’t slop. There’s probably more out there but no good ways to find them. Mobile gaming is heavily overrepresented by freemium and gacha games and players, or people suggesting indie games that exist on other platforms.
Phone app stores don’t gave good games. They just don’t. Not free, not paid; they just don’t.
Unless you get into Foss shit. Which you donate not pay for. Mindustry goes pretty hard.
Phones are never going to be as good an experience as a dedicated handheld gaming system.
This is my phone with my magnetic controller attached. I can detach the magnet and screen and set it on a kickstand to play at a table or hotel desk or such. I My phone is my main gaming device when I’m on the road; lots and lots to play.
When it’s closed up and the controller is still attached, it’s this big:
However, it’s still not pocketable, but that’s because I’m a woman and pockets aren’t easy to come by. Fits in my bag quite well though.
That controller looks awesome! Can I get a link or a name or something to identify it, please?
https://ohsnap.com/products/mcon-magnetic-controller
Here you go! $100 is not cheap.
While I admire the anti-advertising stance, there’s a difference between obnoxious advertising and sharing something you like. Luckily, the fediverse is still niche enough that it doesn’t have marketing agencies trying to blur the line yet.
I sent it to them in a PM as well, when I made the original comment.
I went out of my way to avoid doing that because I didn’t want to advertise in a federated space.
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There’s still good ones. You just have to look hard and ask around. I wouldn’t recommend it on smaller phones, but there’s a port called “Dungeon Clawler” that’s a blast. Then a great and super hard free game called “Shattered Pixel Dungeon”. Another called “Earn to Die”. “Merge Maestro” is also a lot of fun.
I mean, I’m eating well on my phone.
Is any of those a mobile first game? Besides, I totally get this complaint of op’s
Nothing I hate more than playing a game designed for a controller on a touchscreen.
There are good mobile first games, but you definitely need to cut through the slop to find them. One thing that helps is just completely ignoring free games and looking at the actual paid ones. Then skip any games you are aware of that are on other consoles, because those are likely to be ports (which to be clear, are often great, but not if you are looking to avoid controller touch controls as you are).
Some of my favs in the past have been Card Thief, and every other game by the same dev; most of Kairosoft stuff, though they did a free to play period of releases so I’d avoid those; Monument Valley; Reign and its spin offs; Vampire Survivors, even though it’s free; Professor Layton series even though they are ports; there’s others, this is just off the top of my head.
Oh! I’ve never cared to distinguish. I just have a controller, a setup that works for me, and I haven’t given it much thought besides.
I think that may actually be a bit crass of me, but I didn’t really consider other people when I was trying to figure this out.
Insofar as good mobile-first pay-money-and-get-game games, my favorites are A Ticket to Earth, SOULVARS, Slice and Dice, and others, but I can’t be sure because I don’t have an easy way to check release dates of iOS games against their Steam counterparts. I’m a 41 year old woman who’s on a photography expedition at the moment.
At the end of the day, does it matter though? Play what you want, on the device you want, and enjoy the remainder of the four thousand weeks you started with. :)
There’s a whole market of pocketable handhelds where you can carry around 40 years of retro gaming. Retroid, Miyoo, AYANEO.
There are others that run Android, giving you access newer mobile games on a dedicated device with physical buttons.
I’d argue that, in 2026, pocketable mobile gaming is better than it has ever been.
Yeah I address this.
They’re like museums though. As cool as they are they’ll never capture that “current, supported console” energy with a large community. No exciting big new releases. I’ll never have a spontaneous local multiplayer session.
They do look super cool though and I’m sure I’ll get one eventually.
Weird take, retro gaming communities are huge and new hacks/mods are released often.
Nothing will ever beat the feeling of having mario kart ds, then beaming the game over to other people who did not have their own copy of the game and playing quick multiplayer rounds with them. We didn’t realize how good we had it
Download Play was the shit. Nintendo added something similar back (GameShare) but it’s just display streaming instead of sharing a binary. Can give. Similar experience, though.
We really need to recreate the same thing. I wanted game devs to do local multiplayer on Android using WiFi Direct for over a decade and yet NOBODY HAS EVEN TOUCHED IT, at most a few does Bluetooth, it’s just a handful of applications even using it at all and the single most notable program is a printer manager (Mopria) so not even something multi user oriented.
I agree with you completely on the phones. Ergonomic nightmares on top of all the mtx and game quality issues.
But i think the retro handheld community deserves a bit more consideration than dismissed as museums. They allow portable access to decades of games. Most of which are far more suited to the 20-30 minutes sessions you describe than any games of more recent days. The blast you have on a 3ds? You can build on that. Either by jailbreaking other platforms (PSP?) or get a newly built device of similar size which adds greater convenience (battery life, usb-C, etc) and add the ability to emulate most consoles. Up to say, Ps3 era and you have decades of options in any genre.
Not sure you are going to find any answers if that isnt going to scratch your itch.
Ive personally never had the multiplayer itch i think you ae referring to and havent played a fraction of the games that habe intrigued me over the years.
If you get one with a Snapdragon chip (Adreno GPU), you can run most Switch and Steam games, so you will be able to play new releases, within reason.
My bad lol, I ADHD’d my way in and out of reading your post and seems like I skipped the latter half
Good point
Yup. Retroid Pocket 6 is perfect for this. Can even run PC games with Steam save game sync. Plays all Switch emulated games.
But this is not for normies. The amount of setup and fiddling these consoles take make them a very very niche enthusiast device. But still a device I would strongly recommend for people who are willing and who want a budget device in this current hardware climate.
GameBoy SP was the perfect handheld. It fit easily in your pocket. It had color. It had a backlight. Everything after is just chasing screen size.
It weirded me out that it didn’t have XY buttons.
I mean, the GB Color and Advanced didn’t have them. The Advanced just added L and R, and the SP was the same, but more compact with a backlight.
I agree, but I think it could be a biiit wider. Especially if we add some analog controls. Personally I think somewhere around DS lite size.
Not really for the screen size just for grip comfort
There are a shit ton of handhelds ranging from a lot of budgets, wulffden made a great video about any that he could get his hands on.
Sounds like a you problem.
Another big issue with smartphone gaming is platform decay. The stores require you to constantly update or your game gets kicked off. There are tons of great games that have no legit way to play them, and others are completely lost with no backups existing. I have some games on my phone I can’t delete without risking losing access to them altogether.
Meanwhile I can go put rhythmn heaven in my gba and play it right now.
Even Android itself can be emulated. But that doesn’t save games with online dependencies
