They don't need to be in the same gen, for one to be the better system overall, or the better gen if you want.

Yeah, I literally just realized that I misinterpreted the thread lol. I'm sorry. I'll amend.

For me, it was the GBA because it was more of what I prefer in a handheld. It had a light, more compact form factor, amazing battery life, its library had mostly 2D, stripped-down, simplistic titles that felt like SNES successors... and it had the best lineup of handheld Castlevania games, ever imo. Oh, and Golden Sun.

It just felt like the last true dedicated Nintendo handheld. What came after was great, too, but they were different. The DS and 3DS was more blue ocean, less red.

GBA SP had the best form factor ever, and IMO the best Nintendo handheld ever. But library wise the PSP blows both out of the water. There is just an insane amount of variety on it and most games still hold up shockingly well. But all 3 systems are great core systems and personally prefer all of them over the GB and DS.

3DS for me. It had a solid game library from Nintendo and some interesting 3rd party titles like RE revelations, fantasy life, Bravely default and Shinobi. It wins by default being backward compatible with the DS library. I know the 3D wasn't for everyone but I like it, I still use mine to this day and still collect for it.

PSP was best for me. I really enjoyed their line up, and then when adding PS1 games was definitely locked in.

....now if can include the PSP being modded then it's a no brainer as it'd include (NES, SNES, Sega, GB, GBA games etc...)