Packing for Gaming

Going away for Christmas? Or perhaps, like me, you’re going home? When you do travel, especially on a plane, I’m sure you have a good think about what gaming equipment to bring with you to keep you preoccupied. Me? I tend to overthink it. If you’re anything like me when you’re travelling home for Christmas then your bedroom becomes a sprawled out mess of chargers and gadgets setting the room aglow with their LED lights set to charge mode.

First things first – you certainly need to bring a laptop along. Not just for gaming, but you know, one needs it as an option. Thankfully in my case I replaced my mammoth 17” back-breaking desktop replacement with an Alienware m11x. The first Alienware I’ve used that wasn’t a terrible disappointment. Apart from its wonky hinges.

Next? Well, you need a phone you can game on. I’m stuck with a two year old iPhone 3G. It’s pretty slow, but it does double as a hand warmer. Always nice to have ChuChu Rocket! on the go, too.

Then we come to the handheld consoles. This is where the meat of gaming on the go comes in. Let’s see… well, I have to bring my DS. My Lite’s probably the best option as it has a GBA slot to boot. But what if the batteries run out? Best bring my DSi and XL too. Alright… I guess that should do it. Hmm. But what if I want to play one of my PSone games off of PSN? I know that if I don’t take a PSP I’ll end up just wanting to play it on the plane and regretting not having brought it. Fine, I’ll bring my PSP Go. Mind you… its battery can’t be swapped out. Should probably bring along a PSP-2000 with a spare 2200 mAh battery. Just in case, you know. That’s it. Nothing more. Although… GBA Micros are, by definition, really rather small. Wouldn’t hurt to bring a few of them along. Hell, I’ll just shove them all in my rucksack.

Unfortunately for my back, this is how my brain works.

Now, one of the problems you may have encountered when you go on planes is where to keep all of your gaming gear for the duration of the flight. You can’t have a hefty rucksack by your feet and you can’t really stuff everything in the pocket in front of you. What if a sudden bout of motion sickness kicked in and you needed the sick bag? My solution: wear jackets. Jackets plural. Or even a jacket / coat combo. The more deep pockets the sucker’s got the better. Sure, you may end up looking like a chunky grizzly, but if it means you’ve got enough gaming and battery power on you to survive any number of flights then what does that matter?

The only trouble you may run into when taking all this gaming gear with you is the worrying mess of charging cables as they get passed through the x-ray machine at airport security. You probably won’t make the situation any easier for yourself if you’re a heavily bearded man in a bulky, bulging parka.

After all this planning and preparation I tend to sit down in my seat, ready for gaming. Only to pass out on red wine, with my MP3 player blaring. Such is life.