So it’s not going to exactly be a big secret, you’ll undoubtedly hear it in today’s recording (sorry about that…) but I… have a cold. It’s nothing so terrible that I’m “bed ridden”, but at the same time I absolutely feel like a walking zombie who’s taking 3-4x longer to perform even the most basic task. At thirty seven years old, this is mildly inconvenient at best and day-altering at worst. Twenty five or thirty years ago though… school-aged John would have had one agenda… a day off in pajamas filled with Mario, Pokemon, and Mega Man on nothing other than my trusty Gameboy…

So it’s no wonder, these literal decades later, that on stuffy-headed days like today I have a nearly innate yearning to pickup my Gameboy’s spiritual successor the Switch an proceed “recovering” on the couch to the subtle tones of Zelda’s background music…

In that moment, though, it hits me… yes the Switch is “portable”, I guess you can even call it “hand held” (with two hands, looking at you, dbrand)... but the equation has changed SO much since the still very pocket-able Gameboy days (and the DS, 3DS, even 3DS XL that followed). 

So the question is, have we lost something in translation? Was the true best, final form of the portable gaming device a foot-wide slab that mostly fits in a backpack? Or are we missing out on the best 10-15 minutes of gaming we could find here and there when still truly amazing titles were along for the ride in our pocket. 

Battery just finished charging, so lets find out…