Just curious what the selling point was for those of you that have one? Most of my gaming is retro stuff on my rp2+ or rg35xx and I just don’t see the appeal the pocket has over the Retroid/Anbernic alternatives. Is the quality and ability to play actual carts that big of a selling point for the higher price and waiting?
To my knowledge, it’s that the analogue devices are running the game in real hardware and not emulation, even if you run the files off a flash cart.
That’s not worth it for many people, but if there’s some game that you can feel isn’t quite right on emulators, there’s a good chance the analogue can be the closest to the original experience. It’s definitely niche and priced accordingly.
Analogue consoles still are emulating the old game consoles, but they do so in a different way than a normal software emulator. This emulates the individual circuits of the device on a special chip called a FPGA. This has the advantage of supporting much lower input latency (say with real controllers) and video latency (down to the cycle for CRTs). This means your lightgun will work on a FPGA NES with connected CRT, along with making the system “feel” better (due to the lower latency).
Yes it’s fantastic. I’ve been playing some old school RPGs like chrono trigger, ff6, earthbound, and mother 3.
If you haven’t already you can run fpga cores for basically any console up to the snes/gba, then you can just load roms onto it. Check out this guide: retrogamecorps.com/…/analogue-pocket-jailbreak-gu…
I was thinking about getting one but then I saw Retroid’s line of products. They run Android instead of using FPGAs so you can play regular Android games (including modern re-releases as well as Steam’s Remote Play) but they dual-boot a stripped-down version of Android for running emulators with better performance.
Was hella fun playing MediEvil on the flight from the US to India and that was with the Retroid Pocket 2, they have a much larger model out now.
It’s an expensive high end GameBoy clone, basically. It uses some specialized hardware (FPGA) to run original GB cartridges and can also run other retro consoles pretty well. It’s a bit nicer than most other handheld emulator devices that are on the market right now, although it’s limited in some other ways.
A Game Boy clone console that can play original Game Boy (Color/Advance) cartridges with a terrific screen and support for many more systems’ ROMs via OpenFPGA.
Right now, I am really enjoying Mario & Luigi on GBA. This one somehow missed me, perhaps because I was expecting something closer to Paper Mario at the time.
I have an order in that I placed last August. I’m hoping to get it by the end of the year, but who knows, they are really slow at manufacturing the devices.
I’m part of the club! Although tbf I haven’t touched it much since getting it about a year ago (I just haven’t played that much retro stuff these days or most of it has been with my Super Nt).
One great addition I got recently was a 3D printed grip case, it made long play sessions sooo much more comfortable (obligatory “not affiliated” and I’m not the one making these, but I really like the quality which is why I’m linking it here).
As far as what I’ve been playing on it recently… really just pick up and play, SoR 2 or Turtles in Time, but I completed Metroid Fusion (first time) a few months ago on the Pocket (that’s what made me get a grip case, it really wasn’t too great wrt shoulder buttons comfort).
I keep being tempted to pick one up but I’m not a huge fan of old handheld games. Even growing up I was always like “I wish these were more like the PC or console versions.” My first system was a GBC so maybe a bit before my time. Happily playing PC games on a steam deck these days though. My childhood dream is real now! lol
But it’s not just handheld games. My analogue pocket has the entire SNES, NES, Mega Drive and Pc Engine libraries, plus Amiga. Loads of MiSTer cores have been ported.
Playing SNES on the pocket is amazing. And it’s better on the pocket than any other device I’ve ever used.
I got mine in the first batch over a year ago and it was defective but they got me a replacement fast. I’ve barely touched it since I got it though. I hardly have time to play video games anymore.
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