Toronto Thumbs

ODD PROD: A Fake Mini PSP

At first glance, and if you were completely clueless, you might have thought this was a PSP.

It’s somewhat of a long-standing tradition for opportunists to try and make a buck off the success of others. Here, we have a small keychain LCD game device that does just that, exactly. This little LCD game was exactly one dollar (at Dollarama - the store, not the band) and is shaped too much like a PSP to be a coincidence.

Still, one has to wonder what the people who made this were thinking. Did they just imitate the PSP’s design as a form of flattery? Or was it that they were somehow trying to trick people into believing this tiny thing actually is a PSP? It’s hard to tell. What isn’t hard to tell is how cheaply made this is. Just look at it. See those smears? They’re not just fingerprints. That’s where the natural oils in my fingerprints have deformed the plastic. The dust? That’s actually caked-in at this point.

I’ve had this goofy thing sitting on my desk at work as a bit of a joke. “Hey guys, wanna see my new PSP?” I’d ask. “Here! It’s the new, smaller PSP with built-in games.”

A sexy angle on a not-so-sexy handheld.

Okay, so that didn’t actually happen. But since I mentioned it’s got built-in games, I will talk a little about the few of them that are actually quite playable, oddly enough.

First, there is the Tetris clone. And there appears to be several modes of play. There’s the standard one, obviously. But then there are a few variations. In one of them, there is a new block piece - a single square (not to be confused with the square block comprised of four square tiles) that lets you shoot new single-pieced blocks into gaps in the stacked blocks, effectively helping to clear lines.

Another game is a top-down racer where you move your crudely-drawn car (everything in every game is made up of single “blocks,” by the way) left and right to avoid traffic. Another title is a Breakout clone which is probably the most enjoyable - and I do use that term loosely - of the bunch.

There may in fact be even more games on this thing but there’s no documentation and the user interface is so bad, it’s nearly non-existent. Why did I buy this? Because I thought it would be funny if my 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime figure had a “PSP.”

I was wrong.

What does amaze me, however, is that one of my first handheld video games - a Tiger Electronics racer, was really no better in execution. It only had one game but at least it wasn’t made of super oily plastic.

If anyone wants this thing, send us an email and I’ll be sure to send it along. Though this may actually qualify as sending “dangerous goods,” so no promises.

Posted in Features, Odd Prods, PSP, Reviews |