The Analogue Pocket continues to garner praise despite always being sold out. I mean, Ars Technica calls it “the greatest Game Boy ever made.” (Your move, Nintendo.) This thing is beloved, and if you haven’t heard much about it yet, you’re in for a treat—an expensive treat, that is.
Not just an emulator
If you’ve spent any time on TikTok or Instagram in recent months, you’ve likely seen the horde of videos advertising cheap handheld emulators that can run a ton of old games. While many of them might share some similarities in appearance with the Analogue Pocket, none of them are actually like it at all. That’s because the Analogue Pocket isn’t just a cheap emulator designed to cram as many games as possible into a plastic shell.
Instead, the Pocket is designed to play any Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advanced cartridge. (You read that right: cartridge.) You won’t be relying on emulation to run the games, as they’ll actually be running off the cartridges themselves—just as they would if you had put them into an actual Game Boy back in the ’90s.
But it doesn’t stop there. You can also buy various cartridge adapters to play Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16, and even Neo Geo Pocket Color games. This opens the little handheld up to act as a single device for various retro games, all played off their original cartridges.
How does Analogue Pocket work?
The Analogue Pocket uses what is called Field Programmable Gate Array (FGPA) motherboards that, essentially, pretend to be the original systems these cartridges were designed to run on. When you pop in Super Mario Land, the Analogue Pocket pretends to be the motherboard for a Game Boy. When you play The Minish Cap, it pretends to be a Game Boy Advance. While this isn’t standard emulation, it is technically a form of hardware emulation, since the Pocket runs those older software systems on the board with the same clock speeds the original developers intended.
Not to mention, the Pocket is outfitted with a 3.5-inch, 615 ppi backlit display with a resolution of 1600 x 1440. It’s 10 times the resolution of the original Game Boy, while, at the same time, offering realistic replications of each device’s display quirks, such as backlight LCD effects, pixel grid patterns, and LCD subpixel patterns.
With this design, the Analogue Pocket can recreate the smoothest visuals, audio, and gameplay as the developers intended it, something that has long been an issue when emulating certain older games that only ran off sluggish and underpowered hardware.
Is it something you should buy?
Because the Analogue Pocket doesn’t work off software emulation, you’re going to need the physical cartridges you want to play. That’s fine if you’ve been collecting these games for years, but if not, you’ll find it hard to get your hands on some older cartridges. Some have devoted fanbases and fetch a high price.
As such, the $250 price tag might not be wholly justifiable if you don’t already have a storage box full of cartridges to put to use. After all, there are plenty of other emulators out there that look similar to the Analogue Pocket. However, they don’t offer the physicality of playing off the original game cart that some might be looking for.
Ultimately, the Analogue Pocket is all about banking on your nostalgia for a time in gaming that has come and gone. It’s a great system, especially if you have a ton of old games that you love to enjoy. But, at $250 and with extremely limited inventory, it might be hard to get your hands on one if you don’t strike while they’re available.
To help with the available inventory, Analogue often releases Limited Edition models of the Analogue Pocket. The latest batch include some Game Boy-inspired color options, which will be available to order on Nov. 17. Of course, with the demand so high, these likely won’t stay in stock for very long, so make sure you grab one before they’re gone if you’re interested.
While all other Analogue Pocket models are sold out, Analogue lets you sign up for email alerts whenever the original black-and-white models are back in stock. It’s too bad there isn’t an option for other colors, such as the glow-in-the-dark or translucent options, but if you miss this latest sale and want your best chance to snag a Pocket for yourself, make sure to sign up. To do so, head to Analogue’s Pocket product page, scroll down to the black or white versions, then hit notify me when in stock.
