My current influence is once again Rez on the Dreamcast. A superb console in it' s own right, with a plethora of quality titles that IMHO put some of the PS2' s to shame. Originality was pretty much standard with this console, Rez, Ooga Booga, even the tried and tested game genres were remolded and thanks to the like of Zero Gunner 2 & Ikaruga completely raised the bar on visually stunning titles that once again IMHO has not yet been bettered.

This could be why when I heard of a small handheld console with the same Windows CE OS, and a shed loads more ram than the 16meg that the Dreamcast exploited so well appeared on the market I had to find out more.

I am now the proud owner of a brand new baby boy. He was already named Gizmondo and some of the other school children are forever taking the micky out of his name, his looks and how he has no friends. What they are forgetting (or in some cases, just don' t realise due to rubbishing something they have not even read about let alone seen or used) is that his friends are big, their just getting themselves sorted before catching up with their new buddy. Microsoft Game Studios, Ubisoft, EA are just the three that spring to mind at this moment as I type.

Now, Gizmondo is an outsider. He looks different, he doesn' t have as many buttons as the bully' s in the playground at school. PSP is one of the bigger bullies, but he appears to have some strange disorder that affects the brain of those who know (and in some cases love him). They seem to lose all politeness towards the other children in the playground and enforce their will on anyone even if it' s not the right time or place to do so. NDS, can be a bully also, but after numerous pta meetings, it' s generally been seen that he is just sticking to what he knows best and utilising the 20 years experience of staying a child and not getting a real job (lets be honest, a ninty will remain one - games back catalogue n all).

Now currently, the children are teasing young Gizmondo about his unsightly lump on his back for the purpose of keeping this simple, we shall call this a camera okay?) Anyway, the camera is at standard VGA resolution of 640x480 (or 0.3 mega pixel for the pedantic among you) and through this eye to the world Gizmondo can take pictures for multimedia messaging as well as placing the gamer into his world. A world of entertainment, a world where you can sit on a bus, photograph someone and place them into the game world your immersed in. Another thing that Gizmondo managed, was not only allow me to place myself into a game via the camera, but also allow me to steer my way around a maze. Sounds a little flat say the bully' s, but their just wondering how they ever forgot to include one originally and will no doubt grab more money off of the school children to implement one (making their pocket (sorry did I say pocket! heh heh) handheld a huge slavering beast) of a handheld that needs assembling.

As a new parent however, I’m a little concerned for the safety of Gizmondo. Thankfully though, we can utilise the inbuilt GPS system to track and locate the little tyke should he run off on me whilst in the park. " That’s inhumane!" shout some of the parents of the bullies, but in all honesty I can choose to set this up or leave it switched off. Anyway, why would anyone be playing with Gizmondo in the park? Simple, because utilising his GPS facilities and implementing them into, oh shall we say A GAME for example, what would that be like eh? What would it be like to interact with real people, who are real distances away from you, in your neighborhood, in your park, challenging YOUR TURF? Think about it ...

Mind you, as young as he is, and as old as I am (33 ... no comments children), he is going to be a godsend for me also. Bless his little GPS heart. He will be telling me precisely where to go (feel free PSP & NDS fan boys to take this as an opportunity to interject here - but please, please, please make it amusing ) ... because soon he will have taught himself in car navigation. Yes, he' s been staying after class with Mr Tom Tom and learnt all the tricks he had to offer (right up to chapter 5.0 I believe).

Mind you, as any parent knows, entertaining your little nipper can be difficult at the best of times, but at least I try. Yes, when he' s back from Mr Tom Tom' s we sit down together and watch the latest episode of Friends with him. Oh he enjoys that, you should see his little screen light up and the choice. Thankfully with the current memory (SD-Cards) at 2gig, and the 4 gig cards on the way, well he can have as much entertainment to watch as he can carry. But sometimes though, he' ll just want to listen to his favorite music. Thankfully he got himself one of those neat little IPod beating Windows Media players also. So when he' s finished watching TV, he' s then put to bed and listens to music until he falls asleep.

So ... Bully' s ... This is the end of my little tale, it' s not gone into too much detail about processor speed, or colours, or the cutting edge NVIDIA 3D graphics engine ... It has been written to entertain, educate and generate a response. Because if I can generate a response with this, wait until you get your hands on one of them (Michael Jackson need not apply).