More PSP vs Odroid Go Advance Thoughts

2021-07-31

I have a page on my capsule detailing my thoughts comparing the Sony PSP and Odroid Go Advance as gaming handhelds. I've probably annoyed most of my followers on the fediverse with additional thoughts on this subject so I've decided to give them a break and post my most recent opinions here instead.

The past week or so I have been using my OGA more. I've been playing some games but also tinkering with the OS and software. That's what I want to talk about along with how well suited they are to playing games. I'm now leaning more towards the conclusion that the PSP is the winner but not superior in all ways. I still like the OGA a lot but when it comes to playing games it just...requires a lot of fiddling. For example, most PS1 games play great but there is an occasional title that has some stutters or less than smooth audio. I'm fairly certain these little glitches can be tweaked away but it requires time and fiddling. On the PSP side there is official from Sony PS1 game support and they run flawlessly. No fiddling. There are some PSP games the OGA can run well but a lot that it can't. There's more time and fiddling figuring out which titles will play well enough, which won't and trying to tweak the settings for ones that are really close. The PSP is a PSP so no problems there at all. The OGA beats the PSP when it comes to N64 but even the OGA struggles with some N64 games (allegedly, have not done extensive N64 testing myself). Everything older than that is close enough that I'll call it a wash.

I realize I'm goofy but the things that I like most about the OGA are also the things that I have just been criticizing. It allows a great deal of freedom and power to load whatever software you want and fiddle to your hearts content in order to make it do what you want. That's really cool. I can ssh into my OGA and upgrade the system, scp roms to it, mount it as a shared folder over the network etc. Also, the screen is really nice and an upgrade in quality over the PSP's screen. Though the PSP's display is significantly larger while the size of the two devices are nearly identical. The Vita joystick I've replaced the stock one with on my OGA is also nicer to play on than the PSP's nub but it also sticks up more and makes it less pocketable. The hardware design of the PSP really is great and prioritized being pocket friendly which I appreciate.

My point is...well I'm not sure what my point is. I keep wanting the OGA to be this awesome gaming handheld because there are lots of things I like about it and there is potential for it to be really great. In practice though I have found that it's just too much fiddling to get the gaming experience to be as smooth as I'd like. With the PSP I can just turn it on and play and everything runs great. The original Odroid Go shares this great feature. Super easy to just turn on and play.

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