Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I always wanted a hand held system, but i want to ask a few questions first :x

1) are they both region free? alot of the games i want to play seems to be out in japan only

2) where do you guys find most of your games from ? ones that are out 2-3 years ago.

3) do they offer like extra warranties? would i need it?

might have more question when im awake :"P thanks for now!

I got a DS in 2006, and loved it. It stopped working last year when I spilled vodka on it... but it survived being soaked in wine six months after I got it. Battery life was great, it supported GBA cartridges. The games have come down drastically in price over the past six months as well. Not sure about warranty though.

Oh, and it's region free! Getting a bit dated now, though.

I have the DS since it came out. There's a bunch of really great games, if you manage to dig thorugh the steaming pile of casual "games".

I was never that much interested in the PSP, since they just don't have the type of games I want to play on a Handheld. I'm sure, God of War and Dexter are nice games, but I prefer to play games like this on the big screen. The DS is great for 2-D titles like the Castlevania series or Mega Man.Turn-based strategy games work also very well on the system.

I don't know about warranties, but most stores still carry older DS games and then there's always Amazon.

A lot of people have something against the PSP, but no one can deny that it has a few games that just CANNOT be passed up. I would rather have a small library of incredible games than a large library of mediocre games, anyway (the best games on the DS absolutely pale in comparison to the PSP).

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of The Lions (One of the best games ever made in the first place, remade with cinematics and extra classes? How can you beat that?), Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (One of the best Castlevania games remade in 3D, and on top of that, it includes Symphony of the Night, the best Castlevania game of all time) simply cannot be touched by anything that the DS has to offer (unless you have an unhealthy infatuation with generic one-off JRPGs). And then there's games like Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, etc. Not to mention that the PSP is getting a lot of love from Square-Enix in the coming year, with Final Fantasy: Dissidia (A Final Fantasy fighting game) and the next entry in the Parasite Eve series (Entitled The Third Birthday). The attention that the PSP is getting lately is sad, sure, but again, I'd rather have a few absolutely amazing games than a lot of crappy ones.

The DS also lacks all of that extra functionality, if you're at all interested. MP3 Playback, Video and picture storage, Skype, GPS navigation, Ethernet connection, Movie playback, and (if you're so inclined) PS3 connectivity.

Since I ordered my PSP from Japan (I really wanted a white one), I'm not so sure about region-free. I just know that a Japanese PSP will play any North American PSP Game, and it's probably due to english updates from the internet. I've never really had to worry about a warranty, but I take obsessive care of all of my systems. I would definetly recommend buying at least some screen protectors to keep you from scratching it, but other than that, it's a pretty solidly built system. I'm also pretty sure that warranties depend on where you buy your system from.

Since the PSP library isn't really all that big, you should be able to find anything you really want at your local gamestore (probably brand new). If you're looking for something obscure or from japan, I'd try ebay.

PSP is region free. I have the original model (no skype for me, but hackers delight!) and I picked up Tales of Eternia from Europe as there is no US version and it plays perfectly. I don't know about the UMD movies as I never watch those, just play games.

Ahtman wrote:PSP is region free. I have the original model (no skype for me, but hackers delight!) and I picked up Tales of Eternia from Europe as there is no US version and it plays perfectly. I don't know about the UMD movies as I never watch those, just play games.

does that mean both n.american psp and DS can play japanese games directly? thats about the only reason holding me back from buying it.

LunaHound wrote:

Ahtman wrote:PSP is region free. I have the original model (no skype for me, but hackers delight!) and I picked up Tales of Eternia from Europe as there is no US version and it plays perfectly. I don't know about the UMD movies as I never watch those, just play games.

does that mean both n.american psp and DS can play japanese games directly? thats about the only reason holding me back from buying it.

DS I think so but I am not sure. The PSP can play Japanese games directly, yes.

Chrysaor686 wrote A lot of people have something against the PSP, but no one can deny that it has a few games that just CANNOT be passed up. I would rather have a small library of incredible games than a large library of mediocre games, anyway (the best games on the DS absolutely pale in comparison to the PSP).

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of The Lions (One of the best games ever made in the first place, remade with cinematics and extra classes? How can you beat that?), Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (One of the best Castlevania games remade in 3D, and on top of that, it includes Symphony of the Night, the best Castlevania game of all time) simply cannot be touched by anything that the DS has to offer (unless you have an unhealthy infatuation with generic one-off JRPGs). And then there's games like Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, etc. Not to mention that the PSP is getting a lot of love from Square-Enix in the coming year, with Final Fantasy: Dissidia (A Final Fantasy fighting game) and the next entry in the Parasite Eve series (Entitled The Third Birthday). The attention that the PSP is getting lately is sad, sure, but again, I'd rather have a few absolutely amazing games than a lot of crappy ones.

I never got around to play FF tactics, but I think I would prefer Fire Emblem. Altough the PSP remake has Cloud Strife, which is a big plus .
I played Symphony of the Night on XBox Live arcade. It is a great castlevania game, no questions there, but imo not as good as Circle of the Moon, Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, all of which were handheld Nintendo titles.
There are a lot of really great titles in the DS library, but I can understand how people who are not familiar with the system have difficulties to find the good games among all the casual gaming trash.

Final Fantasy Tactics is by far the best Turn-based Strategy Game, bar none, even if you don't like the Final Fantasy series whatsoever. I know that sounds like an opinion, but trust me, just play it. If you're basing your preference to Fire Emblem on an experience with either Tactics Advanced title, just know that Tactics Advanced is a blasphemic heresy unto the Final Fantasy Tactics name. Tactics Advanced can't even come close to standing up to the original.

The Playstation One original FFT also had Cloud Strife as a playable character, but now he is much easier to obtain. The characters that were added in to The War of the Lions are Balthier from Final Fantasy XII, and Luso from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (For whatever reason. In my game I left him for dead. ).

I have played both Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, but I found that I did not enjoy them nearly as much as Symphony of the Night (Or my newfound experience with Rondo of Blood). It could've been the characters, possibly the storyline, or maybe even the brighter color scheme, but something about it just didn't resonate as well with me as Symphony did.

I'm not denying that the DS has some awesome titles available (Phantom Hourglass, New Super Mario Brothers, Contra 4, etc.), just that they can't stand up to the best that the PSP has to offer. I guess that if you're either an Oldschool or Nintendo fanatic to the core, then the DS is the better way to go. But since I have an emulator running on my PSP that can play all of my SNES classics anyway (Some may look down upon this, but just look at it this way...I own all of them to begin with), I can almost get the same awesome experiences that can be had with 2D sequels on the DS, sans touch-screen.

Oh, and then the extra functionality tops it all off.

If I ever get around to playing FF tactics, there's a pretty good chance it will be the Advance version.

Maybe my problem with Symphony of the Night was, that I played it after the GBA and DS titles. There were a lot of things in Symphony that just bugged me, like equipping a healing potion in the menu screen, switching back to the game, use it, then switching back to the weapon.
And while I'm talking about 2-D Castlevanias, I never seem to really enjoy the "2nd castle". Mirroring the map is just plain lazy, if they can't think of any new areas, they should just stop programming at that point.

And yes, I am a Die-Hard Nintendo fan, or at least I used to be, back when Nintendo was still making REAL games for the Wii. I just don't see that much appeal on the PSP. I don't want to play first person shooters or God of War style games on a small screen like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Chains of Olympus is a good game and I'm actually really interested the Metal Gear Acid games.
You can also play GBA games on the DS, and there's a large library of really great titles.

DS is made of Win, nuff said.

Plus it has many more social games. Mario Kart, etc

Chrysaor686 wrote:The DS also lacks all of that extra functionality, if you're at all interested. MP3 Playback, Video and picture storage, Skype, GPS navigation, Ethernet connection, Movie playback, and (if you're so inclined) PS3 connectivity.

Half true. The little known DSi(Japan only release until Q4 2009) has all of these features(sans PS3 connectivity and GPS, all DS versions have Wii Connectivity and Internet), in exchange for being 12% thinner than the DS Lite, with larger screens(3.25" vs 3"), and an SD card slot instead of the GBA slot. Just like the PSP, the firmware is upgradeable. Also, the DSi features the DSi Shop, just like the Wii Shop.

DS game compatibility is Region-free just like the DS/DS Lite, rumours state that the DSi exclusive software/applications are Region Locked.

The DSi can only play AAC audio files, not MP3s (In essence, skewing any possibility of saving your C.D.s onto your SD card). The DSi has no Skype connectivity. As you've mentioned, no GPS hardware either. I have not been able to find anything about video playback, and even if you can, good luck fitting a movie onto an SD card. The only leg up the DSi has on the PSP's hardware is the 3 Megapixel camera, and even that is comparable to taking a picture on a cell phone (though I'm sure the one on the microphone side will find some gimmicky use in some games).

The decision to remove the GBA compatability was an absolutely terrible one. I'm sure this will piss a lot of people off. Not only can you not play your GBA library on the DSi, a lot of peripherals depended on that slot. This is a bit of a smaller complaint, but they also cut the battery life down 5 hours from the DS Lite (Probably shouldn't be complaining about that, since the PSP is notorious for it's bad battery life, but even so. That's a fairly big hit). Also, the DSI is actually more expensive than the PSP (One of the reasons that the DS Lite does so well is because it's cheaper).

Anung Un Rama wrote:If I ever get around to playing FF tactics, there's a pretty good chance it will be the Advance version.

Maybe my problem with Symphony of the Night was, that I played it after the GBA and DS titles. There were a lot of things in Symphony that just bugged me, like equipping a healing potion in the menu screen, switching back to the game, use it, then switching back to the weapon.
And while I'm talking about 2-D Castlevanias, I never seem to really enjoy the "2nd castle". Mirroring the map is just plain lazy, if they can't think of any new areas, they should just stop programming at that point.

And yes, I am a Die-Hard Nintendo fan, or at least I used to be, back when Nintendo was still making REAL games for the Wii. I just don't see that much appeal on the PSP. I don't want to play first person shooters or God of War style games on a small screen like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Chains of Olympus is a good game and I'm actually really interested the Metal Gear Acid games.
You can also play GBA games on the DS, and there's a large library of really great titles.

My only problem with that version was that it seemed to end sooner than the PS
one (as I recall it). It also didn't have the gravitas that I remember from the PS one.