There's a lot of handheld game consoles out there right now for indie game devs. It's an exciting time to carry a game in your pocket! But it's splitting the community.
My proposal: learn how to make Game Boy games! Almost every one of these devices can play Game Boy games, and there's lots of resources for every skill level in the homebrew scene!
Advanced: https://github.com/gbdev/awesome-gbdev/blob/master/README.md
Intermediate: http://www.dotmatrixgame.com/
Beginner: https://www.gbstudio.dev/
@bunnyjane in my NES (and now also SNES) development I've always been really amused at just how many platforms I can just drop my games into and play on. I personally prefer those two over Game Boy due to screen size and processor choice.
I definitely agree that homebrew is a good workaround if you intentionally want to run your games on these devices. Big advantage in being able to run on some device without expecting the player to learn how to compile your thing. Just a ROM and that's it.
@NovaSquirrel @bunnyjane The problem is these aren't portable on original hardware.
So the obvious solution is to make homebrew Genesis games for your Sega Nomad!
@RC @bunnyjane Seriously though the Sega Genesis is a very solid option. The hardware is very straightforward and I saw what looked like a decent SDK to use C with it.
I'd definitely recommend it over the SNES for a beginner wanting to do a game for a 16-bit console.
Also definitely worth looking at the Game Boy Advance which is very friendly, and it should be very easy to pick one up.
@NovaSquirrel @RC Turns out there's a BASIC compiler for Genesis!!! Heck yeah, even I can write games in BASIC!
https://segaretro.org/BasiEgaXorz