Best Handhelds for Final Fantasy

Sixteen numbered games, and the hardware question they ask is not one question. Final Fantasy began on the Famicom in 1987 and has since landed on eight of the systems our capability index grades: the SNES, the Game Boy Advance, the PlayStation 1, the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo 3DS and the Switch. Each of those columns is a separate purchase, and the price of a straight A across them runs from $30 to $399.

That ladder is the guide, and it does not follow the reputation of the games. The four entries people name first - VI, VII, IX, Tactics - all sit in the cheap third of it, on hardware that costs less than a new release. The expensive step is the two eras nobody calls the golden age: the PlayStation 2, where X, X-2 and XII live, and the Switch, where the modern ports live. Between those two steps the price of a Final Fantasy machine multiplies thirteen times.

Every count below is computed over the 443 handhelds in the index, 376 of which carry a tracked street price. A straight A means the index's top band, the letter A; there is no A+ in the dataset, A- is the band below it, and "playable" means a B or better, the site-wide threshold.

Eight systems, sixteen numbered entries

The franchise is unusually spread out, because Square re-released almost everything it ever shipped. That is the good news for a buyer: no single system owns the catalogue, so no single system can hold the purchase hostage. It is also the trap, because the re-releases are not evenly distributed and the hardware that runs one era is often hopeless at the next.

Two things in that table decide the rest of this page. The first is that the PSP row is not a footnote. The anniversary releases of I, II and IV are on it, along with the definitive Tactics, Crisis Core and both Dissidia games - a large share of what anyone actually plays. The PSP is also the system a cheap handheld is most likely to fail outright. The second is that the modern ports on the Switch row are not ports of the emulated versions - they are native releases, which is why the Switch column matters even to someone who has no intention of emulating Switch games.

The 2D half is settled at thirty dollars

Start with the part of the catalogue that everyone agrees on. 356 of the 443 graded handhelds take a straight A on the SNES, 373 take one on the Game Boy Advance and 339 on the PlayStation 1. Those three columns between them hold everything from I to IX except III - the Famicom originals via the Origins and Dawn of Souls collections, the Advance conversions of IV, V and VI, the three PlayStation discs, Tactics and Tactics Advance.

The overlap is not a coincidence, it is the shape of the market. 339 devices are a straight A on all three of those systems at once, and 310 of those carry a price. The cheapest is the U8 at $30. The second cheapest are the R36 Max and the XF40H at $35, and fifteen priced devices under $45 hold the whole triple.

That number is worth sitting with, because it means the most-quoted era of the franchise is no longer a hardware decision. A $30 handheld runs Final Fantasy VI at full emulation quality, and a $120 handheld runs it exactly as well. If the plan stops at IX, or at Tactics, the answer is the cheapest device with straight A grades on the SNES, the GBA and the PlayStation 1, and everything above that price is buying something else.

What the letters do not tell you inside that band is the shape. The PlayStation games are 4:3 and the Advance games are 3:2 landscape; on a vertical handheld both letterbox, which is fine for a 40-hour RPG on a train and less fine for a 100-hour one. That is the only real decision left at this tier, and it is why the shortlist below carries both shells.

The PSP library is where the field splits

Now the step that separates a list of handhelds from a guide to them. 443 devices carry a PSP grade. 165 of them take a straight A. 187 are playable at a B or better, and 102 grade the system an F outright - they will not boot Crisis Core at all.

That is the most lopsided column in the whole index. On the Game Boy Advance, 373 devices take the top band and the failure count is negligible. On the PSP, 165 of 443 take the top band - 37% of the catalogue - and 102 grade the system an F, which is 23% that cannot run the system at all. The reason is not marketing, it is the hardware: the PSP is a 333 MHz MIPS machine with a 480x272 widescreen display, and emulating it well needs a GPU and a CPU that the fifteen-dollar tier does not have.

The failure pattern is the useful part, because it does not track price the way you would expect. The RG35XX SP is $65, a straight A on the SNES, the GBA and the PlayStation 1, and a C on the PSP. Its sibling the RG34XX is the same. So is the RG35XX Plus. A buyer who reasons "it does PlayStation 1, so it will do PSP" spends $65 on a handheld that cannot run War of the Lions properly - and War of the Lions is the version most people mean when they say they want Tactics on a handheld.

The cheapest device that clears all five of the earlier systems - SNES, GBA, PlayStation 1, DS and PSP - is the Pocket Air Mini at $70. 165 priced-capable devices manage the five-band; 161 of them carry a price; $70 is the floor. That is $5 more than the RG35XX SP that fails the PSP column, which makes it the single most important comparison on this page.

The DS sits between the two and behaves itself. 442 devices carry a DS grade, 208 take a straight A, and the cheap verticals land a B+ rather than an F - which is the difference between a DS game that plays and one that does not.

X, X-2 and XII cost another $130

The PlayStation 2 is the era the market has not solved cheaply, and the numbers are blunt about it. 408 devices carry a PS2 grade, 101 take a straight A, 131 are playable at a B or better, and 236 grade it an F. More than half the catalogue cannot run Final Fantasy X.

The 3DS column is even harsher: 436 devices graded, 115 straight A, 268 at an F. So the two systems that hold X, X-2, XII, Theatrhythm and Explorers are also the two systems most handhelds fail, and they fail together - of the 115 devices that take a straight A on the 3DS, 101 also take one on the PS2. It is effectively one tier, not two.

That tier starts at $200. The RG477V is the cheapest priced device that takes a straight A on both the PlayStation 2 and the 3DS, and 98 priced devices reach that pairing at all. The next cheapest are the Retroid Pocket 6 at $209 and the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite Plus at $219. The step from the $70 Pocket Air Mini to the $200 RG477V is $130, and what it buys is three mainline games plus the 3DS rhythm spinoffs - not a better version of anything you could already play.

Whether that is worth $130 is the actual question this guide exists to answer, and the answer depends entirely on whether X and XII are on your list. They are the two entries in the series where the emulation tier genuinely changes the purchase.

The Switch tier, and the ports that skip emulation

The top of the ladder is the Switch, and it is a small tier: 435 devices carry a Switch grade and only 63 take a straight A. Those 63 are, with almost no exceptions, the PC-handheld class - the Steam Deck at $399 is the cheapest of them, and 61 of the 63 carry a price.

But the Switch column is the one place where emulation is the wrong frame. Final Fantasy's modern releases - the Pixel Remaster collection that collects I through VI, the X/X-2 HD remaster, XII: The Zodiac Age, and the VII, VIII and IX re-releases - all ship natively on Steam. A Steam Deck plays them as PC games, at native resolution, with no emulation layer, no frame pacing problems and no compatibility list. The Pixel Remaster is also the only release of the original Final Fantasy III outside Japan, which is a detail worth knowing if III is the one you have never played.

So the $399 step buys two different things at once: the only handheld tier that emulates the Switch library properly, and the only tier that runs the franchise's own modern ports natively. If your Final Fantasy plan includes anything from 2019 onward, that is the tier, and the emulation grades are beside the point.

What the grades do not measure

Four things separate two devices that carry identical letters.

The screen aspect. A PlayStation 1 game is 4:3, a PSP game is 16:9 at 480x272, a DS game is two 256x192 panels. A device can be a straight A on all three and still be the wrong shape for two of them. The DS is the extreme case: a single-screen handheld has to choose a layout, and no layout reproduces a game that expects a map under your thumb.

The save. PlayStation-era RPGs are 40 to 100 hours. On original hardware a memory card held them; on a handheld the save lives in the emulator's state, which means the front-end's suspend-and-resume behaviour matters more than the grade. Test with a throwaway save before hour ten, not after.

The specific title. A system grade is an average of how a device handles the system, not a promise about one game. Final Fantasy games are mostly turn-based and undemanding; the ones that are not - Crisis Core's action combat, Dissidia's fighting engine, Theatrhythm's timing - are exactly the ones where a marginal grade shows.

The era above. The PlayStation 3 trilogy - XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns - sits outside this ladder entirely. 43 of the 443 devices take a straight A on the PlayStation 3, the cheapest of them is $599, and the Steam Deck itself grades the system a C-. If XIII is the entry you care about, this is a six-hundred-dollar question rather than a seventy-dollar one, and the honest answer is that a used PS3 does it better.

The shortlist

The U8, $30. The cheapest handheld in the catalogue that is a straight A on the SNES, the Game Boy Advance and the PlayStation 1 at once - everything from I to IX except III, plus Tactics and Tactics Advance, for the price of a takeaway. It is a B on the Nintendo DS and a C on the PSP, so it is the end of the road at the PlayStation 1. If Tactics means the 1997 original rather than War of the Lions, this is the entire answer and the rest of the page is unnecessary.

The RG35XX SP, $65. Here as the warning rather than the recommendation. It is a straight A on the same three systems as the U8 in a clamshell shell that folds into a pocket, which is why it gets bought - and it grades the PSP a C, which is why people are disappointed. If you want the Game Boy Advance-era Final Fantasy and nothing later, it is a lovely object. If you want War of the Lions, it is the wrong $65.

The Pocket Air Mini, $70. The winner, and the cheapest handheld in the catalogue that takes a straight A on all five of the SNES, the GBA, the PlayStation 1, the DS and the PSP. That grade sheet is the franchise's first eleven years plus its most ambitious re-releases: I through IX, Tactics, Tactics A2, War of the Lions and Crisis Core, all at the top band. 161 priced devices manage the five-band and $70 is the floor of it - five dollars more than the clamshell that fails the PSP column outright. What it does not do is the PlayStation 2, at a C+, and that is the honest limit of the purchase.

The Retroid Pocket 5, $199. The near-complete answer and the value pick of the top tier. Straight A on the SNES, the GBA, the PlayStation 1, the DS, the PSP and the 3DS, an A- on the PlayStation 2, and a D on the Switch. That is the entire mainline catalogue through XII in one device for under two hundred dollars, with the Switch-era ports out of reach. It is the device to buy if X and XII are on the list and the Switch ports are not.

The RG477V, $200. The strict answer to the PS2 question: the cheapest device in the catalogue that takes a straight A on both the PlayStation 2 and the 3DS, which is a pairing only 98 priced devices reach. It holds straight A grades across every column up to the 3DS and carries no Switch grade at all, so it is the top of the emulation ladder and the bottom of the next one. If the goal is the whole emulated catalogue without paying Steam Deck money, this is the line.

The Steam Deck, $399. The only device on this list that takes a straight A on all eight of the franchise's systems, and one of only 63 of 443 that take one on the Switch. More to the point it is the only one that runs the modern releases - Pixel Remaster, X/X-2 HD, XII Zodiac Age, VII, VIII and IX - as native Steam games rather than emulated ones. Everything above this price buys a better screen or a smaller chassis, not a Final Fantasy you could not otherwise play. It is not, though, a PlayStation 3 machine: it grades that system a C-, and the cheapest straight A on the PlayStation 3 is $599.

What to look for

1. Work out which era you are actually buying. The franchise spans eight systems and the price steps are set by era, not by chip. If your list is VI, VII, IX and Tactics, you are a $30 buyer. If it is X and XII, you are a $200 buyer. Nothing in between is a compromise - it is a different list.
2. Read the PSP column before you read anything else. It is the one column where the cheap tier fails hard: 102 of 443 devices grade it an F, and the ones that fail include $65 handhelds with straight A grades on the systems either side of it.
3. Decide whether you want emulation or the native port. From 2019 onward Square ships everything on Steam, and the Switch ports are native too. A device that emulates the Switch badly still plays the Pixel Remaster perfectly if it is a PC handheld.
4. Check the shape against the era. PlayStation and PSP games are widescreen, DS games are two panels, Game Boy Advance games are landscape. A straight A on a system you cannot comfortably see is not worth the $30.

The honest counterpoint

For a large share of the people reading this, the answer is the $70 device and the page ends there. I through IX, Tactics, War of the Lions and Crisis Core are the franchise as most people experienced it, and the Pocket Air Mini covers all of them at the top band. The $130 step to the PlayStation 2 buys three games. The $329 step to the Steam Deck buys the modern ports and the Switch tier.

The second honest point is that a used PSP and a used DS together cost less than any device on this list, and they run those libraries natively, with the original screens and the original load times. The case for the handheld is one device instead of four, with save states, a modern screen and a battery that holds a charge - which is a real case, but it is a convenience case.

Which leaves the case for the winner, and it is clean. Seventy dollars is the price at which a single handheld stops being an emulator for a cartridge console and becomes a machine for the whole pre-PlayStation-2 Final Fantasy canon, including the two PSP games that most cheap handhelds cannot run. The next device that does the same job with the PlayStation 2 included costs $130 more, and the next one that adds the Switch costs $329 more. That is not a small deal in a market where the default answer to this question is a $400 PC handheld.

Sources

• Lost In Consoles - the capability index, the per-system grades and tracked prices every number here is computed from: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the PlayStation 1 guide, for the era that holds VII, VIII, IX and Tactics: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the Game Boy Advance guide, for the Advance ports and Tactics Advance: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the SNES guide, for IV, V and VI: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the PSP guide, for the column that splits the market: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the Nintendo DS guide, for the 3D remakes and Tactics A2: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the PlayStation 2 guide, for X, X-2 and XII: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the Nintendo 3DS guide, for Theatrhythm and Explorers: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the Switch guide, for the smallest tier in the index: lostinconsoles.com
• Lost In Consoles - the device pages the grades and prices are read from: U8, RG35XX SP, Pocket Air Mini, Retroid Pocket 5, RG477V, Steam Deck
• Wikipedia - the Final Fantasy franchise, sixteen numbered entries since 1987: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy Tactics, the 1997 PlayStation original: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, the 2007 PSP version: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, the 2007 PSP prequel: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Dissidia Final Fantasy, the 2008 PSP fighting game: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, the 2007 Nintendo DS tactics game: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the 2003 Game Boy Advance tactics game: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the 2007 Nintendo DS sequel: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, the remasters of I through VI and the first release of the original III outside Japan: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, the 2012 Nintendo 3DS rhythm game: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy VI, the 1994 Super Nintendo entry: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy IX, the 2000 PlayStation entry: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy X and X-2, the 2001 and 2003 PlayStation 2 entries: en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy XII, the 2006 PlayStation 2 entry: en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia - Final Fantasy XIII, the 2009 PlayStation 3 entry that sits above this ladder: en.wikipedia.org

Method: every grade and price quoted here is the frozen value published on each device page in the Lost In Consoles capability index, which grades 443 handhelds on eighteen systems and carries a tracked street price for 376 of them. The tier counts are computed over that dataset in full, not sampled: 356 of 443 devices take a straight A on the SNES, 373 of 443 on the Game Boy Advance, 339 of 443 on the PlayStation 1, 208 of 442 on the Nintendo DS, 165 of 443 on the PSP, 101 of 408 on the PlayStation 2, 115 of 436 on the Nintendo 3DS and 63 of 435 on the Switch, with a denominator that differs from 443 only where the index has no grade for a device on that system. A straight A means the index top band, the letter A; there is no A+ in the dataset and A- is the band below it, so "playable" in this guide means a B or better. The floors quoted - $30 U8 as the cheapest priced straight A on the SNES, the Game Boy Advance and the PlayStation 1 together, $70 Pocket Air Mini as the cheapest on those three plus the Nintendo DS and the PSP, $200 RG477V as the cheapest on the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo 3DS together, $399 Steam Deck as the cheapest on all eight of those systems including the Switch, $599 AOKZOE A2 and TJD T101 as the cheapest straight A on the PlayStation 3 - are the cheapest priced device in the dataset that reaches that band, recomputed for this page. The 165-device five-band figure is the count of devices that take a straight A on the SNES, the GBA, the PlayStation 1, the DS and the PSP simultaneously, 161 of them priced; the 63-device Switch figure is the count of devices that take a straight A on the Switch, 61 of them priced. Prices are the tracked street price at publication and move with the market.