The new Playstation portable has hit the stage, hoping to steal the spotlight from the legendary Game Boy line of handhelds.  He's got the stylish threads and the energy to dazzle the audience, but does this up and coming star have the moxie to make it big on a crowded stage?  We open the curtains and reveal the answer in this review. I've owned a lot of handhelds in my time, from the boxy yet sporty Neo-Geo Pocket to the incredibly compact Game Boy Advance SP. However, out of all the portable game systems I've had, none have been as attractive and stylish as the PSP. The console has a sleek capsule shape, with a black case that helps associate it with Sony's flagship system, the Playstation 2. A large, horizontally oriented screen stretches across the front of the unit, with the left and right hand sides devoted to Sony's familiar seperated cross joypad and action buttons arranged in a diamond pattern. Smaller buttons for accessing auxillary functions like brightness and volume are lined up near the bottom of the system, while clear shoulder buttons are perched on the top. Silver trim decorates the edges of the PSP, and is home to a variety of switches and input/output jacks. On the back are doors for the battery, memory card, and UMD drive, with the UMD drive adorned with a shining silver ring and the PSP logo. There is one downside to the system's appearance... although it looks great when you take it out of the box, it won't stay that way for long. Both the metal plate on the front of the unit and the screen picks up grease and smeared fingerprints quickly, leaving even brand new units looking a little shabby after they've been used. In addition to the case, the system also includes a soft cloth... you'll want to take both along with you wherever you go to keep the system in the best possible shape. The PSP's horizontally oriented screen is truly one of the system's greatest triumphs. It's nearly twice the size of the screen on the Game Boy Advance, opening the door for the most spectacular graphics ever seen on a handheld game system. The resolution is very fine, so details stand out just enough to be noticable without looking pixelated. This benefits Darkstalkers Chronicles the most... reviewers have complained for years that the cast of this horror-themed fighting game are behind the times, but on the PSP, they look just as gorgeous as they did in their 1995 arcade debut. Polygonal games (which make up the overwhelming majority of the PSP software library) are only slightly less impressive... the jagged edges that made some Playstation 2 titles an eyesore are far less noticable on its handheld cousin. Finally, there are movies... you'll understand why Sony packed the first hundred thousand systems with Spiderman 2 after you watch the film on the PSP. The system's wide screen format eliminates the need for letterboxing, making it seem as though you're holding a tiny movie theatre in your hands. For all its strengths, the PSP screen isn't perfect. Many, many units have shipped with inactive or discolored pixels, and there's slight blurring on the edges of moving objects with high contrast colors. Usually, this is barely noticable, but the constant blurring in New Rally X (the game included as a bonus in Ridge Racer) suggests that classic video games collections may not fare as well on the PSP as more modern titles, which disguise the blurring with a high level of complex detail. Like past Playstation systems, the PSP has a seperated cross for a directional pad, and four face buttons labelled with shapes rather than letters. Most players have adjusted to Sony's quirky controller design, but there are a few holdouts who deliberately avoid it by purchasing third party joypads. This time, however, that won't be an option for them... since the controller is built into the system itself, they'll have to learn to live with it. Playstation fans will be right at home, however. The PSP doesn't feel exactly like a Dual Shock controller, since its face buttons are a bit more delicate and the less frequently used keys are very tiny, but it's close enough to make the transition from console to portable smooth for Playstation devotees. The analog stick on the bottom left hand corner of the PSP is the system's only major flaw. Sony obviously made form a higher priority than function when designing it... although its diminuitive size makes the PSP more compact, it has the unfortunate side effect of being so small that it's difficult to use. Also, instead of tilting, the analog stick slides around in its base, with tight springs pulling it back to its center position. This makes it difficult to apply a light touch to the stick, ultimately defeating its intended purpose of offering the player precise control. Fortunately, the joypad and buttons are all quite responsive, and offer a more than suitable alternative to the rather underwhelming analog stick. The PSP is the first handheld game system with a high capacity optical drive. This brings a lot to the portable gaming experience... crisp full-motion video, broadcast quality audio... and oh yeah, excruciatingly long load times. It would seem that, in the hopes of conserving battery life, Sony designed the UMD drive to run at a low speed. This means that players will spend almost as much time waiting for their games to start as they will playing them. The access time is especially bad in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix, Mercury, and Darkstalkers Chronicles. You'll wait two and a half minutes from the time you first boot up your PSP to actually begin playing THUG2, a painfully long time to wait to satisfy your skateboarding jones. Darkstalkers Chronicles is even worse, suffering from both an initial minute long load time and fifteen second intervals between matches. This is a little odd when you take into account the almost non-existant access time between matches in the Dreamcast and Saturn versions of the game. At the same time, it's fair to mention that Darkstalkers Chronicles is a far better arcade conversion than would ever have been possible on previous handheld game systems. There's not even a trace of audiovisual compromise, with full-sized characters and an exceptional soundtrack that's easily on par with the console versions of Darkstalkers. It's the double-edged sword of the UMD format... you get a more complete gaming experience, but only if you're willing to wait for it. As a portable game system, the PSP is unmatched. There hasn't been a handheld this powerful, with such high-profile games, since the release of the Sega Nomad ten years ago. The system's high resolution screen, astonishingly fast processor, and outstanding sound results in games that come very close to what you'll find on today's home consoles. The first batch of games for the system suggest that the PSP is roughly comparable to the Sega Dreamcast in overall performance. Darkstalkers Chronicles, for instance, matches its Dreamcast counterpart frame for frame, with beautifully drawn, smoothly animated characters and a full-bodied soundtrack that never misses a beat. On the polygonal side of things, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix isn't quite up to speed with its closest Dreamcast equivalent, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2... some objects have sharp, jagged edges, and the textures, although more brightly colored, lack the detail they had on the Dreamcast. This is especially apparent when you get a close look at the characters' faces, which look cartoonish in comparison to the photorealistic visages of the skaters in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. However, the game's soundtrack is easily on par with its Dreamcast counterpart... in fact, it's even better, since the designers packed the disc with even more licensed, CD-quality music. The UMD format holds nearly double the data of the Dreamcast's GD-ROM, expanding the designers' horizons considerably. When you weigh this against the lengthy load times and the slightly less polished polygonal graphics, you've got a handheld game system that's as good as state-of-the-art console technology released just six years ago. In addition to games, the PSP offers support for movies, music, and photos. It can even wash, dry, and press your laundry for you while you're at work! All right... it's not quite THAT versatile, but you get the point. Files are imported to the PSP using a USB cable, and are stored on a tiny memory card called a Memory Stick Duo (the card is included in the Value Pack, but the USB cable is not). The system accepts MPEG4 movies, JPG pictures, and music in two different formats. In addition to MP3s, the current industry standard, the PSP also plays Sony's proprietary digital music format, 8-Track. Oh wait, that's supposed to be ATRAC, isn't it? Well, in five years, people aren't going to know the difference. At any rate, you can get music files for your system from Sony's Connect service, but the smart way to go is to buy used CDs and transfer their contents to the more versatile MP3 format. The PSP handles music files well enough... they're easy to access and sound much clearer than they would from an FM radio. However, the system's large size, delicate screen, and limited capacity with the included memory card keep it from being an iPod killer, or even an iPod bruiser. You're better off leaving the music playback for a dedicated digital music player... nearly all of them are smaller and more rugged than the PSP. The system's other multimedia functions do have some practical use, however. You can customize the handheld with photos, or use it to watch your favorite television shows and films, if you're willing to spring for a memory card large enough to accommodate them. The PSP is a merely adequate multimedia player... it does play music, but it's too bulky to take along with you for your daily jog. It does play movies, but you're limited to a small handful of overpriced UMD titles, along with less impressive compressed video clips that can't possibly fit on the system's included memory card. It does display photos, but the JPG format leaves some images, particularly comics and video game snapshots, with ugly smears. As a handheld game system, however, the PSP is incredible. It's too early to call it the best portable ever made, but it's already in the running for that honor, with hardware that's vastly superior to any of its competitors and a top-notch selection of software. There hasn't been a truly bad game released for the system yet, an impressive feat when you consider that even the Dreamcast had a couple of duds in its early library. As good as it is, however, the PSP isn't perfect. It's got a high price, a low battery life, and the access time... oh, the access time! The agonizingly long waits between stages keep the system from offering the instant gratification that players have come to expect from handhelds. This will no longer be an issue when homebrew emulators and officially released mini-games are made available for the system, but it may be a while before we see either of them. Nevertheless, if you need a console-quality gaming experience on the go, and are willing to pay a premium price for it, the PSP is wholeheartedly recommended. If the Game Boy Advance SP is a compact car; reliable, energy-efficient, but ultimately unexciting, the PSP is a Porsche. It's not always practical, but you'll feel one heck of a rush when you get behind the wheel!