An Old Friend in Cyprus
The classics never go out of fashion
The clouds are gathering over the Troodos, slow and theatrical, the way mountain weather likes to announce itself before things inevitably get perilous.
"Look at that horizon," I tell my youngest. She pays no attention, more interested in the Cypriot dish in front of her. She's only two, but you'd swear she was savouring this entirely new culinary experience. "Chef kiss?" I ask. "Sheef kiss," she responds.
I'm well fed. I've just had a dish called Stifado, a frankly delicious traditional Greek stew, rich and cooked low and slow. I'm brimming from the generosity of the people around me, who keep bringing me food.
Now I want to savour the moment. The clouds are coming in heavy and ominous, turning the sky a leaden black. A small moment of respite, I take out my PlayStation Portable.
Honestly. This is about as content as I think I’ve been in a long while.
Game Gear, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, whatever your handheld of choice was growing up, there's just something about them that a phone can't touch. A bygone era we're tenuously linked to by the tech that's survived and the memories we've held onto.
It was a forward thinking device. Something you could game on, watch films on, even browse the web. A lovely slab of black, tastefully accented with clear plastic buttons, a tastefulness that rather preceded my young sensibilities.
Even after all this time, I think the PSP still has a lovely weight to it, proper weight, the kind that reminds you you’re holding something with purpose. Something full of silicon wizardry. It feels cutting edge to me the same way the PlayStation 2 still feels when I fire it up.
The screen looks crisp after all these years, wide and warm, and the analog nub (while far from perfect) still glides under my thumb with no issues. No stickiness, no drift.
But my memories of getting hold of a PSP are a bit bittersweet, if I’m honest. I’d saved up pocket money for what felt like an eternity, scraped together whatever relatives had handed over at birthdays and Christmas, and convinced myself I had enough to import one from Japan ahead of the European release.
Or maybe it was imported from Hong Kong. I actually can’t quite remember.
But in my naivete, I hadn’t accounted for the £80 import duty waiting for me on the other end, a number that landed like a punch. That was the price of two games!
And so this meant another round of borrowing from anyone who’d lend me a tenner, more odd jobs here and there, and another stretch of waiting while the PSP sat in a customs warehouse somewhere being held hostage by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
By the time it finally arrived I’d built it up in my head into something close to a religious artefact, which is perhaps unfair on any piece of consumer electronics, but the PSP had the decency to mostly live up to it.
Ah, who am I kidding. It did live up to it entirely. It’s one of the greats.
I brought this one almost as an afterthought, tucked into a side pocket with a few UMDs rattling around. Wipeout Pure, Ridge Racer, Metal Gear Acid, a small and slightly chaotic spread that says quite a lot about how I was feeling when I packed.
LocoRoco is on the memory stick. Remember that one? An oddity in which you controlled a wobbly yellow blob by tilting the world itself, the left and right shoulder buttons rocking the landscape until the little thing rolled where you wanted it to go.
An unexpected companion to the trip, broken out in the small pockets of empty time between everything else. With kids in tow there isn’t a lot of downtime, which is exactly why those small windows feel like a treat.
Twenty minutes on the terrace while they’re napping, a quick race after bedtime, the occasional stolen ten minutes with a cold drink.
It really feels like travelling with an old friend, one who doesn’t need much from you. I especially love how disconnected the experience is. No notifications, no battery anxiety in the existential sense, no five apps fighting for your attention.
Just a little 4.3 inch screen and whatever world you’ve decided to live in for a few minutes. It doesn’t ask you to optimise your time or track your engagement, it just wants to know if you’d like one more race, which yes, obviously, of course.
There really is a serene pleasure in having it while thunder rumbles in the distance. The light goes soft and grey, the cicadas knock off for the afternoon, and the whole valley takes on a bit of a pre-rain hush.
Sinking into a corner of the sofa, the world shrinks down, and it’s lovely, it really is. Cozy in the proper sense of the word.
Wipeout Pure in particular feels made for this. The colours pop against the gloomy mountain light, the soundtrack does its thing through the little speakers, and for a few minutes you’re sliding through Sol 2 as the first few drops of rain patter against the patio tiles.
Ridge Racer scratches a different itch, all cheerful arcade silliness, perfect for ten minutes of side-ways escapism. Metal Gear Acid is the wildcard in the bag, a turn-based card game version of a stealth series that was admittedly weird on release, but I am quite fond of it.
It’s very appropriate for the PSP. A handheld that looked like a piece of consumer electronics from the future, but still home to games that ranged from earnest console ports to genuinely strange experiments, and it… worked.
Life has moved on, the welfare of others often supersedes my own, and I wouldn’t change that. But I do sometimes think about that first time playing Wipeout Pure, with little to worry about, falling asleep to Sam Simon on the Simpsons DVD commentary.
That’s the version of an evening I find myself craving, one where the entertainment doesn’t have opinions about what I should watch next and doesn’t try to predict me.
I am, increasingly, fed up with algorithms.
Is it so bad to pine for the simple contentment of a UMD spinning and a voice from a director’s commentary lulling me off, with no engagement metric being satisfied anywhere in the building?
I don’t think so.
If you don’t own a handheld from this generation, I’d recommend that you absolutely do. Especially for moments when you’re guaranteed some downtime.
You can boot up something from 2006 and it just works, no patches, no updates, no servers to check in with. The little disc spins, the menu loads, and you’re back.
It’s a wonderful experience, one that I’ve suggested is a little like therapy compared to the standards of today.
“Hooking up the PS2 feels like therapy at this point. It's the gaming equivalent of disconnecting from a connected world and going for a walk in the woods. No notifications, no massive updates, minimal UI, one wholly singular experience at a time.”
The rain is picking up, actually, while I’ve been writing this.
Big proper drops on the terracotta. I'm going to put the laptop away, because the kids have eaten their fill and now they want to laze about and doze in the muggy heat, which means there's a save file waiting and a maybe we’ll end up stuck inside.
Frankly that's a better afternoon than most. I am content.
Definitely the single system on which I’ve explored the library the most. The PSP is a wonder and a leap in portable hardware that was never again equaled.
Glad you're back Chris! :) Loved this one!