There are three home consoles that truly define my adolescence: The Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, and Nintendo GameCube. They were released in a few short years from 1998 to 2001, and to me, they represent the tipping point from retro to modern gaming. Anything after that feels like I should just be playing on a PC.
But there is one handheld that managed to recapture that magic: the Nintendo DS. Not only did it have its own amazing catalog of games, I could still play my favorite Game Boy Advance titles in a clamshell form factor thanks to the bottom slot, building on what the GBA SP had started a few years earlier. In 2025, the stars have aligned to bring everything I like into a single device: the Retroid Pocket Flip 2.