When the first pictures surfaced
of the sexy new PSOne with an adorable portable monitor on its back, I thought to myself:
"GameBoys are for kids." This is the Real Deal! All of my favorite games on the
go. Of course, it would probably use batteries pretty fast, but - - What a Ride! This
is about 7 months later and there is no word on when, or if Sony will release the
screen-part of this dream-team. A few other companies have tossed down the gauntlet and it
doesn't look pretty. Pelican was the first with an oval-shaped screen that, by all
accounts has a very blurry picture and poor sound, all for the high price of about
$150.00. Next comes Interact, a company that is generally respected in the peripherals
world, with a fantastic square-shaped screen that is roughly the same size as the PSOne,
itself. Though a little bigger, it offered a very crisp screen, better sound (larger
speakers, placed further apart), and the glorious benefit of RCA A/V inputs for use with
other consoles or VCR/DVD players. A nice little collapsible stand completes the package
enabling it to function as a stand-alone A/V monitor.
What happened? Nobody in the gaming sales community seams to have it. This reviewer did
receive one, but it failed to even turn-on, and had to be returned. Could this be the
Achilles' Heal of this fine instrument? In any case a new design appears to have come
along, and it is a L O O S E R! Guess what I found starring back at me when I opened the
package? The same pathetic oval design that Pelican released. Either Interact originally
manufactured it for Pelican or they have adopted the crappy design, but in either case,
the dream machine appears not to exist. An Interact company representative stated that the
square design is the newer and will replace the oval-shaped one, but EB and Babbage's are
only offering the oval ones. So this is the one that must be reviewed.
While it does offer A/V inputs, they are a strangely modified 1/8" plug that might
be difficult to connect to an actual device. It additionally requires a large, AC-adapter
that must be dragged along if one wishes to plug it into a wall outlet. Unfortunately, the
screen is also BAD! Anyone who has ever used a decent digital camera or a newer video
camera, knows that these little active-matrix screens are usually pretty snazzy, but this
one showed almost no variation in shades of red, poor middle-grays and 1/16" of color
bleed on every object on screen. On a 27" screen, this bleed wouldn't be a problem,
but on a four inch screen it totally ruins the whole picture. The speakers are only about
1 inch apart and offer a very tinny sound with NO stereo-dimension. The biggest possible
problem is that the screen that I received, and one a friend purchased, both had a
crippling problem with overheating. It would work for about 10-minutes and then a strange
interference would begin in the sound and work its way into the picture, eventually
causing the screen to go black. Once it cooled down again, it would run another ten
minutes or so. The bottom (where it connects with the PSOne) became very hot, and could
prove to be a fire-hazard.
This is a dream that dies very hard in my heart. As a college student, this might have
been like a fine lover: attentive, intimate and fulfilling. But instead it wound up being
more like an irritating TV commercial -- something that comes on to interfere with your
peace of mind for a few minutes and then leaves you with nothing. At least for the time
being, the world of quality, portable gaming still belongs to Nintendo.