Classic gaming purists and collectors tend to eschew emulators, because the software doesn’t provide the same experience as the original hardware (and generally can’t play cartridges to begin with, which makes collecting them pointless). I’ve been sympathetic to this perspective, and deeply appreciate Analogue’s non-emulation, FPGA-based consoles like the Super Nt and Mega Sg for perfectly running Super NES and Sega Genesis cartridges, respectively, while making them look fantastic on a high-resolution TV. However, I don’t think I really respected just what a big difference this non-emulation technology could make until I held it in my hand.
The Analogue Pocket is the company’s first attempt at a handheld game system, designed to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges with the same care and accuracy as their home consoles. Its screen is so high-resolution compared to the original handhelds that it can reproduce how their LCDs looked as easily as it can make every sprite look razor-sharp. Its audio reproduction is pristine. And its controls feel tighter and more responsive than any emulation-based device I’ve used.
The Pocket takes the best parts of playing with an original Game Boy and combines it with a screen that looks far better than any Game Boy (or DS, or 3DS, and it’s even sharper than the Nintendo Switch’s screen) ever did. If that isn’t enough, you can connect it to your TV with an optional dock for a Switch-like handheld/home console experience, develop your own games and apps for it with free programming software, and create your own chiptunes music. The Analogue Pocket is the only Game Boy device you’ll ever need, which easily justifies its $219 price and earns the handheld our Editors’ Choice award.
A Premium, Upscale Game Boy
The Pocket’s design is unquestionably inspired by the original Game Boy’s, with a vertical form factor that places a screen directly above a directional pad and face buttons. The chunky, black handheld measures 5.9 by 3.5 by 0.9 inches (HWD), with a solid-feeling, matte black plastic chassis. The Pocket’s front holds a 3.5-inch, 1,600-by-1,440 LCD screen, a plus-shaped direction pad, four face buttons (two concave, two convex, like the original SNES controller), and three buttons for Start, Select, and Menu near the bottom.
The left edge of the system holds a flat green power button and a tiny volume rocker, while the right edge features a microSD card slot. The volume rocker is a bit too small to easily find with a fingertip without looking. You won’t accidentally press it, but you might have to take an extra second to adjust the volume.
The back of the Pocket features a thick, grippy bottom half and a much more narrow top half that leaves the cartridge slot open. This design decision creates enough room for left and right trigger buttons around the slot, and ensures that Analogue’s upcoming cartridge adapters will fit without issue. The cartridge slot itself is a Game Boy Advance slot, which makes it backwards compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. The slot is wide open to accommodate adapters for other systems, which means your Game Boy cartridges stick out on the back instead of fitting snugly in a recess, and there is no dust cover to protect the slot itself when a game isn’t in it. We didn’t have any issues with cartridges wiggling or feeling loose in the slot, but they still feel less secure than they do in the original, form-fitting handhelds.
Unlike the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, the Analogue Pocket’s bottom half doesn’t open up to insert batteries. Instead, a built-in 4,300mAh rechargeable battery provides between six and 10 hours of play time.
The Pocket’s bottom edge holds a USB-C port for charging and connecting to the optional Analogue Dock accessory to play games on your TV, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Link Cable port for using Analogue’s optional Pocket to Pocket Link Cable or certain Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Advance Link Cables. The Analogue Pocket doesn’t have Wi-Fi or any other internet connectivity, but you can still trade Pokemon between the first three game generations with the cable, and enjoy other multiplayer games locally with a wire.
As is typical with Analogue’s products, the Analogue Pocket has good construction. It feels solid in the hand, and all of the controls feel nicely springy and clicky. The matte finish also looks quite nice, giving the impression of a more mature, upscale version of the Game Boy.
Bigger, Better Screen
The Pocket’s screen is absolutely stunning. It’s 100 times the 160-by-144 resolution of the original Game Boy’s screen, and 60 times that of the Game Boy Advance’s screen (total number of pixels). In fact, its 615-pixels-per-inch density is significantly sharper than even flagship smartphones. It’s the ideal canvas to take advantage of the system’s FPGA core and Analogue’s fantastic scaling technology that lets low-resolution, classic handheld games appear visually faithful or razor-sharp.
In fact, because the resolution is so much higher than the original handhelds, the Pocket can apply compelling retro filters that actually look good, compared with the generally low-quality scan line options in many other retro game devices. By holding the Home button down and pressing left or right on the direction pad, you can choose between perfectly crisp upscaled graphics displayed as bright and colorful as possible, or have the picture emulate the original handheld the game was made for by effectively rendering a tiny dark “frame” around each game-designated pixel to give the impression of looking at the much lower-resolution GB/GBC/GBA screens. These filters also limit the color range of Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games to appear more accurate, and replace stark black-and-white with the green-tinted monochrome of the Game Boy or gray monochrome of the Game Boy Pocket for GB games. For GBA games, you can even choose between the original Game Boy Advance’s more muted colors or the Game Boy Advance SP AGS-101’s brighter, backlit colors.
All the Accessories
Several accessories are available for the Pocket, and depending on your tastes some of them might be vital. The biggest one is the Analogue Dock, a $100 dock for the Pocket that gives the system a touch of Nintendo Switch flexibility. It outputs the system’s video to any TV over HDMI at 1080p, and supports Bluetooth controllers including several 8Bitdo gamepads, including the Pro 2; the Switch Pro Controller; and the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4. The dock is a simple, black block with a recess equipped with a USB-C port in the middle for the Pocket, and a black, metal cylinder behind it to support the system. The Pocket isn’t held in place in a form-fitting slot when docked; it’s supported by the USB-C plug and metal tube behind it. Again, the Pocket didn’t accidentally fall out of the dock, but a deeper recess or some form of supporting side pieces would have made it feel more secure.
The back panel holds an HDMI port, a USB-C port for the included cable and wall adapter, and two USB-A ports for wired controllers and updating the dock’s firmware with a USB drive.
Analogue also plans to release four, $30 adapters to expand the Pocket’s capabilities beyond Game Boy games. Currently only the Game Gear adapter is available, but adapters for Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, and TurboGrafx-16 games will launch next year. Other accessories include a $16 tempered glass screen protector, and a $30 hard case for storage and display (the Pocket is not usable while inside it). Several cables round out the accessories, ranging from $16 to $20 that include a sync cable for connecting to other Pockets or original Game Boy systems (except the first Game Boy) and USB/MIDI cables for using the Pocket’s music sequencing features with computers or audio gear.
Analogue sent us several of the accessories for testing along with the Pocket itself, including the Analogue Dock and Game Gear adapter.
Plays Games Perfectly
I tested the Analogue Pocket with over a dozen different Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games, including both Japanese and North American cartridges. All but one loaded perfectly on the Pocket; the only exception was a reproduction cart of Final Fantasy V Advance I purchased from eBay with the “Sound Restoration” mod applied to it. That cartridge didn’t load at all, which could be because of inconsistent manufacturing of reproduction carts. Analog is currently testing similar reproduction carts to investigate the problem, and is working on a solution. Another reproduction cart, the Castlevania Double Pack, worked fine on the Pocket.
I also tried a few Game Gear games using the Game Gear adapter, and they all worked without issues. The adapter blocks the Pocket’s shoulder buttons, but none of the systems the adapters are for feature shoulder buttons, so it shouldn’t be an issue with those games.
Every game plays, for lack of a better word, perfectly. The graphics are sharp, bright, and colorful (or accurately muted, tinted, and textured to reflect the original handhelds’ screens), and the sound is spot-on. Starting up Tetris on the Analogue Pocket brought me back to 1989, just from how the music sounded. Game Boy Advance games are letterboxed on the 4:3 screen because of their wider aspect ratio, but they still look fantastic, and you’re still getting around the same active screen size as the original GBA.
Control consistently feels just as excellent on the Pocket. The direction pad and face buttons have the perfect levels of clickiness and springiness, and inputs come through instantly. I’m very forgiving of the quirks of emulators for playing classic games and tend not to pay attention to minute levels of lag, but even so the responsiveness of the Pocket feels a step above every emulation-based gaming device I’ve used. It’s a distinction I never quite noticed or appreciated until now, but it comes through on the Pocket.
Graphics, sound, and control all feel just as good on a TV over the Analogue Dock, with a small visual caveat. The LCD-emulating filters available on the Pocket’s screen aren’t available when the video is output over HDMI at 1080p, so you can’t get that incredible effect of the original handhelds’ screens on your TV. To be fair, the lower output resolution probably slightly limits just how well that texturing filter can look, and the effect might simply not translate to a large screen you’re sitting a few feet away from instead of a smaller one in your hand. Every game looks crisp and clean on the TV, which is the output I desire from emulation-based retro game systems, and my preferred way to play classic games. For monochrome Game Boy games, you can switch between a few light color filters to tint the game mint, blue, green, or purple, but I would have liked to have had the green-browns of the original Game Boy and darker grayscale of the Game Boy Pocket as options.
The Pocket’s superlative performance is from the system being FPGA-driven rather than using software emulation, and from Analogue’s fantastic upscaling technology. Because it doesn’t use emulation, you won’t find many emulator tricks like rewinding or applying cheats or hacks. However, Analogue has enabled save states on the Pocket, storing a game’s state in memory so you can snap back to it with a button press. Holding the Analogue button down and pressing up on the direction pad saves your game state, and pressing down on the pad loads that state. The feature is currently in beta, and only provides one save state slot. That said, a future software update will expand those capabilities and add screenshot capabilities.
Extra Features: Programming and Music Tools
Besides playing classic cartridge-based handheld games, the Analogue Pocket has additional features I can’t test nearly as thoroughly. GB Studio is an application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that provides a fairly direct, visual toolkit for creating Game Boy-level games and software. GB Studio projects can then be exported as .pocket files, which the Pocket can read (or as Game Boy ROM files, which it cannot, but which can be run in an emulator).
It seems to be a fairly direct, flexible program that lets programmers create games in a variety of genres almost entirely through visual objects rather than text-based coding. Unfortunately, it’s a bit beyond my skill set. The software also set off my PC’s antivirus when compiling sample projects, which indicates it plays a bit fast and loose with temp files (though likely doesn’t actually present a system threat).
For even more dedicated programmers who want to dig into the technology behind the Pocket (and Analogue’s other devices), the Pocket features a second FPGA core just for development of additional system cores to run software designed for even more devices. Analogue announced a FPGA developer program, and make its excellent graphical scalers available through the processor.
Finally, the Pocket has Nanoloop, a music sequencing app. It’s a combination synthesizer and sequencer that lets you create music with surprisingly in-depth control. It supports creating synthesized patterns in 16-note blocks, with three tonal channels and one noise channel. Notes can be adjusted with different options, such as attack, decay, delay, cutoff, highpass and bandpass filters, length, and others. Patterns can be saved into sound banks with 15 slots for each channel, and strung together into songs. There is enough space for 120 sound banks, though each song can only use the patterns from a single sound bank. It’s similar to Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator devices, but with more channels, more storage, and no audio sampling features.
With optional accessory cables, you can connect the Pocket to a computer to sync your projects with digital audio workstation (DAW) software that can handle MIDI data, external MIDI devices like keyboards, analog instruments, or other Analogue Pockets. It seems to be a powerful little toolkit for making chiptunes.
The Best Game Boy
Although Nintendo didn’t create it, the Analogue Pocket is the best Game Boy device ever made. It perfectly plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games, faithfully reproducing each system’s graphics and audio while offering a much sharper and brighter picture in the process. On its own, without any extra features, it is the only device a GB/GBC/GBA cartridge collector could ever need. It made me put my lovingly restored Game Boy Advance SP AGS-101 away in favor of it (and go on the hunt for new Game Boy cartridges to add to my collection).
Add the various adapters, and it can handle Game Gear and (eventually) Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, and TurboGrafx-16 games just as well. Add GB Studio, and it’s a platform for developing and testing your own Game Boy games. Add Nanoloop, and it’s a chiptunes instrument. It’s incredible.
The Pocket is a bit expensive, but the performance and quality justify the price. If you prefer convenience over pristine reproduction, emulation-based handhelds like the Anbernic RG351P can hold thousands of games at once (and come with thousands of games, if you don’t care where they got them) and emulate most game systems up to the fifth console generation. Even the Nintendo Switch can store loads of classic games from different consoles (though, perplexingly, it lacks Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games). Still, for the purest experience, they can’t compete with how good the cartridges look and play on the Analogue Pocket.
