The current unit I own is a second-generation PSP Slim, and while the PSP Go is available, I have no interest in giving up my UMD library, so screw that. Once this PSP Slim goes down, I will most likely go for a third-generation PSP instead, which is a PSP Slim on diet pills.

The Sony PSP has become a handheld favorite of mine due in large part to the heavy load of crap and kiddie titles that litter Nintendo DSi shelves, making it impossible to find the titles on that platform that I might actually like; PSP’s library may not be as massive, but there’s a lot more games I actually like and want to play on it.

I’ve owned two PSPs to date, not counting the two my wife has owned. I don’t necessarily look forward to shelling out for one again, but I use it so much, it’s to be expected. And since I chose iPod nano instead of iPod Touch this last time out, I’m in no danger of going app-crazy and forgetting my lovely PSP anytime soon.

Once, this series would have ranked right at the top of my list; that was back in the previous decade, the 1990s, when Square was arguably at the top of their game. However, the turn of the century saw a marked drop-off in production, as well as some stagnation, to be frank.

The proper installments that actually were released in the past decade include Final Fantasy IX on PSone in 2000, Final Fantasy X on PS2 in 2001, and the MMO-RPG, Final Fantasy XI on multiple platforms in 2002. Then there was the long silence before, late in the life of the PS2, Square released the long-awaited Final Fantasy XII in 2006… and it was almost overshadowed by the release of the PS3.

Japan already saw the release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2009, but it will be a new decade by the time the title hits US shores, so it just doesn’t count.

Still, each Final Fantasy installment was beautiful for its time; FFIX was a wonderful swan song for the PSone platform, FFX was a platform-defining game for the PS2, a model which all other PS2-era RPGs paid homage to, and FFXII was a glorious swan song on PS2 that made some people wonder why a new generation of hardware was even necessary.

The only real stinker in the series proper was the MMO-RPG, FFXI, which has seen regular updates and is due to be replaced sometime early in the new decade (2010 or 2011) by Final Fantasy XIV. Still, for series purists like me, FFXI doesn’t count and should never have been made part of the main series’ numbering, but the launch of a new online-only series that could have been called Final Fantasy Online or something like that.

Sure, like a lot of people, I didn’t care for the sit-n-watch combat system of FFXII; but at least it saved me loads of joint pain from all that button-mashing hitting the X button tends to inspire in other Final Fantasy titles.

Be that as it may, and despite all the missteps and delays this decade, the wonderful gaming memories I’ve enjoyed at the hands of FFIX, FFX and FFXII still rank this RPG as an all-time favorite series… in this past decade or any other it has been part of.

Officially, there are only three chapters in the Disgaea franchise: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, and Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. However, the first two titles, originally for the PS2, have been remixed and re-released on the Sony PSP platform as Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days. Also, the original Disgaea has been remixed even further for an appearance on the Nintendo DS in Disgaea DS.

While Atlus makes many fine Tactics-style RPGs, none carries quite the depth of entertainment value as does their Disgaea series, which held up well when moving to the PS3 platform with Absence of Justice. Focusing on the struggles of the young son of an overlord of Hell to take his father’s mantle despite a desperate power struggle to wrest it from him, the series is full-on Japanese anime goodness with plenty of comedy.

Although not as mainstream as, say, Super Mario Galaxy or Legend of Zelda, I’ll take the gameplay of a Disgaea trouble over that juvenile, overrated stuff any day!

I almost ranked this series higher, but the top of the list is going to be crowded with great, great franchises, so it was just about impossible to bump it any higher. All the free medical travel in the world isn’t worth as much to me as one good Prince of Persia title.

Now, I’m a bit of a late-comer to the franchise. When the PS2/Xbox trilogy was being published, I was not big on action-adventure-platformers and viewed the the Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones with some suspicion; I figured it was a “me-too” title in the Tomb Raider mode.

How wrong I was, but I didn’t discover that until I picked up the game on a whim in its first PS3 appearance. A franchise reboot, the PS3/360-era Prince of Persia, which came out in 2008 originally, was full of cell-shaded beauty and HD eye candy. Plus, it was addictively fun to play! It’s one of the first games I had played all the way through in years, and boy was it worth it; I’ve almost completed my second go-round on it, and even coughed up for the add-on adventure through the PSN Store.

With a major motion picture on the way and the first PS3/360-era sequel coming this spring, namely Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, it’s a great time to like this franchise. But the series makes my list because I’ve gone back and purchased all three of the PS2 Prince of Persia titles and found them quite good for the era in which they were made, but also they are evidence of how dramatically the franchise has grown and matured over the past decade.

Of course, the game goes back quite a bit longer than the last decade, with roots in many 1989-era home PCs, Macs, Commodores and home videogame systems. It is a concept that has weathered… the sands of time!

First unleased in January 2000, The Sims is a “life simulator” that allows you to control electronic people from the comfort of your real-world TV. Just entering its third official iteration, The Sims 3, the series has been a huge and consistent seller for publisher EA Games, even though they never really put it on a discounted sale.

That’s because the game itself is just loads of fun; too many people get sadistic pleasure, for example, out of forcing a sim to pee itself, or leading it into a room, then removing all the doors and windows and sources of food, water or cleansing and watching the little thing go ape until it “died.”

Once EA realized this, they of course nurtured it by offering even more amusing “torture your sim” animations and scenarios. Sure, plenty of folks play the game more straight-up, but that’s the beauty of the franchise; there’s no “wrong” way to play it.

OK, so the original Final Fantasy Tactics title on the original PlayStation came out in 1997. Got it. But the game’s impact wasn’t really felt until this past decade. Overshadowed and nearly overlooked as a result of Square releasing Final Fantasy VII the same year, many gamers initially derided FFT as being too throwback and retro in approach.

However, the game, which had predecessors in the Ogre Tactics titles on SNES, ultimately won hardcore gamers over with its sometimes-insanely-difficult battles, some of which could last over an hour and still result in a loss! That was bold even in 1997, and the resultant button-pushing was a real muscle builder for thumbs everywhere.

Yet the game’s popularity was vastly helped in 2001 when Square re-released it as a PlayStation Classic, even though the game never reached the magic 1 million units sold bar established for most games to become PlayStation Classics.

That helped launch the game into popularization. By the time PlayStation 2 came out, entire companies were dedicated to the new subgenre of “Tactics-style RPGs,” which was a direct reference to Final Fantasy Tactics’ approach to RPG gaming.

By 2003, a new title in the series, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, was licensed by Nintendo to help launch their new GameBoy Advance platform, and quickly became the defining title of the GBA platform.

2007 saw a remake of the PlayStation original arrive on Sony’s portable platform, the PSP. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions delivered the greatness of the original with plenty of new content and a fresh, more understandable translation.

And in 2008, Final Fantasy A2: Grimoire of the Rift delivered a Nintendo DS-era sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

The groundbreaking nature of the series gave birth to much of Atlus’ game catalog, as well as opening the door for NIS America to bring much of its catalog to North America. In an era where RPGs are now done as big-budget productions often perceived of as “too easy to win” by hardcore gamers, the popularity of the Tactics-style RPG is in its retro approach, greater difficulty level, and most importantly, it’s considerable length.

Tactics-style titles often involve hundreds of hours of gameplay to complete successfully, and that makes them perfect candidates for on-the-go platforms like GBA, DS and PSP. By staying retro, Final Fantasy Tactics has delivered the perfect style of RPG for handheld systems, and the influence of that 1997 title was felt most profoundly only in the past decade.

Appearing initially on Nintendo’s touch-screen handheld platform, and then later on its motion-senative-based Wii system, Trauma Center: Under the Knife (not so much its sequel) gets credit for being one of the first games to fully leverage Nintendo’s touch-screen controller on the DS. It also adapted itself well to the Wii’s then-unique control scheme. All it lacked as a solid remote backup service to make sure you never lose your saves.

Developed by Atlus for the DS, Trauma Center is a bit like the old Operation! board game, in that touch-screen controls put you in control of the hands of a surgeon for life-saving surgical procedures. However, the game, while one of the first surgery sims of its kind, is still a fantasy RPG and so it’s not quite photo-realistic and not quite strictly limited to pure real-world medicine as the use of magical healing gels and special surgical abilities do become a core component of game play after a while.

However, for pure edge-of-your-seat tension, there are few games that build it as well as Trauma Center: Under the Knife; that it appeared on the DS system within the launch window and is still one of the most highly-regarded games on a system filled with bloatware says a lot about the game’s unique concept, design and execution.

Some may label it a niche game; but virtually no other game kept me interested in owning my DS for as long as I did. While I recently finally did sell off my DS, I would have done it ages ago if not for Trauma Center.

Love it or hate it, there is no sports videogame that rivals it. Arguing against it is like arguing against using floor tiles in a kitchen: pointless. Hands down, it is the biggest money-making sports videogame in the world.

The biggest bump in the road came a few years ago, when EA announced it had secured exclusive rights to the NFL, NFLPA and NFLCA licensing. This, in effect, drove alternate NFL games like Sega/2K Games’ football game pretty much out of the running.

The big argument has been that without competitors, EA would slack on game innovation. That has not been the case, and in fact Madden NFL ’10 has seen a changing of the guard on the development team, including a re-emphasis on producing a serious, realistic simulation of football, rather than a pinball scoring-machine style of play where the game has typically fallen down, due to the inclusion of so-called “magic plays” that almost always work.

With plenty of innovation each year, the Madden franchise has proven that their biggest competition is… every other videogame out there vying for gamers’ hard-earned dollars in a down economy. People are buying fewer videogames now than they were at the start of the decade; but most are still keeping Madden at the top of their list every August.

Sure, we didn’t have the extra-fancy Nintendo DSi to trade in with all the bells and whistles and rackmount LCD. But with a chubby DS, a DS Lite and about 16 games, as well as a PS3 game we didn’t care for tossed in for good measure, I hoped we’d at least have enough to get her a PSP Slim.

Well, not only did we get her a PSP Slim for about $110, but we had enough left over to pick up Dragon Age: Origins for the PS3, as well as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona for the PSP, as well! Talk about a nice deal? For me, Dragon Age: Origins is enough to make me forget all about those DS games… Phoenix Wright who? I’m playing BioWare’s latest and greatest, baby!

But the hits, I’m afraid, are too few and too far between.

I know it goes against conventional thinking and industry bias, but I’d trade all the ephedrine I’ve ever owned (not a lot, BTW) for a PSP over a DSi any day of the week.

And twice on Sundays.

TecmoBowl: Kickoff

It’s been over 15 years, but Tecmo Bowl non-licensed football has returned, this time on Nintendo DS. Worth owning for nostalgia alone.

Chrono Trigger

The classic SquareEnix game that started a worldwide obsession that’s outlasted two successive hardware generations and counting is back, this time on the DS. A must-have for SquareEnix fans.

That’s it! But what fun you’ll have.

In fact, it’s completely empty, and considering there are over 50 titles releasing next month for Nintendo DS, that’s saying something. Sure, there’s a couple titles by SquareEnix, but they’re not RPGs and SquareEnix never does well at non-RPGs.

And then there’s one RPG, but it’s by Disney Interactive and is a sequel to boot. It just doesn’t capture my interest; sorry. And then there’s a Fantasy Harvest Moon title, but it’s a sequel that doesn’t look to bring much new to the table.

So let it be said this way: there are well over 50 DS titles coming next month, but not one of them are anything I’d spend my money on, so I’m not going to suggest anyone else does, either.