gaming

This is a very small (4.92 x 2.17 x 0.59in) Chinese handheld. It’s mainly of use as an aid to open game development, though usefully it’ll also support music and film playback, pick up radio and read ebooks. It’ll cost less than £100, and looks enough like a PSP to have Sony’s lawyers twitching.
 

Another slice of handheld nostalgia, the Wiz is an open-source console from South Korea that will let you play ‘emulations’ of classic games. Retro games from the Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amiga, Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, Gameboy and Gameboy Advance will be available as downloadable emulators. And because it’s open-source, you can even design your own.

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Previous incarnations of handheld Sony consoles relied on small discs (called UMDs) for content, but while this was fine for the games, the movies were a resounding flop. As a result the PSP Go relies entirely on downloaded content – you’ll be buying your games and movies online from now on. For content Sony has partnered with www.emusic.com, which offers reasonably priced games and films. The overall effect here is of a gaming device that you treat like your iPod, by downloading games you play on the Go. See what they did there?

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Right out of the box the Touch looks sleek and expensive. The touch-sensitive screen is scratch-resistant, which is handy since you’ll be rubbing your grubby mitts all over it from the off. The games on the Touch are purchased and downloaded from the online App Store, and you’re going to be spoilt for choice. With everyone in possession of the slightest bit of technical knowledge designing applications and games of their own, the store makes available around 50 new games every single day.

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The DSi is the third version of the Nintendo DS, which can currently claim to be the world’s most popular handheld gaming device. It’s a more powerful beast, with 16MB of RAM adding up to a fourfold increase on previous versions, while the processing speed has gone from 67 to 133MHz. It is also the first DS model to have internal memory – 256MB of internal flash memory, to be precise, and there’s a slot for a memory card that can hold up to an extra 32GB.

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 An endearing piece of kit that strips the format down to the basics, this offers a trip down memory lane for the more mature gamer. It’s pre-loaded with 20 games from Sega, including Golden Axe, Sonic & Knuckles and Ecco. That’s your lot, but there’s a wire so you can plug it into your telly if you wish, and it’ll set you back less than £30. Bargain!