One day in the early 2000s, I was lunched by a couple of editors at a broadsheet newspaper, who asked what I thought of the then-speculative notion of ‘convergence’: that all our different gadgets would eventually become one super-gadget that did everything. I nodded sagely and brought forth my Psion 5mx pocket computer, with its gorgeous touch-typable qwerty keyboard, and the Sony Ericsson phone by means of which it communicated with newspaper and magazine ‘wires’ (servers), via infrared and 3G data. These things would remain separate, I announced like some kind of reverse Nostradamus, because to combine them would compromise the efficiency of each too much. Half a decade later, the iPhone came out, and before long I was proved comprehensively wrong.
Or was I, perhaps, just before my time? (A thing I have often wondered while pondering my book sales.) Yes, any half-decent modern smartphone can run high-quality videogames, so why am I so pleased with my new Super Pocket? You may wonder why I enjoy playing 1942 and its sequels on my Capcom edition, even though half the already-tiny screen is wasted to present the vertical aspect ratio, and even though I could as easily replay the brilliant Sky Force series of 1942-alikes on my Switch. I’d say that there’s something about playing the Super Pocket that feels sillier, in a beautiful way. More gratuitous. And there’s no way you can check your Twitter feed on it.