Consider for a moment that there literally was a time when Sony, Nintendo, and Sega all played with the idea of portable expansions to their home console experiences. All three raced towards this money making gimmick with reckless abandon, sometimes even drawing ire from the gaming community. This was a period not so long ago, which makes one wonder why, with Nintendo and Sony both having portable consoles, this trend seems all but forgotten. But before we look at that, let's look at the start.


Pokemon. Fine, I'll expand more and say Pokemon Stadium. You see, Pokemon was addictive and fun but lacked a certain feature, decent graphics. Even by Gameboy standards at the time, static sprites were considered dated. While static sprites and lazy art remains a Pokemon Tradition to this day, the other tradition started here was watching Pokemon battles on much beefier hardware. So with the GB Adapter, which shipped with Pokemon Stadium on N64, players could upload their pokemon onto Pokemon Stadium and watch a pokemon battle with their friends in glorious 64 graphics. This device would be used for a couple other games but really it was all about Pokemon Stadium. To my knowledge, this was the first shot in this direction.


Now this next step is controversial in a lot of ways. The first point of controversy is really who did it first, Sega or Sony. You see, Katana was starting it's hype cycle mentioning an awesome new hardware feature while Sony was hinting towards a new way to play Playstation games. Turns out, both companies were working on similar concepts. Despite Sega Cults tendacy to claim Sony stole from Sega about everything (Dreameye was a camera....) the timing was far too perfect and with the popularity of Virtual Pets, it's VERY probably both had the same idea. So who cares which one came first or was shown first or was rumored first, they both were great ideas far too close to one another to be a theft. Now, Pocketstation never left Japan. The primary reason being the same earthquake which severely crippled GBC's production on it's first christmas also hit a Sony factory. By the time demand was met in Japan, Sony was in full PS2 swing tryng not to mention PSX. Even though the US and European launches would eventually get cancelled, there were games releasing in the US and Europe with Pocketstation compatibility. If one is so inclined, yes... import Pocketstations do work with domestic copies of R4 and FFVIII. The other side of the coin was Sega's Virtual Memory Unit (VMU) which was and extension of the controller itself.

So we know their names and the controversy, but what exactly did they do? Pocketstation would plug into the memory card slot and be able to download a miniature app which would often be a virtual pet or some other simple game. Progress could then be uploaded back into the game. Sega's VMU did exactly the same thing with a couple added features. The first being since it was a window on the controller itself, it allowed you player specific information such as stats in a multiplayer RPG or a playbook for football. The other thing is it served as a memory card itself. Both had remarkably similar implimentations and the number of games supporting it was also comparably large. This concept would eventually, and unfortunately, die out.


Sidebar: Of course Sega, being the idea before implimentation company that they were, had another volley to fire into this little war. The NGPC to DC cable. You see, since Sega had failed in the portable space before, they left that war to be waged by the spunky newcomer NeoGeo Pocket Color. Sega promised to support the console just as SNK promised to support Dreamcast. Thus, cross game expansion was born. Get this, you could put King of Fighters on Dreamcast AND on NGPC, and they could totally talk to each other. Nifty, huh? Unfortunately, that's ALL that happened. It was only supported by two games total, and only one made it to the states. Which of course makes this the SAME level of software support as the Maraca controllers. This failing meant the ONLY reason for this feature to exists was for the hardware pervs who got off on plugging exotic devices in their Dreamcasts.


Nintendo, feeling left out, decided to take this a few steps further. Gamecube launched with a nebulous announcement of the GCN/GBA link cable and promised of possibilities that sounded remarkable similar to what Sega and Sony did years before. Of course we all know Nintendo invented everything so this went unquestioned. One of the experiments with this was Metroid Prime and it's connection to Metroid Fusion. The early reaction from gamers, naturally, was rage about it being a ripoff. Of course things settled down because it was still a feature largely unused. Until Miyamoto started getting big ideas. Pacman Versus, Four Swords, and Crystal Chronicles were the main gunners on this battleship.

You see, Nintendo finally wised up and realized you could do more than simply download minigames or unlock bonus content at the premium price. No, you COULD make owning multiple GBAs integral to the games design. Take Pacman Versus. Players could control ghosts and try to hunt down the first player. With the GBA screen, the full map wasn't visible. Instead, the ghosts got their own POV. Crystal Chronicles did something similar. Despite most of the gameplay being on the screen, this multiplayer RPG forced users to use their GBAs as controllers and stat devices. Your healer couldn't see your health, so teamwork via costly devices was the key to success. This of course leading to the biggest of these designs, Zelda: Four Swords. This competitive multiplayer game was expertly designed and a blast to play, supposedly...

You see, for the most part, these were great ideas. I only wish everyone could afford it, myself included. To pull this off, one needed four GCN/GBA connectors, four GBAs, a Gamecube, and the game. Priced out, that was a mammoth investment. Many hardcore gamers, myself included, never had the resources or the group environment to try this out. That would ultimately be it's downfall. To this day, many people even within the most devout Nintendo fans, never got a chance at this. And that would be it's downfall.


Sidebar: What would a new Nintendo device be without the initial gimmick? Not very good, apparently. You see, Nintendo DS had a GBA slot and Nintendo, in turn, allowed games for both systems to talk to each other. While Nintendo largely ignored this, Sega exploited it. Several early Sega DS games played well with Sega GBA games. Still, most companies never bothered which made the loss of the GBA slot on DSi not really a big deal.


So where are we now? Two of the three major consoles have portable cousins on the market and the third is just launched theirs. Let's take a look at the three. We'll first talk about the one that has the least to talk about. Microsoft recently launched the Zune HD with vague mentionings of games. Literally, they won't talk about it. The first Zune had games... let's see if this actually becomes important before we talk about long term implications.

Next, let's talk about Nintendo. Nintendo confuses me here. I want to say Nintendo has shown us their intentions but right now, despite being one of the biggest innovators in this space, they now seem completely dormant in the concept. For example, the Nintendo Channel on Wii can download DS demos onto your Nintendo DS, no matter the variety. However, the Nintendo DSi has a built in online store for miniature apps yet cannot download demos. So Wii and DS can connect to one another quite easily. It's just that no one is trying to do it.

Sony, however, is doing it a bit too much. PSP and PS3 seem connected to each other in ways that sound cool, yet goofy. Take Remote Play. Sony has a feature on PSP where you can "dial in" to your PS3 online and listen to music, boot Blurays, watch videos, cue downloads, and even play select PS3 games. Wait, WHAT?!? This SOUNDS cool but in practice this seems like a "let me show you what this can do" and not a "I want to do this" feature. Now PSOne classics you buy on PS3/PSP can be transferred, free of charge, to the other device. So let's say you buy Crash Bandicoot. That means for $6, you just bought it for PS3 AND PSP. Now the final is the weirdest. Select games are now speaking to their portable brothers to unlock features across both. Take Resistance on PSP, for example. Connecting Resistance PSP to Resistance 2 "infects" the game and grants access to special sections and new rulesets for the campaign. Likewise, hooking the two up allows a player to use a Dual Shock 3 for their PSP game.... yes, it is odd. The upcoming Assassins Creed games tout similar features. While Sony is the most active in this regard, their approach seems REALLY batshit crazy.

Where we go from here is really anyones guess. Will Nintendo go back to their experiements in this field? Will Sony completely jump the shark with something so odd we'll push this idea away? Will Microsoft actually give a damn about Zune gaming? I have no answers... only curiosity.

Article notes:
-Many will want me to mention Super Gameboy. This SNES cart allowed you to play GB games in glorious 12 color graphics on your television with custom borders. While innovative in it's own right, it took Gameboy graphics from "Godfuckingawful" to "Godawful." Like the GBA adapter for Gamecube, this device really only illustrated what you were missing on the other console thanks to, nicely put, cheap hardware. In addition, this wasn't really bridging the gap between the two devices but rather giving your Gameboy games another place to play. If I mention this, I have to give the nod to Turbo Express for bridging this gap first (to my knowledge) and most importantly, fuck all this noise. The only reason why I mention it was because someone will mark the exclusion as a failure. So here's the inclusion...

-It should also be noted that the original intent of this article was for a monthly musings Untapped Potential submission. My laziness in completing the illustrations and realizing the original article sucked ass eventually doomed this piece towards Dreamcast retrofitting. This too proved far too focused for the attempt and went on to be the article you see before you.

-Yes, I know my drawings are shitty.