Watching TV on The Go for 30 Years

The strange thing about modern life. It means someone who writes (like myself) have no excuses anymore for missing deadlines. Even if they are arbitrary ones set by myself.

I write this whilst on a bus, on the way to a train station to head to London. When you are reading this, I’ll be in a pub watching football. Whilst writing this, I have BBC IPlayer on picture-in-picture so I can catch up with Match or the Day and see the highlights of yesterday’s football action.

Isn’t that nuts?

I mean it’s genuinely unfathomable. In some ways it’s sad because generations of people won’t have had this at all and others will know nothing different.

In my bag I have my usual handheld (you know the one if you know my day job) and I also have my PSP. Just because I have the option of playing the best feeling football game ever made in my opinion - Pro Evolution Soccer 5.

I think back to my history of handheld gaming because whilst watching football on the go whilst typing still blows my mind, taking games with you to play is nothing new.

I try to recall my experience of my first PSP and why I eventually traded it in. It was mostly because I didn’t play it, because either I didn’t really go anywhere at the time except to work, or because no one else had one.

We tend to think of handheld gaming as a very solo orientated but experience but it really isn’t. Aside from showing off the screen and what you were doing (which still happens today with a Switch) my experiences of the PSP specifically are a social one.

With the aforementioned Pro Evo 5, it was the lunchtime tonic to an otherwise drab and depressing call centre job. Four of us, WiFi linked, playing 2v2 with all the real team names and kits added on the memory card (did anyone play a Pro Evo game without nodding it?). It was a ritual. One that years later would be similarly replicated in another job with another game and console.

After that job however, times changed, colleagues moved in and my next job didn’t have anyone who had a PSP nor the interest in it. It was all about Halo now thanks to Halo 3. So the console made way for some cash.

I think further back to my previous handheld the SEGA Game Gear, which is one I still own. It doesn’t work but I still have it and one day I’ll repair it. But in an era where Mario reigned the handheld space, and before catchable pocket monsters gave handhelds a new lease of life, I was supplying inordinate amounts of AA batteries to the big gray power moncher.

I loved my Game Gear and I still think some of the games I experienced at the time were incredible. Fun, challenging pick up and play games. The Sonic ports, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Olympic Gold, Super Monaco GP - Just some of the games that very rarely left my travel bag. And some of things those games bought to the table still resonate with me today.

The sound on the Game Gear was excellent as was the screen. The game library has arguably aged well and is also full of hidden gems, by the nature of the Game Boy being dominant. This is all subjective of course but there was something I used more than the games.

Which is where this weeks ramblings come full circle. Whether it was very early morning wake ups for F1 races in Japan or Australia, keeping myself busy when visits to family homes were more adult focused, or staying up late so I could watch Match of the Day - the Game Gear TV tuner was the essential thing in my handheld travel.

So. Really. Whilst I’m writing this on a cloud based platform (now on a train and having watched most of the highlights) whilst watching telly on the go… nothing has actually changed in 30 years.

The tech is better, the situations differ, but at its core - the ability/desire to be entertained by broadcasted content on the go, and sharing some enjoyable gameplay with those around you, is something that feels is a human constant.

At least now, in 2023, it doesn’t take a fresh batch of 6 AA batteries every few hours to enjoy all of this