the near service for the ps vita was a very short lived competetor to streetpass, kind of, it had some similarities to both streetpass and spotpass with a lil geocaching, you could drop items or custom loadouts and people who check into near in that area could pick those items up, it could range from loadouts in call of duty, items in games like ragnarok odyssey and shinobido 2 or even costumes in ultimate marvel vs capcom 3! it wasnt just items too, you could send things like challanges or time trials for people to beat, and if they came back and posted their better time, you could do a little back and fourth, it was cool! it very much was a reason to want a 3G vita at the time, and the service was there all working at launch, because it was so cool to just log in and see what you got, little items from different games, some of which you didnt even own, you could see what other people were playing, you could add them and even make friends if you wanted to. the system even compiled local stats, what were the most popular games and apps in the area and even a little section where people could rate those games with a, somewhat limited, selection of emojis! it felt much more interactive and in depth than streetpass, like it was a real community, which considering how few people really would have owned vitas, was a nice thing and it really made you feel a part of it, even if you didnt personally know anyone that owned one.

the thing has some vibes too, the music, which should be playing in the background of the site (the autoplay music is supposed to be a part of the site, if it's not playing then idk whats wrong) is amazing and is in several of my regular playlists, hearing it in the app just felt like coming home, it was cozy in a way that very few music pieces can be for me, it's welcoming and warm. the almost notebooky scrapbooky aesthetic the app has is really nice too, paper sound effects and tabs give it a very tactile feel almost and it just has a cozy vibe, something like this would absolutely catch on a lot more now just based on the look of it alone in an age of low-fi cozy aesthetics. a lot of the features were slowly put into other areas over time though, so parts of it didn't stay too useful, many things like activity logs were eventually just rolled into the live are for those specific games or in the live area of the friends section, but a lot of aspects like the game goods and the locational data were kept in the app

i have a ton of stories about the service myself, i was, likely, one of the few hardcore near users in my time. i was a day one vita faithful, i got my vita at launch along with a few games and near always facinated me, i loved comparing the games i had with other people, i loved finding out about new games id never even heard of, this was how i found out about some of my fav vita games like virtues last reward and shinobido 2 and i ended up getting those entirely because i found them in another players list in near! i remember sending people ghosts in wipeout, getting cool items from another user nearby me that had also imported ragnarok odyssey (they were also the only person i ever saw who also owned ragnarok odyssey) i made some psn friends that i ended up playing games like wipeout and UMVC3 with. i remember always connecting to wifi whenever i was out any chance i could to update near and see just what i could get and what new games i could find, there were even some games that worked wholley though near! treasure park was a good example of this. it was a free minesweepery game that let you make your own levels and send them to friends, you had to find treasure and avoid traps using the games touchscreen, like minesweeper, and while it is playable solo with randomised maps, near made it feel much more special and there was nothing like connecting to near and getting a bunch of cool, and usually unfairly hard, maps from people! there was also travel bug, a little virtual pet tamagotchi style app that let you swap bugs with other users via near and let you send out your own little bug on adventures! it was cute! though very limited and i had a little less luck with this one versus treasure park. it had a lot of customisation though, you could really make your lil guy your own and you unlocked stuff at a pretty steady pace depending on how far you and your bug had walked, the bugs would even send you cute little photos of where they've been as they traveled!

i miss near a lot when i remember how much fun i used to have with it, it was discontinued in 2017 though even by then very few games used it anymore and it was starting to become rarer and rarer to ever see anyone with it, i would have loved if this had of had a real comeback with the hacking scene but i feel like that'll never happen, and considering how badly that could go maybe its for the best, but i would love to see something like this come back in a handheld, the 3ds was great for it and the switch is severely lacking in charm in part because of that, features like near give a console so much heart and that goes a long way for me.