With dedicated handhelds now (mostly) being a thing of the past and handhelds sharing the same library as consoles I thought would be useful to build a list of game recommendations that are suited to handheld play. I am going to share what j come across and why I think they suit his playstyle, and it would be great if others did the same.
Lunistice
A platform game that is drenched in the PS1/Saturn aesthetic. Short, speedy levels with a great sense of flow and a lot of replayability make this a great game to play in short bursts. And as a nice bonus, the UI scale can be increased to better fit devices with smaller screens.
Whilst these were originally console games I believe this collection has made them well suited to handheld play. The games save at every checkpoint, so they are really easy to jump in and out of and there are extras like Boss Rush, Mission Mode and Time Attacks to dig into for some more fun. Not to mention every Game Gear Sonic game is also on offer (just set Game Gear audio to mono in the settings).
Picross S Series
Games like this were the bread and butter of the Nintendo DS, so it is good to see that Nintendo carried this particular series onto the Switch. Sound isn’t particularly important in these games, so you can play them in public without having to worry about needing headphones or bothering other people with the sound coming out of the system.
This game is probably pretty well known by people here. The small maps, simple controls and the way you take on jobs are a great fit for playing in short bursts.
Arcade style cover shooter. Most stages can be beat in less than a minute. It’s a rather difficult game to master, but super fun once you get the hang of the cover and dodging. They have another game called Strikey sisters that’s also really good
Victory Heat Rally
A super stylish rally racer which some banger music too. There a bunch of characters to unlock with their own stats and styles of racing and the tracks can get kinda wacky with ice tracks and stuff.
Uppers
kinda cheating here with a Vita port. Uppers is built around doing quick beat-em-up stages and trying to be as stylish as you can to win the panties of the girls watching you fight. Each stage isn’t more than 10 minutes each and its super addicting.
Blaster Master Series
cheating again with a 3DS port. The whole series is great and don’t take that much time to beat. Plus they have various extra modes and playable characters that make replaying them a good idea.
Slave Zero X
Imagine if Devil May Cry was a side scrolling beat-em-up. You have all of your abilities from the start so you can jump in and try to beat the game without worrying about progression or anything. It was a pain to get working on the Steam Deck but the other game Slave Zero which is a Dreamcast game is also a really fun game to play on the go. It plays completely different from X as its a Mech Shooter.
Ohhh yeah this is a subject I really enjoy. I used to say I didn’t really get or like handheld gaming, but honestly over the year’s I’ve had my Switch and now that I have a little retro emulation handheld, I’ve found just how much I enjoy games on the format. I’ve had many many hours of certain games, that ended up shaping which are my favorite genres of playing on a portable device. I mostly play on the bed with them at home, so it’s usually a pretty comfy time.
I will say, those genres of games I prefer playing on a handheld are mostly RPGs, anything grindy, tactics games and the like, Metroidvanias and roguelikes, and some arcade games. This last week I’ve been doing beat-em-ups and it’s a joy.
The games I’ve played the most on handhelds through my life were the Monster Hunter series, Pokemon series, Fire Emblem series and Dead Cells, specifically. Quite a bit of Hades and Cult of the Lamb too. I’ve also beat Doom and Quake on the handhelds! what I could never really find were racing games that felt good.