Top 5 handheld highlights from day 1 of E3 2009

As you can no doubt tell if you follow events on the front page of Pocket Gamer, E3 is happening, and it’s happening with a vengeance. On Monday, before the event started for real, Microsoft took to the stage and failed to say anything interesting about the ZuneHD.

Yesterday, however, on the first day of the event proper, Nintendo and then Sony conspired to keep Spanner and I at our respective desks until 9pm with their consecutive press conferences. It was in these that the most interesting revelations of day one were made. Here are the top five.

Top 5 handheld highlights from day 1 of E3 2009

It’s pretty amazing that Golden Sun hasn’t already made the move to DS given its standing in the handheld RPG world. Yesterday, however, Nintendo finally answered the prayers of the fans by announcing that Camelot’s classic will be along in due course.

There’s a playable version at the show, but the action only lasts ten seconds. The video demonstration that surrounds this nugget of gameplay is encouraging, however, showing battle sequences, character footage, and exploration. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks could have some stiff competition when the two hit the shelves.

Speaking of which, Spirit Tracks is playable at the event. A follow up to the hugely acclaimed Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks replaces its predecessor’s boats with trains, and although only a foaming fanboy could profess serious excitement there are enough new features to pique reasonable interest.

The game gives you partial control of an entity called Phantom, whom you can direct by dragging a line. Phantom is tough, but lacks moral or intellectual insight.

Travelling looks more involved than in Phantom Hourglass. You have to adjust your train’s speed, avoid obstacles, shoot things, and sound your whistle to clear wildlife from the track. Also, there’s something called a Whirlwind attack, to deploy which you need to blow into your DS microphone.

God.

It’s difficult to register this as news at all, given that everybody in the video games industry and most people outside it were perfectly aware that the PSP Go! was coming several days ago. Jack Tretton even amused the press at E3 by referring to it as "E3's worst kept secret".

It’s good to get the thing out in the open, though, and we did learn a couple of new facts about the least stealthy handheld in the world. It’s not designed to replace the PSP, but rather to complement it as a different kind of device, and it’ll retail initially at $250 (and, if the luck of the British stays its grey course, £250).

Bundled in with the PSP Go! announcement were a couple of revelations concerning the direction of Sony’s new handheld. Prior to the official unveiling, Jack Tretton revealed that Sony is "working to increase our offering to younger gamers and 'tweens."

To some, this translates as an intention to woo the casual games market, into which Apple has recently elbowed its way with the iPhone and iPod touch. And it seems Sony is taking its cue from Apple by cutting the cost of PSP development kits by 80 per cent in the hope of encouraging smaller developers – the kind who make games like Flight Control - to get involved.

There’s long been a tradition of intertextuality in fighting games, with characters from a range of franchises merrily assembling in titles like Smash Bros Brawl and Soul Calibur to beat each others’ heads in.

It’s no surprise to learn that Kratos is going to feature in Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, but it’s no less exciting for that. Kratos is, after all, a permanently confused and enraged lunatic with supernatural powers and biceps that could bend volcanoes.

To paraphrase Dermot Murnaghan's daily rhetorical sign off on television’s Eggheads, “who will beat him?”