For as long as I can remember, Nintendo has had a stranglehold on the portable gaming market. The Game Boy is synonymous with portable gaming; it basically created the market as we know it. Sure, other companies have tried to compete with Nintendo before. Atari's Lynx was a more powerful machine, but failed when it came to software and consumer appeal. Sega's Game Gear came close to being an equal competitor-it had a color screen and was graphically superior to the Game Boy. The problem with the Game Gear, however, was that it didn't have as much developer support. It was bulkier and suffered from a poor battery life. In the end, no one was able to compete with Nintendo.

That is, until the announcement of the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP, with its promise of PlayStation 2 quality games on a handheld system, is the first legitimate competition Nintendo has had since the early '90s. It's actually also the first to make Nintendo sweat.

With next to no competition, Nintendo has traditionally taken a more conservative approach to evolving its portable systems. The original Game Boy, released in 1989, didn't see a significant upgrade until 1998 with the introduction of the Game Boy Color (GBC). If you will remember though, the GBC wasn't all that impressive. The Game Gear and Lynx still offered better color screens, but since they were already extinct by this point, Nintendo was able to pass off a slight upgrade as an entirely new platform. In 2001, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance (GBA). Finally, Nintendo had a system that was better than anything that had come before.

The GBA was a more powerful system than the Super Nintendo, Nintendo's infamous 16-bit console. Of course, some argued that we should have achieved this level of portable gaming much earlier. But, no one listened to them, as people were too busy playing their GBAs. The GBA's main flaw was its lack of a backlight; it often required perfect lighting to play a game effectively. Nintendo fixed this glitch in 2003 with the release of the GBA SP, a smaller, clamshell version of the GBA.

Sony first announced the PSP in May of 2004. At that time, the leading portable gaming system on the market was the GBA SP. When we first caught sight of Sony's sexy little beast, most gamers held one of two opinions. Some thought it would never succeed. After all, Nintendo owns portable gaming, and no one could compete with that. Others thought that the PSP's introduction would be a repeat of the release of the Sony PlayStation, which ripped the leading console title away from Nintendo's N64.

The essential difference between those two consoles lies in each company's philosophy-Nintendo's conservatism and Sony's progressivism. The N64 failed because Nintendo was too shortsighted to see the benefit of CD media. This shift was a big change for consoles, but Nintendo thought it knew what was best and stuck with the tried and true cartridge. We see the same thing happening today, as Nintendo's new portable console, the Dual Screen (DS), lags significantly behind the Sony PSP in almost every respect. Sure, Nintendo actually tried something new for once with the addition of a touch-sensitive bottom screen-this could open up all sorts of new gameplay elements. But when viewed alongside the PSP, we can't help but think that it's lacking a certain something.

Perhaps the difference lies in each system's target demographics. The DS resembles a child's toy. It is open and inviting for gamers of all ages. This has often been a complaint against Nintendo's systems, but it has never been truer. The PSP, on the other hand, seems more like an adult's toy; its jaw-dropping screen and seductive design-not to mention the $100 price difference over the DS-place it out of the realm of something meant for kids.

In my next column I will discuss the differences between the DS and the PSP, as well as come to grips with my failure as a Nintendo fanboy.