I was a Playstation child. Many of my friends in my age group were Nintendo children. While they were trying to save the princess locked in a different castle, I was pounding my way up the stairs of Shadow Moses, or racing my way around the High Speed Ring. When it came to portable gaming, there wasn’t much choice. Like my friends, I was stuck with the Game Boy, and later, the Game Boy Color. Of course, everyone was into playing the Pokémon RPGs back then. The Pokémon RPGS were really the best portable titles around at the time. This applied doubly so to me, since I found myself mostly uninterested with the vast majority of other Nintendo offerings. Decent third party Game Boy titles were few and far-between.

When the following generation of portable gaming devices was rolled out, I naturally gravitated towards the Playstation Portable rather than the Nintendo DS. Sure, the PSP had plenty of original titles. But it also had piles of ports.  These came in the form of compilations, or simply straight up portable versions of existing Playstation titles that I had grown to love. When the Playstation Network began offering Playstation One Classics, I was ecstatic. Playing the games of my childhood on the go? An amazing idea. There is certainly something novel about playing an old classic on a new system. The way newer technology seems to smash through old technological barriers is simply amazing to see in action.

It is amazing to see newer technology smash through old technological barriers

When I’d heard that the iPhone would be receiving a port of Grand Theft Auto III, I was naturally excited. I’d been hoping that smartphones would become a fertile ground for ports of classic games. For years, I’d been disappointed, seeing shoddy ports of games such as Minecraft and Final Fantasy hit the iTunes store. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the many quality iOS-designed games of recent years, it’s just that I’m rather disappointed about the lack of quality ports.

Ports are something many gamers groan about upon announcement. The word “port” is often associated with ideas such as low quality and laziness. But not all ports are this way, obviously. Ports have been abused by many developers as the chance to move old content onto new systems, usually through the path of least resistance. This invariably leads to low quality interfaces with new game hardware. Again, it doesn’t have to be this way.

With the technological advancement of devices such as the Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita, more and more developers are designing games specifically for the system. Portable games no longer have to cling to the coattails of their larger, home console cousins. Most gamers will hail this as an achievement. While I’m inclined to agree, I worry about the status of older games. Sure, there’ll always be lazy developers attempting to push low quality products onto the next generation. But true, high quality ports may become rare, as original games are designed for the next generation of handhelds.

Will older games become the specks of dust caught in the pages of gaming history? Or will the gaming industry continue to support remakes and ports with new technology?