That's a cool looking handheld, but... that button naming is cursed. Who puts A and B across from each other?!

I had great fun playing Pirates! Gold on the GP2X back in high-school. I always lamented the short battery life, lack of wifi connectivity, and no USB host mode. But it was a different era and just having a Linux handheld at all was extraordinary at the time. Makes me really appreciate the Steam Deck for all it's features and ease of use.

I was obsessing over these back in the day but it was at the upper end of what I could possibly manage to wangle as a Christmas and Birthday present combined.. Then I discovered that a refurbished, like new, PsP 1000 phat could be had for less than half the price that these were retailing for and not only was the modding / emulating scene more active and better supported but it also opened an entire new library of native PsP games.

I don't regret my choice in the slightest. Although I still think these are really cool.

Love me some Cave Story!

Yeah I think I have one of those still around somewhere. I remember when they released it they didn't release any sources at all, even though it was full of software that required sharing in their license. So the community got together and helped them publish it all. Some of the drivers were still binary blobs, but that was the maker of the chips fault and not GameParks fault.

Once I got one I created a small little side scrolling game engine and a couple of games for it, a couple of other people used my engine to make some games for it as well. To imagine that's 20 years ago. We had a small little forum of enthusiasts setup and shared code in attachments. It's all lost to time now, but those were the days.

Yes, it was pretty bad. Poor battery life and the damn power cable never stayed in.

Emulated a handful of games, put it in a drawer and forgot about it. Got a PSP instead and spent months playing Everybody's Golf.

I had a caanoo and it was legitimately one of my favorite consoles of all time. Same era think.

Yes! I had the first one in black. I was active in the community and made a few skins for the interface. But I sold it a few years after I got it.

I always wanted one so bad but never picked one up

Game Park thrived because South Korea's history with Japan led to import restrictions that made Nintendo, Sega, and Sony almost irrelevant. They had a captive audience, which expanded internationally once buying stuff online became commonplace. Aaand then the whole thing went to shit when Korea ended those restrictions and this family of niche gizmos had to compete against the DS Lite and jailbroken PSPs.