HOT LESBIAN ACTION!!!

So, House of Flying Daggers just came out on video. I was just sitting there watching TV, and I see the ad. And at the end of the commercial, it says "House of Flying Daggers: out on DVD and UMD for the PSP." I'm like, "Whoa!"

I mean, they're taking movies, actual, honest-to-God films, and putting them on tiny little disks. And then you watch them on a screen the size of an eyeglass lens. This is far out stuff. I'm talking about science fiction here. We are like, steps away from just, like, being, like, JACKED IN. Like, to the GRID. We're going to be riding around in FLYING cars, and like, SHOOTING SHIT with our LASERS and shit. I am like, SO FREAKING OUT.

But all kidding aside, this is pretty neat. But, then you have to ask yourself: is this pretty neat?

Is it so great to be able to watch movies on a tiny little portable device? Is it really that fantastic to be able to download movie trailers onto your cell phone? Can't we wait until we get home to do these things? Are movies today really so all-encompassingly, mind blowingly excellent that it is necessary to sit still and stare at a screen the size of a playing card for two hours?

I don't know; it could work. Maybe you're standing in line at the supermarket one day and you say to yourself, "Man, I've really been meaning to catch the next three and a half minutes of Once Upon A Time in Mexico. I better fire that shit up!"

But, in the grand scheme of things, I guess this fits into the whole new emerging philosophy of portable gaming. When the first Gameboy came out, it's graphics were almost as good as those of the Super Nintendo. Your squat, ill-formed hero could go left and right, climb ladders, jump, and shoot little pellets at his ill-formed enemies. And you know what? It really didn't matter if your screen was 2x2 inches or whatever, because it was just a squat little guy moving around. For years, the graphics of PC and console games improved to the point where they no longer resembled their handheld counterparts. But in a way, didn't that make portables that much more special? You took them with you because they presented a simple problem; "how do I get my little guy across the screen and not get hit by those other pellets?" Wasn't that a relief from these 3D games with their mipmaps... and polygons? The graphics weren't great, so they had to make creative games, games where there were interesting things to do. And the games on the Gameboy, and it's proud descendant the Gameboy Advance, were beautiful in their own way. The elegant simplicity that they presented made our hectic lives that much simpler.

Now, I admit that I love 3D games. I am enthralled by dynamic lighting, detailed shading engines, and especially, physics. So hell, maybe I like the big PC and console games more than I ever liked the handheld games. But is taking these great PC and console games and shrinking them down to the size of a box of Tic-Tacs really the next step in the handheld race?

Well, apparently. The gaming elite and Paris Hilton alike are snapping up the PSP like electric frogs to digital flies. In this world, a world that is so myopically focused on perfectly machined beauty, is there still room for the quirky eccentricity that can really only be produced by someone doing more with less? Are these the final dying hours of the Mario generation? I tell you this: if the little man walks into my room, I'll salute.


Nicky

MY E-MAIL! Okayeahwhatever@yahoo.com.
AIM: Jake Aimer