Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

First, some history. I’ve owned every Nintendo platform save for the Game and Watch, Game Boy Color, and the Virtual Boy at some point or another. My time with the N64 was brief but my time with the Gamecube was extensive. Despite its huge library of quality titles, I had little interest in the PS2 outside of its Castlevania titles. When my wife and I recently went out and bought a PS3, it was as much a surprise to me as anyone else. Even now, there’s only one compelling PS3 title on shelves for someone like me, and I’m already playing it. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. In fact, with the exception of Uncharted, and trying out a couple of other borrowed games, I’ve been happily playing the aforementioned Castlevania content on Sony’s Blu-Ray monster.

Most of the key traditionally Sony franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto are not of any interest to me. Even Final Fantasy became uninteresting to me after it peaked at 6. Still, even without many current-gen games that compel me, I really like the console, and not just because, as Paul likes to put it, the PS3 is the best PS2 you can buy, but also for all the other things it does that my primary console, Nintendo Wii, does not do. Things like the ability to download demos of many games, and the fact that I’m unlikely to ever run out of internal storage.

Perhaps our purchase of a PS3 is a little more surprising than a more recent acquisition: a PSP. I had wanted one for the retro remakes like Mega Man Powered Up and Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles, but it was kind of an intimidating investment for one person. When my wife started mentioning wanting one for games like Patapon (my fault, I showed her a trailer) and a number of unique titles like WTF: Work Time Fun and even for Castlevania I bought her one. One of my sisters-in-law recently observed that when any of them so much as casually express an interest in a video game product it appears quickly, and it’s true: when a gift that easy presents itself, we leap on it. I picked up Parappa the Rapper on clearance at Target for $15, a new copy of Patapon, and used copies of WTF: Work Time Fun and Mega Man Powered Up are on order. Castlevania is still retailing at $30, so we’ll see what happens when that comes down.

Sony’s handheld has got more great games than the PS3 does I think, and the fact that you can send your purchased PS1 games from the PlayStation Store to your PSP’s Memory Stick Pro Duo is pretty sweet. Let’s face it, most of those games look like ass on a modern HDTV but they still look sweet in a little square in the center of PSP’s display. I downloaded Symphony of the Night some time ago, and this will make it much more accessible to myself and my wife.

The PSP is an amazing little platform, and one in peril at that. It’s far too easy to download pirated firmware mere hours after Sony releases a new one, which lets people play copies of retail games off of a Memory Stick. This is throttling the platform’s third party support as we speak, even while it sells PSPs to those who figure they won’t have to buy games for it. It’s a shame, and I hope Sony finds a way to resolve the issue, though I don’t expect it. One has to wonder whether the death of the platform will make those who killed it think about their choices in life.

I don’t understand why I can’t visit the PlayStation Store right from the PSP. Having to turn on the PS3, download the games to the PS3, then link up the PSP via a USB cable and copy the games over seems like it’s at least one extra step. I also don’t understand why it doesn’t have a profiles option like the PS3′s XMB does. Not a huge issue of course, but a confusing one. Also, why aren’t there PSP themes in the PlayStation Store? Why doesn’t the PSP Core package come with a Memory Stick? The system is pretty much useless without one and they’re not expensive.

All in all, I’m happy with both platforms. It’s nice to have more systems around. It means I can be more selective about what games I buy, and it’s rare that a game comes out that I can’t get. I expect I’ll still tend to favor the kinds of games that are coming out on the DS and Wii, but that’s fine. I’ve been selling off a lot of old games to cover these new systems and their titles. It turns out my iron grip on games I’ve not touched in years is paying off: games I’ve kept in pristine condition after years of being out of print are paying off well on eBay, which is a good thing. The influx of software only has a finite amount of shelf space to occupy.

Image source: Wikipedia, since Capcom is pretending the game doesn’t exist.