Sony’s PlayStation Portable is the most high-powered handheld video-game machine on the market, but it’s usually my third choice when it comes to on-the-road action.
It’s all a matter of size. Apple’s iPhone, which has become a solid casual-gaming platform, slides easily into a pants pocket. Nintendo’s DS fits a little more snugly. But even the slimmest version of the old PSP is still nearly 7 inches long and too bulky to carry on everyday errands.
The newest model of Sony’s handheld, the PSP go ($250), is less demanding. Only 5 inches long (by 2.75 inches tall by a half-inch thick), it’s just a little bigger than an iPhone.
Sony has accomplished this feat with a number of tricks. The video screen is about a half-inch smaller (diagonally), though it has the same wide-screen ratio and looks as sharp as ever. The controls that were once on the sides of the screen are now on a panel that slides out from under the screen.
Most significantly, there’s no longer a slot or a drive for the Universal Media Discs that contain PSP games and videos. There’s no longer a need to carry a UMD for each game; instead, all your media can be stored on the PSP go’s 16-gigabyte hard drive or on a tiny memory stick.
That also means no more trips to the game store. Instead, you have to download software from Sony’s PlayStation Store — a process that shouldn’t be too alien now that Apple has trained everyone to download media through iTunes. Sony says there are more than 225 games available, as well as 2,300 movies and 13,300 TV episodes.
The game library runs the gamut from elegant puzzlers like “Echochrome” to elaborate role-playing dramas like “Jeanne d’Arc.” There are PSP originals like “Patapon 2” and remakes of PlayStation 1 classics like…