Sony handhelds might be dead, but on its 18th birthday the promise of the PSP is as alive as ever

If you’re old enough to remember when Sony announced that it was getting into the handheld video game system thing, you’ll remember how exciting it was. At that time, in 2003, Sony was at the absolute height of its gaming powers, with the PS2 an absolutely undisputed dominator of the market. The idea that Sony would now encroach on the last corner of the market still held by Nintendo was thrilling.

It wasn’t just the capitalist nightmare of all-out corporate warfare for the pockets and backpacks of gamers that made the PSP special, though – it was that Sony was promising something different. There’d been other contenders in the gaming handheld market, from Sega to Nokia, but all had followed pretty much the same playbook as Nintendo, putting out either games built around handheld gimmicks or slimmed-down versions of known franchises running perhaps a generation or two behind what was hitting consoles at the time.

Sony, buoyed by its experience with the Walkman, wanted to create a device for adults – for that same audience it had successfully courted with the PS2. What you got was a surprisingly powerful console that quite often felt like a PS2, even though it wasn’t. It delivered numerous big-budget, broad-feeling experiences; the utter antithesis to what Nintendo was doing over on the Game Boy and DS.