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Ridiculous Handheld Peripherals
Written by Philip Jones on Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Consoles have had some pretty dumb add-ons, including nerf Wii tennis rackets and cooling fans that overheat Xbox's, but portables have it even worse. Trust us...
What extra hardware have you ever bought for your handheld? For me, it goes about as far as a carry case and that's about it. Yet there is an entire world of add-ons and accessories for our consoles. I've got a sneaking suspicion that most of them exist entirely to entice your parents into buying a dodgy value bundle, with the likes of carry cases, in-car adaptors and screen "protectors" being the most popular "freebies". Go into any decent games retailer though and you'll find a whole range of expensive items that in some way or another attach to your machine in an attempt to increase your entertainment factor. I've never seen the appeal in them myself but they must sell, or they wouldn't be there on the shelves.
Let's take a peek at some of these craptastic add-ons, are they all entirely useless? Surely not.
The Light Magnifier
These were the first things I ever saw people attaching to their Game Boys and Game Gears back in the early 90's. The idea was to make your screen BIGGER than it actually is with a simple piece of warped plastic suspended a couple of inches above your screen. The Game Boy versions often packed a teeny tiny lightbulb next to the magnifier that would do its best to illuminate your screen if you happened to be playing in the dark. I remember borrowing a friends one and being completely unimpressed at its weak lighting abilities. That and the fact you had to ram an extra pair of AA's into it to power the weak-ass light.
The spectre that is the magnifier has never left us. They continued to be made for the Game Boy Advance and now they're even available for the PSP, still looking as ridiculous as they ever did. It's true they're a cheap way to increase your screen size but don't you think the PSP's screen is large enough as it is?
The Snakelight
As we all know, the original Game Boy Advance had the most useless screen of quite possibly any handheld ever. You had to be in direct sunlight basically, that or sit with a lamp right over your shoulder. So some clever chaps invented a little light on a wire that plugged into the GBA extension socket and behold gave you LIGHT! There has to be a snag though. Yep, the light was a super bright white LED. Concentrating all its light in one point. I found the centre of the screen was over bright, with an unavoidable reflection of the light itself. I tried all kinds of solutions, trying to stick tissue paper over the light in a weak attempt at diffusing the light. Yeah, pathetic I know. Didn't work. Another 15 bucks down the toilet. GBA restricted to daylight use only until the arrival of the SP.
Strap-on Speakers
Never very loud, these handhelds. Something to do with conserving battery life maybe? So what you gonna do? Stick some extra speakers on! The first of these I ever saw were the NUBY Game Boy Amplifier speakers. They were both huge and loud. Loud to the point of distortion and almost pain. They were impressive enough but surely the audio of the Game Boy wasn't the most pleasant to be played loud. Combine this with a Light Magnifier and your Game Boy started to take over the house.
There's a bunch of speakers still available for the GBA and the GBA SP, The SP ones looking pretty neat actually, folding out from behind the screen to give you decent stereo sound. Ones made for the original GBA however, still manage to look stupid.
The PSP however has more speakers available for it than any other system that came before! They aren't quite such a crappy add-on though due to the machines multimedia capabilities. One thing I found while trawling the web though seemed to pretty much define uselessness. The PSP charger dock. No speakers or anything, just a... charger. Surely all PSP's sold kinda come with a charger included?
posted February 16, 2007