- my pocket engine -

Remember those days -- those glory days where we were all happy that a bunch of simple pixels were hopping around?

And remember when we could take those happily hopping pixels everywhere we went?

And remember when those happily hopping pixels went colourful?

And what about the time when those happily colourful hopping pixels went ballistic and hyper?

And how wonderful was it when a whole bunch of new polygons started zipping around with the ballistically hyper and happily colourful hopping pixels?

And it was craaaaaaaaaaazy when those bunches of polygons and ballistically hyper and happily colourful hopping pixels shared rooms with sparkly spinning discs with extras and deleted scenes and heaps of alternate universes full of other happy polygons and pixels!

That was quite enough for me and I longed for those glory days again. Remember the Game Boy? Those little dark dots on the vaguely green background? The high score that you couldn't reach because you're on a road trip with your parents on a sunny day?

Well I'm not here to talk about that piece of space junk.

I'm here, to nostalgically reminesce the best handheld console ever made -- the PC Engine GT.

Developed by NEC and launched in 1990, the PC Engine GT was the best there was at the time. I mean, by golly, it had a colour screen powered by its own cathode ray tube! Its backlight and the recessed screen meant that you could play it even during your day lit road trips.

There was no question about it, the PC Engine GT was leagues ahead of its competition, and at 15, it's still being considered as 'quite possibly the best handheld console ever made', and only runs a close second to Game Boy Advanced, according to TotalGame.net.

It also offered the best game ever: PC Kid 2 (PC Genjin 2) by Hudson Soft.
This kid has a super bony head that could knock any wondering axe throwers or american indian triceratops into oblivion. Get him a meat shank and he'd turn into a huffing puffing zany-eyed maniac. And watch out for those fishies, they'll latch onto you and suck you dry if you don't shake 'em off with turbo powered fingers (more pictures). It's amazing how much you can do with just two buttons. Swim, climb, suck, kiss, eat, run etc... I could press those buttons all day.

Now I haven't seen my PC Engine GT for years. Perhaps even a decade. I had moved onto Playstation and the like in the past years but now I'm reminescing. I had just found out my mum has given it away in the past few weeks too and I'm desperately trying to get her to retrieve it. It's worth a bit nowadays but not as much as I thought it'd be (about AUD$130 on Ebay). But of course, if I could claim mine back and it's still in playable condition, I wouldn't give it away for all the chocolate in the world!