I keep seeing posts like this online: “Looking for a device to play Gal.” “Which tablet is good for eroge?” “This handheld is great, a perfect eroge-dedicated machine.” … Sometimes I’m confused too. The “Galgame” category has been a dying industry for ages, so why does it look like there are still so many fans online, willing to spend real money on a pricey dedicated device just for it? Actually, long-time readers of my blog probably know that about 10+ years ago I wrote a similar article. I briefly laid out some of my own views back then; some hold up now, some were incomplete. After all these years I’ve built up a fair amount of galgame experience and cycled through a lot of devices for playing them. Maybe we should sit down and talk about this again, and share some of my experience.

Everyone knows the “handheld market” is hot right now. On top of the old crop of “open-source handhelds,” we’re drowning in “high-performance handhelds.” Plenty of people are chomping at the bit for these things, but most of them are “playing with the machine, not the games”—buying one after another, testing for a bit, then stopping cold. Some call this “electronic impotence.” I don’t buy it. I just think most of today’s “handhelds” don’t deserve the name. They’re more like a “giant desktop PC you can cradle in both hands.” Whether it’s Aya or GPD, each new machine is bigger than the last, and heavy too. I basically have no desire to take them out anymore—you need a dedicated shoulder bag just to carry one. And that’s not even the main issue. The most awkward part is that battery life on these handhelds tops out at two hours. Good luck getting enough playtime out of one on a trip. Aya even showed off a concept machine called the Next 2 that ditches the battery entirely and has you play plugged in. Which is basically an admission that this thing isn’t a “portable handheld” anymore—it’s just a mini desktop you can hold in your hands. If that’s the case, why not just use the TV at home?

As someone who loves portable devices, I was actually pretty interested in the Steam Deck. But earlier this year, the Steam Deck was terrifyingly expensive and basically impossible to buy. The few Chinese handheld makers that bothered to show up were all just drawing pies in the sky. Then Maxzhou, Brother Zhou, released a Windows handheld: the Anbernic Win600. Not only was it in stock, it was the cheapest thing from a legitimate manufacturer on the market… Most importantly, before launch they advertised it as: made in cooperation with Valve, supports Steam OS, and they even showed some demo videos. So I got carried away. Couldn’t afford the expensive one, bought the cheap one.

I don’t feel like spending too many words on how these two things are, because it’s really hard to say much in detail.