There’s a small black rectangle sitting on my desk right now. Its OLED screen is slightly scratched from years of use. The analog sticks have that specific, slightly worn texture that only comes from hundreds of hours of Persona 4 Golden. The back touchpad has a tiny crack in the corner from when I dropped it in 2015.

It’s my PlayStation Vita, and I will defend this console with my life (ง’̀-’́)ง

A console ahead of its time

When Sony released the PS Vita in 2012, it was a technological marvel. Dual analog sticks on a handheld! An OLED screen with colors so vibrant it made the 3DS look like a Game Boy! Built-in GPS, accelerometer, front and rear cameras, and both front and rear touch surfaces.

The hardware was insane for 2012. This was basically a portable PS3 that fit in your pocket. The launch lineup included Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which genuinely looked like a home console game running on a 5-inch screen.

And yet… Sony basically abandoned it within two years. No major first-party support. Overpriced proprietary memory cards (seriously, who approved those?!). Almost zero marketing. The Vita was left to fend for itself in a market increasingly dominated by smartphones.

But the games… oh, the games ✧(ꈍᴗꈍ)✧

Here’s the thing people don’t realize: the Vita has one of the best game libraries of any handheld ever made. You just have to know where to look.

Let me drop some names:

• Persona 4 Golden — the definitive version of one of the greatest JRPGs ever made. This alone justifies owning a Vita. 100+ hours of high school dungeon-crawling goodness.
• Gravity Rush — a completely original IP where you control gravity itself. Flying through a floating city, walking on ceilings, falling sideways through the sky. Nothing else feels like this game.
• Tearaway — Media Molecule made a game that uses every single Vita feature: touch, cameras, microphone, tilt. It’s a papercraft adventure that literally puts YOUR face into the game through the front camera.
• Danganronpa 1 & 2 — visual novels about high school students trapped in deadly games. If you like mystery and psychological tension, these are absolute masterpieces.
• Soul Sacrifice Delta — a dark fantasy action game where you sacrifice parts of your own body to cast powerful spells. Monster Hunter but with existential dread.

And then there’s the entire indie scene. The Vita became a haven for indie games: Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Rogue Legacy, Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, Darkest Dungeon… The list goes on and on.

The OLED screen changes everything ╰(✧∇✧╰)

I need to talk about that screen. The original Vita model (PCH-1000) had a 5-inch OLED display, and in 2012, OLED on a consumer device was still rare. The blacks were true black. The colors were saturated and vivid in a way that LCD screens simply couldn’t match.

Playing Gravity Rush on that screen, with its cel-shaded art style and vibrant color palette, was a borderline spiritual experience. Playing horror games in a dark room was genuinely terrifying because the dark areas of the screen disappeared completely.

Sony replaced it with an LCD panel in the Vita Slim (PCH-2000) to cut costs, and it was a downgrade that still hurts to think about (ノ_<。)

My Vita routine in 2026

I still play my Vita regularly. Here’s what a typical evening looks like:

1. Get home from work
2. Make some tea
3. Pick up the Vita from its charging cradle
4. Boot up whatever I’m currently playing (right now it’s a replay of Muramasa Rebirth)
5. Play for an hour or two in bed before sleep

There’s something about the form factor that smartphones can’t replicate. The weight of it in your hands, the physical buttons, the satisfying click of the analog sticks. It’s a dedicated gaming device, and that focus makes the experience better.

No notifications popping up. No temptation to check email. No algorithmic feeds trying to steal your attention. Just you and the game. That’s becoming incredibly rare, and I think it’s genuinely valuable.

Why it deserved better

The Vita failed commercially because of Sony’s mistakes, not because of any flaw in the hardware or its games:

• Proprietary memory cards were absurdly expensive and completely unnecessary
• No first-party support after the first year killed consumer confidence
• Poor marketing meant most people didn’t even know what a Vita was
• The smartphone argument was overblown — mobile gaming and dedicated handheld gaming are fundamentally different experiences

If Sony had priced the memory cards fairly, kept releasing first-party titles, and marketed the console properly, I genuinely believe the Vita could have been as successful as the PSP.

Instead, it became a cult classic. Loved deeply by a small community, forgotten by everyone else.

If you find one, grab it

Vita prices on the second-hand market are going up. If you see one at a reasonable price, buy it. Get a copy of Persona 4 Golden and Gravity Rush. Thank me later (☆▽☆)

The Vita isn’t dead. It’s just sleeping. And those of us who love it will keep its memory alive, one play session at a time.

Long live the Vita. ₍ᐢ.ˬ.ᐢ₎♡

— Biagio