Reading your posts about the PSP makes me love it even more. The PSP Go never leaves my pocket with games like Def Jam FFNY, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Metal Gear Acid, Outrun2, Manhunt 2, Ridge Racer 2 and many PS1 titles like Ghost in the Shell, Dino Crisis 2. Not to mention all the emulators you have like Sega Mega Drive or GBA.Eh, I think the issue is that PSP often just received brand new games based on franchises that originated on PS2 (or earlier) and that was often the most impressive.
Midnight Club 3 is pretty nuts, though, as it's a massive open world driving game on PSP with motion blur and reflections intact. Outrun 2, while not perfect, is kind of amazing in that it originated on Xbox arcade hardware - they even found a way to simulate the reflections and specular highlights. The two GTA games are interesting as well - they are new games but also basically ports in that they feature the same city maps and visual design as the PS2 games. It's simply a collection of new missions and a new story. Having an open world game less than a year after PSP launched was impressive as well.
The AAA console space was *VERY* different during that era, however. There were console shooters but, aside from a few like Halo, most weren't that impressive especially compared to what we were starting to see on the PC. It's not really a comparable time period.
The PSP launched in 2004 - that was the year that Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 all shipped. The Xbox ports of those games, which was the most powerful console at the time, are similar in quality to the Switch port of Wolfenstein 2. That's how far ahead the PC was during that period. There simply wasn't a chance in hell that you could pull that off on a mobile device like PSP. It wasn't time yet.
The fact such a small handheld can run all that blows my mind. What a great platform the PSP was and still is.