In no particular order:

1. Half minute hero: quirky, quick, hilarious, and a bit stressful at times. It’s a perfect mobile title.

2. Disgaea: infinitely scaling/playable strategy rpg. You can power through the game pretty quickly, or take your time and slowly become a god so strong that even friendly healing spells miss you.

3. Patapon (2 and 3): rhythm based game about using drum commands to get your little dudes to complete missions.

4. Dj max (any/all):dance dance revolution for your thumbs. Korean game featuring Korean artists. One of my favorite continuing series.

5. Monster hunter (freedom through portable 3rd): action rpg all about them boss fights. Kill monsters, use their parts to hunt tougher monsters in a game all about incremental progression, inventory management, and learning movement patterns to git gud.

6. Patchwork hero: do you like the dig dug stages where you slice off bits of the land to drop enemies into the water? This is that except they are airships and you must defend your homeland

7. Lumines (1 and 2): musical game about matching colors and making combos in a tetris-esque style game. The devs went on to make tetris effect.

8. Cladun 2: so I heard you like action rpgs, infinite scaling, pixel art, and enough grindy systems that even my power tools get jealous. Enter Cladun.

I’m wondering if I missed any I spent a disproportionate amount of time on… But these were the first ones to pop into my head.

Edit: I am finally home so I can look over my games… and I definitely forgot a couple.

1. LOCO ROCO! It’s a very simple platformer in which you guide your little dudes through stages by using the L and R to tilt the stage. You collect fruits to increase your dude into a larger dude, or several dudes, depending on the situation.

2. N+ Be a platforming Ninja, die a lot… like a lot a lot. It’s… simple and hard and so satisfying to clear one set of 4 stages at a time. You can even make your own stages if you’re feeling up to the challenge.

The PSP was a fantastic system for racing games, despite the lack of an analog throttle. If you want to get into this genre, this console is a great starting point:

• Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast: Perhaps the best version of Outrun to date and an ideal game for people not that used to the genre. Easy to learn, hard to master. It’s gorgeous to look at, the arcade-style gameplay loop is perfect for a portable system and so much fun that you don’t really mind if you lose.

• FlatOut: Head On: A very different take on the arcade racing genre. This one blends challenging stock car racing with over the top minigames that involve drivers being used as virtual bowling balls. It all makes sense, just try it out, if you don’t mind the generally high difficulty. Head On is a near 1:1 port of Flatout 2/Ultimate Carnage, just slightly simplified visually to run on the system.

• Colin McRae Rally 2005 Plus: As the name implies, this is an ever so slightly reworked port of the PC and console game. It’s near 1:1, with only some modest visual downgrades. This is where Codemasters’ rally games peaked prior to Dirt Rally - and unlike Dirt Rally, which is a bonafide racing horror game, this title is accessible to players of all skill levels, with only players who are really into simulations being miffed about the lack of per-tire simulation. Career progression from modest FWD cars to spicy Group B monsters is absolutely exemplary and tracks are a delight, both visually and in terms of design.

• WipeOut Pure: This might just be the best game in the series. Perfect controls, perfect track design, perfect career mode. The only flaw is that on original hardware, the frame rate isn’t always stable. I would highly recommend Pure as an entry into the series.

• MotorStorm: Arctic Edge: One of those “concession games” for older systems as the new generation was already out, releasing for PS2 and PSP - but it’s actually more fun than the mainline games, at least in my opinion. It makes perfect use of the hardware, the vastly different vehicle classes and their strengths and weaknesses are tons of fun, just like in the mainline series, and the track design is wonderfully vertical. It also looks magnificent, which seems to be a trend among PSP racing games, now that I think of it. The developers were so confident in the tech of this title that they included a photo mode, which I don’t think all that many PSP games have.

• Gran Turismo: Everyone expected this to be a mobile port of Gran Turismo 4, but it’s not. While it retains the presentation, large roster of licensed cars, real-world and fictional tracks and highly refined simcade driving physics, there is no conventional campaign. Instead, you create your own racing events and can only buy from a small selection of cars each virtual day. It’s an interesting concept. Do try it out just for the wow-factor of having a game this photorealistic on the PSP and perhaps stay for the fun you can create yourself. If you lack the creativity, people have created random event generators: https://sites.google.com/site/gtpspcampaigngenerator/ Gran Turismo is also to this day - and someone correct me if I’m wrong - the only mobile racing game that features a full 1:1 recreation of the iconic Nürburging, which alone makes it worth playing.

• Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition: Classic Midnight Club on the go, but this time with customization. What’s not to love? Controls are so accurate, every other arcade racer will feel sluggish by comparison, it looks great (again), the cities are huge, there’s tons to do, it has just the right difficulty, challenging without being unfair and it perfectly encompasses this bygone era of early to mid 2000s street racing, even better than any Need for Speed of the time, in my opinion. Like all of the Midnight Club games, this one is also great for just randomly driving around without any goals in mind.

• Test Drive Unlimited: Speaking of randomly driving around, this game represents perhaps the very peak of this idea. Shrinking down the entire island of Oahu at 1:1 scale with its real-world street layout (and some creative liberty in regards to buildings), this one is truly a miracle of optimization. The result may not be the prettiest racing game on the system, but the bouncy, responsive driving physics - which so closely mimic that of Gran Turismo 2 that I’m convinced they straight-up copied them - more than make up for any visual shortcomings. This also means that this cut down version of the 360/PS3/PC game (visuals, some vehicles and customization) is more fun to play than the big version, which has comparatively flat driving physics that straddle the line between arcade and simulation nowhere near as well. If you like the idea of living the idea of living the life on a Hawaiian island, buying homes and cars to fill their garages with, racing down long coastal straights and maneuvering through twisty mountain roads, then this might be right up your alley.

METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER

Patapon

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is an obvious one.