## Silly Toys I have collected a few too many of those SBC handhelds that I've [[What's in My Bag|gushed about before]]. ![[Less Doomscrolling More Playing-20250123153733594.png]][^1] Their affordability makes them easy to impulse buy when you're depressed - which for me is often - and I've actually worked it out so that I can get saves synced across all of them amongst my rom library, meaning I can kind of just grab whichever depending on what my hands want to hold. Also, they're easy to gift out to friends if I plan on replacing them. They're quite delightful to pack up with a friend's favorite games and then pass over for them to marvel at if they've never seen one of these before. I doubt I'll get any more than what I have, unless Anbernic manages to update the PSP Go's format or make a dual-screen console or something. I've hit my endgame, so to speak. Which means it's time to play them, and I've found a good place to slot them in. --- ## Pacing A friend on my forum once described the impulse of scrolling on one's phone as "a tiger pacing in its cage, trying to find sustenance." It's been a great way to describe how scrolling feels to me, especially post-Trump presidency. I do not find joy in looking at the rectangle that ~~Sprint~~ T-Mobile gave me. It is a box that beams sadness directly into my brain. I am, of course, not immune to randomly grabbing my phone out of habit, even though it hurts me 90% of the time.[^2] But it doesn't *have* to be like this. I'm 30 years old! I existed in a world before the smart phone did, and I can do so again. And you know what I grabbed when I was feeling aimless or anxious or bored or tired back then? *My fucking Game Boy Advance*. Or my DS. Or my Vita. Or my New 3DS X-listen, I've had a lot of the things. The point is that the rectangle on the GBA did not make me sad whenever I picked it up. Instead it would beam **Golden Sun** or **Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced** or **Mega Man Battle Network** into my brain, and that shit made me very happy. And when I boot those same games up on these silly little tech toys, I feel that same level of happiness. It's not even an exclusively nostalgia thing either! I've been playing stuff that passed by me when I was a kid too, like **Metroid Fusion**, **Minish Cap**, and a bunch of SNES games that came out before I was born. Could I do something more productive? Yeah, I guess. But playing a game is a significantly better use of my time and brain power either way. So you know, one step at a time. For now, my goal in 2025 is to not grab my phone without purpose. If my brain is "pacing," but I don't have the time to just sit down and play a big game, I'm going to give it bleeps and bloops on my 34XX or my Trimui Brick or whatever else instead. I'm going to keep one of them in my pocket along with my phone at all times, inside or outside the home. **Tetris** is going to fix me for the next few years, if I can help it. Anyways, thanks for reading this silly little post about silly little tech toys. How do you fight back against pacing? Lemme know uh, wherever I post this. [^1]: I'll write thoughts on these after some time spent with them. [^2]: The last 10% is if my wife or my friends message me.