u/Eremitt-thats-hermit

My parents (mom if I’m honest) were not into gaming. That was kinda the norm at that time. She was also a bit scared with what those screens did with our brains. At that time a bit overblown, but in the end pretty prophetic. Combine that with not a huge amount of disposable income and brand-name consoles and handhelds were not going to happen.

My mom did notice of course that I despite that I was still low key obsessed with electronics. So in came the budget options.

I don’t know if it was the first, but the VTECH Genius Math Wizard Pocket (don’t know if that’s the English name, it was called something different in my country and I only could find a german picture) wasn’t really a gaming handheld. It’s a math tutor that had one game. I barely touched the math lessons but there was one game on it that was a mix of snake and pacman. The console had sound that you couldn’t turn off. Mom was not happy about that.

When I was 6 I got my first swimming diploma and as a present I got a brick game. Mine was smaller and translucent yellow though, without that weird bump. Tetris was fine, but at that age I was more into the racing games. When I think of it, this could be before the VTECH one. Or at least they were very close.

Years went by and meanwhile we didn’t really use anymore handhelds. I played PC at the hours it was allowed and at friends houses. I remember a cheapo handheld that had the screen those Tiger handhelds had but it was swappable. Couldn’t find anything online.

Then came the first handheld I bought with my own money. The Conny Pocket Dream Console. I’m including it here because I bought it at an age where my mom definitely still had a say in how I spent my money. The PDC had quite decent games (they were shovelware of course) for the price. It wasn’t amazing of course, I bought it at a discount drugstore.

After that I didn’t really buy or get any consoles for a few years. I didn’t really buy anything to be honest. So the money I got at birthdays from family just slowly piled up in my piggy bank. Then when I was around 13 years old I was at a friends house and he showed me his PSP. I was amazed. My dad’s laptop couldn’t play games like that (I believe) and he had a handheld that could.

I had an allowance at that time and even though it wasn’t nearly enough to get a PSP, with that allowance came the agreement that I was now responsible for my own money and could spend it how I wanted. With a small allowance that is fine of course, but it didn’t account for the €250+ I had saved up over the years. So I could buy a PSP outright. That was surreal to me. As a kid I grew up thinking I could never afford a first party console and now I could buy the latest one, just by doing nothing with my money. Mom felt a little uneasy of course, but an agreement is an agreement, so I bought my PSP. Loved that device. Especially when I jailbroke it with one of those special batteries I got through a friend of mine who used his dad’s PayPal to order it for me. Playing GBA on it was wild.

That started my love for emulation and that’s why I’m here now. How did you get into contact with (handheld) gaming as a kid? Did you have proper consoles at home or did you have to make do with what was available/allowed at the time? Or do you maybe have some obscure handhelds from your childhood? I would love to see some local bootleg devices that never left their original market.

I got my RP Nova 8GB GC last week and have been playing for about 20 hours in between work, family and stuff. I’ve had my mind set on a couple of games, but decided this evening to spin up a game I have barely played in a franchise I really love: Trackmania Wii. I loved the early Trackmania games ever since I found my copy of Sunrise Extreme in a bargain bin at my local drugstore.

Having Trackmania on console was a dream to me, so when the Wii version released I bought it immediately. Boy was that game a letdown. The Wii-Mote was horrible to play this game with. The input lag was rough and the visuals weren’t clear enough for such a precise game. So I lost interest pretty quickly.

Now I not only have a proper portable Trackmania experience (the older pc games don’t have proper controller support and the DS version is meh). With the upscaled graphics and rock steady frames it plays like a dream.

If you like precise time trials, this is a big recommendation. You can also build your own tracks!

I’m new to GameNative. I’ve tried to run Vampire Survivors with the known config and a config I found on EmuReady. Both got stuck on this command prompt. What am I missing? I’m sorry if I missed something super obvious.