Analogue are a boutique company who specialise in creating luxury, modern versions of some of the most beloved consoles in all of gaming. Their first big hit was the Nt mini, a modern recreation of what is, perhaps, North America's most revered console, the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Unfortunately, I do not own an Nt Mini, and probably never will, this is because the other thing about Analogue systems is that they are strictly limited edition, once they are sold out, that's it. If you can find one for sale, expect to pay upwards of £1000 ($1260). The NES was only the start for Analogue, their next homage to the golden age of gaming was the Super Nt, a pimped out SNES, followed a year later by the Mega Sg, which is both Mega Drive (Genesis) and Master System compatible, these are now also discontinued.
Why then are these Analogue systems so desirable, when there are way cheaper emulation devices available online, often pre-loaded with games? The answer is in a technology called FPGA.
What is FPGA?
FPGA is an acronym which stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and is a type of chip that uses programmable circuit blocks that can be altered as needed. This allows the chip to be programmed to accurately replicate the hardware circuitry of an entire console. Kevtris, the head wizard at Analogue has fine-tuned this technology to such a degree, that their systems clock speeds are identical to the real thing.
Digital Foundry do a deep dive on the accuracy of the Mega Sg in this video: https://youtu.be/_ZCQ6kN9Ie0?si=EjYOWuboTYE5qt4Y, if you want to learn more.
The way that traditional software emulation works, often causes games to run slower or with lower frame rates, resulting in lag, stuttering, and other performance issues. If you stick your copy of F-Zero into a Super Nt, it will not only run perfectly, but the visuals will be in stunning HD and the iconic soundtrack will sound better than ever.
The Super Nt and Mega Sg are incredible machines and are, in my opinion, the ultimate way to experience Super Nintendo and Mega Drive games. They each replicate a single system, but FPGA is capable of so much more. This is where the Analogue Pocket comes in.
openFPGA
The Pocket runs on a newly designed operating system called Analogue OS and is powered by not one, but two FPGA chips. Another unique aspect of FPGA chips is that they are reprogrammable in the field, meaning that they can technically recreate multiple systems. The Pocket uses this power to stunning effect, cramming the power of many classic consoles into a compact handheld device.
The first FPGA chip runs the Pockets core systems: The OG Gameboy DMG, Gameboy Colour (Sorry Americans, but I insist on spelling it correctly) and Gameboy Advance. The Pocket will run any of the 2,780+ cartridges released for these three handhelds straight out of the box.
This leaves the second FPGA chip to power a project called openFPGA, something along the lines of the equally brilliant MiSTer project. Essentially, this allows talented programmers to develop and port their own cores to the pocket. Each core can reprogram the FPGA to replicate a specific handheld, console, home computer or even arcade machine.
Developers such as Jotego, Spiritualized and many others, have done, and continue to do, amazing things with the technology. The Pocket is now capable of recreating many different systems, from the Commodore Amiga to the Neo Geo. There is a lot to cover, but let us start with the clear inspiration for the Pocket, the Nintendo Gameboy.
Screen Supreme
The openFPGA cores are the icing on the cake of the Pocket, but its bread and butter is as a tribute to the Gameboy series of handhelds, and at this it excels. It not only recreates these beloved systems perfectly but takes them to a whole other level. It does this is in various ways but the most obvious way is with its screen.
The Pocket's display is simply spectacular, a 3.5" LCD screen with a massive 615 ppi (pixels per inch) density and a resolution of 1600x1440, exactly 10x the resolution of the DMG. This means that no scaling is necessary and the image fills the entire screen from corner to corner beautifully.
The colour accuracy, dynamic range and brightness levels are extraordinary and the screen is topped off by a sheet of super strong Gorilla Glass. The overall effect of this is stunning, Gameboy games have never looked this good, it truly has to be seen to be believed.
When you watch the comparison videos above, you will see the same Pokemon Silver cartridge running on both original hardware and the Analogue Pocket. I had to use lighting to make the DMG display visible on screen and the Pocket is running with no lighting. The difference in visual clarity is staggering, the visuals on the Pocket are bright and vibrant and everything is super-sharp. The audio on the Pocket is also far superior and in stereo, compared to the tinny mono sound from the DMG.
The Pocket has different display modes as well, the video above is in Analogue GB mode which is the default mode for DMG games and takes full advantage of the large, powerful screen. You can switch this on the fly to Original GB DMG, which mimics the pea-soup green of the DMG, Original GBP, an upgrade to the greyscale tones of the Gameboy Pocket, Original GBP Light, which has the Cyan glow of the Japan exclusive Gameboy Light, or Pinball Neon Matrix, which is a red and black homage to the Virtual Boy. You can check out these different display modes below.
Having these extra display modes is a really cool extra, but the upgrades do not end there, you can also easily create save states at any time, not just for the game that you are playing, but all your games. You can have 128 save states across all your cartridge games plus there are another 128 slots reserved for openFPGA cores. Screenshots are easy to take as well and you can view all your played games in an internal library along with game info and cover art.
You will need a micro SD card for these functions, which goes directly into a dedicated slot, alternatively, you can put the Pocket into sleep/wake mode with a push of the power button, taking you straight back to the exact same point in your game.
A Splash of Colour
If you have a bunch of Gameboy cartridges lying around, the Pocket is already the best way to play them just for the reasons above, but there are even more. Some DMG carts such as Metroid II and Super Mario Land 2 would display in special 16-colour palettes if played on a Gameboy Colour. The Pocket does not seem to replicate this feature natively, but it can do something even better, you can colourize every cartridge and change colour palettes on the fly, in-game.
The Analogue GB display mode we have already seen, has several basic palette options within it which will colourize any DMG cart, you can even create and upload your own custom palettes, which adds another level of improvement to your experience.
Some even later carts, such as Pokemon Silver were designed to display in regular Monochrome if played on a DMG, but in full glorious colour if played on a GBC. The Pocket will display the full colour version automatically unless you force it to run in DMG mode in the options. This gives the screen another chance to show what it is capable of.
I Can See a Rainbow
The screen on the Pocket really comes into its own when given bright colours to work with. The Gameboy Colour has a usable palette of 32,000 colours, of which, 56 can be displayed simultaneously, and boy, can the Pocket make those colours shine. The super-high pixel density, the bright, vivid colour range and the fact that screen on the Pocket is a third bigger than the GBC original with 10x the resolution, adds up to something special.
Gameboy Colour games get a huge uplift on the pocket, especially in the Analogue GBC display mode which looks spectacular. You can adjust the sharpness and saturation levels in the menu to get the look you want, there are also Original GBC and GBC+ display settings which simulate and optimise the original consoles style, with separated pixels on a dot matrix grid.
When it comes to compatibility, I tested every Gameboy cartridge that I own and every single one ran and played without flaws, although the Pocket can be very fussy about the cleanliness of your cartridges, bringing up an error message despite running on several test models of original hardware. This is not necessarily a bad thing as you do not want the connectors on your luxury handheld clogging up with grime.
If you are a new Pocket owner I suggest cleaning all your carts using a cotton bud (Q tip) and a little isopropyl alcohol, before inserting them into your expensive toy. Even special, unusually shaped cartridges, such as Pokemon Pinball, which takes a AAA battery to provide rumble directly from the cart, worked without a hitch.
Can I Get an Advance?
So, the Pocket smashes it out of the park when it comes to the 8-bit Gameboys, but how does it fare with their more powerful sibling, the Gameboy Advance? Unfortunately, the landscape 240x160 resolution of the GBA, does not scale up exactly to fill the entire screen of the pocket. As a compromise, a black letterbox border sandwiches the game screen at the top and the bottom, which is a small price to pay when the graphics look this good.
The proprietary Analogue GBA display setting is the star of the show, once again. There are options to set it to an optimised rendition of an Original GBA or AGS-101 display, if you prefer a more nostalgic vibe. An option for high quality audio is also present which eliminates a lot of the notorious fuzziness found in the original hardware.
The Gameboy Advance output on this screen is so bright and vivid, that I had to desaturate the colours in the menu and turn the brightness level down to 60%, just to be able to capture decent footage, as my camera could not handle it.
Modern IPS displays on modded original hardware do a very good job of making the GBA visuals bright and vibrant but they miss a little je ne sais quoi. The Pocket makes you realise what that is. The screens ability to replicate graphics down to a sub-pixel level, gives its output an authenticity that repurposed Blackberry LCDs just cannot reproduce. The thought and attention to detail that Analogue have put into this machine is truly mind-blowing.
Ergonomics
Games undoubtably look and sound fantastic on the Pocket, but how do they feel to play?
The Pocket both looks and feels premium, the materials used are all high-quality and it feels nice in the hands. The device is heavy-duty without being too heavy and has a nice balance to it, I have played several 3-hour sessions without feeling any discomfort.
The D-Pad, whilst not quite up to the standard of my favourite, the 8BitDo SN30 pro, is still really good and perfectly playable for the majority of games, although I found pulling off special moves in games like Super Street Fighter 2 to be a little inconsistent, the D-Pad is perhaps just a little too small for more complex actions with my chunky digits.
The four face buttons follow the style of the North American SNES pad, with B/A being convex and X/Y being concave making them easy to differentiate by touch. The spacing, size and button travel of the face buttons is also very nice, with no issues over many hours of play.
Rounding up the face of the pocket, we have the start and the select buttons flanking the multi-purpose Analogue button, near the bottom of the unit. The Analogue button opens the extensive menus, If pressed along with up on the D-Pad, a save state will be created, and pressing it simultaneously with start will take a screenshot. This all functions extremely smoothly and the placement of these buttons is pretty optimal.
So far, so good, playing DMG and GBC games on this is a joy, with settings to remap any button, so if, like me, you would rather use Y and B as your main buttons, Super Gameboy style, then you can do that. There are also L and R trigger buttons a la Gameboy Advance, and here we run into the first flaw in this so far perfect system.
Analogue have went for the style of the GBA SP with the shoulder buttons, but whereas the cartridge on the SP sat flush with the top of the device, cartridges on the Pocket protrude and get in the way of optimal finger placement. The screen also is an obstacle as the shoulder buttons sit a little over halfway up the rear of the device.
This means that for games such as F-Zero Climax, where you are constantly using the shoulder buttons to drift and spin attack, you are forced to hold the Pocket in a claw-like grip, which isn't ideal and gets uncomfortable after a while. There are options to remap L/R to the X/Y buttons instead which works rather well for many games, such as Super Street Fighter 2, but for many games this feels unnatural and can be awkward.
The portrait form factor of the device means that this was the only location they could really choose for the triggers, but nevertheless it is a bit of a design flaw and takes away a little of the enjoyment for certain games.
Of course, people have come up with solutions, modding their machines in various ways, with some even integrating full-on Xbox and Dreamcast triggers into their Pocket!
There are also after-market solutions such as PlayStation-style grips that make the triggers more accessible, such as this, https://www.reddit.com/r/AnaloguePocket/comments/15nbxtg/trigger_grip_for_analogue_pocket_a_modfree/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3.
I am hopeful that this issue can be solved by Analogue inevitably releasing a GBA version of the Pocket with a landscape form factor, but they have yet to announce such a device.
The left side of the Pocket hosts a speaker, plus the volume and power buttons. These buttons are both lozenge-shaped and are also exactly the same size, which leads to problems differentiating between them. This is also a minor design flaw but not so important, as these buttons are only used occasionally.
On the right lies the second speaker and a micro SD slot, a decent sized SD card is recommended as this is where your memories (save states), screenshots and library cover art will be stored. If you are planning to dabble in the many openFPGA cores, a decent amount of storage will be needed.
The last aspect to cover is the base of the unit, where there is a fair bit going on. Starting at the right, we have a 3.5mm audio out to connect to headphones or speakers, no Bluetooth headphone connectivity here unfortunately, which is a little disappointing.
The audio output through wired headphones is clean and crisp, it is also lag-free which is likely the reason why Analogue went with the wired option. This is important for accuracy when gaming and vital for something called Nanoloop, which I will come back to.
Next up we have a couple of LEDs, one signifying power/charging status and one for the GBC Infrared transceiver, which has a variety of functions across many GBC games, including data transfers between two consoles. To the left of these is a USB-C charging port, the Pocket can be charged via the included USB-C to USB-C cable or in the Dock, which is sold separately.
Lastly we have the link port where by using either original Nintendo link cables or Analogue's modern versions, up to four Pockets or original consoles can be linked together for multiplayer gaming or data transfer, such as exchanging/battling Pokemon. This port and the 3.5mm audio out are also used to connect the Pocket to various Midi devices, Mac/PC and other Pockets/Gameboys while using the Nanoloop software that is built in to the system.
Stuck in a Loop
Integrated into the Pocket is a digital audio workstation called Nanoloop that can be used to create chiptune music. When I first got my Pocket I tried this out for a few minutes and did not understand it and quickly returned to gaming. Four months later, prior to starting this review, I had forgotten about it.
If I was to properly review Nanoloop, I was going to to need some help to understand it. I found an excellent beginners guide on YouTube,
With a little tuition, it is actually quite easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Nanoloop is a synthesizer and a sequencer, which repeatedly loops in a bar of sixteen steps. You place notes in any of the sixteen slots in the loop to make beats, then there are multiple ways in which you can manipulate each note, to totally change their sound. There are four sound channels looping simultaneously, each with sixteen steps to place notes in. This allows for surprising complexity, you can also save channels or whole loops in memory and load them in on the fly. Once I had the hang of the basics I found Nanoloop to be rather fun and surprisingly addictive.
Hardly Yuzo Koshiro or Nobeo Uematsu level, but I had a lot of fun trying. The only external equipment that I had to hand, were a generic Aux to Aux cable and a Bluetooth speaker.
Analogue sell various accessories for the Pocket on their website, including a variety of different Nanoloop cables, which can be used to link the Pocket to external devices.
This playlist,
shows what can be achieved.
Nanoloop is a powerful tool, but I currently lack the musical aptitude and the necessary equipment to take full advantage of it. I plan to delve into it further in a future accessories review.
Come into my Studio
Ultra Gameboy, digital audio workstation, what else? How about creating your very own Gameboy games and playing them directly on the Pocket?
Thanks to full compatibility with an amazing program called GB Studio, you can do just that. GB Studio is a program for PC or Mac that allows you to make actual Gameboy games, even if you have little to no coding experience. Using a simple visual scripting system for the programming allows even total beginners to pick things up quickly. With experience you are able to mess around with the assembly code and add plug-ins to add serious complexity to your games.
At any point, you can export your creation as a .pocket file to your devices SD card and perform playtesting directly on the Pocket. If you have long dreamed of making your own game like me, I can tell you that seeing your creation come to life in your hands, is a sight to behold.
Several Indie developers have even brought out full-on physical releases of their games created using GB Studio, such as Deadeus by Incube8 Games and Dragonborne by Spacebot Interactive. With a lot of time, hard work and patience, it is definitely possible for a solo hobbyist to create a fully working game with this program and being able to easily play and test gameplay on the Pocket is a really cool bonus feature of the machine.
Hardcore
Surely that is it? What more can this wonder machine possibly do? Oh just the coolest function of them all. Remember I mentioned openFPGA earlier? Let's talk about that.
openFPGA is an open platform that allows programmers to develop cores that can reprogram the second FPGA chip on the Pocket, and boy, have they went to town. The Pocket is not just a luxurious way to play Gameboy games, it is a gaming powerhouse. Through the magic of FPGA technology, the Pocket can transform into an authentic, accurate version of anything from the PDP-1, an early computer, upon which the world's first digital video game, Spacewar, debuted in 1962, to a Neo Geo or even a Tamagotchi.
The amount of cores is massive and growing all the time, with the Vectrex being the most recent addition. The Pocket can become a fully functioning Commodore Amiga, NES, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis or PC Engine to name just a few, all playable on the sublime handheld screen, and they all look amazing.
The amount of AAA games that are accurately playable on the Pocket is ridiculous. Megaman is an iconic game franchise, right? Well, there are an astonishing forty different Megaman titles that can potentially be played, across ten different systems, such as the Japan only WonderSwan renditions.
Perhaps the Belmont family's endless battle against the forces of evil, in the Castlevania series is more your thing? No less than twelve games in the series are here, including the PC Engine exlusive title, Rondo of Blood, a contender for the title of best in series. Legend of Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Pokemon have all got many playable games, and that is just the obvious ones, I could literally go on and on.
There are a ton of Arcade cores with more being added all the time. Konami's timeless classic, Track and Field, Sega's iconic OutRun and Capcom's Street Fighter Alpha 3 being just a few of the highlights. There are even some really cool, unusual things, like the Official SquareSoft Chrono Trigger Music Library.
This was only available by satellite broadcast in Japan, using the Satellaview Super Famicom add-on. This music player has all 62 tracks from the game, plus two unreleased tracks that were cut from the game, this is being generated directly from the Super Famicom hardware and it sounds wonderful.
The fact that this is even still playable in some way is incredible, and for the purpose of preserving the medium of video game history is very important.
The good news is that nearly every core is wonderful to play on the Pocket, the face buttons are all that you will need in most cases, plus the button layout for every core is entirely remappable, so you can set them up whichever way suits you. The only real exceptions are the SNES core because of the aforementioned trigger issue and the Amiga core.
Mouse and keyboard, is of course, the optimal way to play many Amiga games, a lot of the best ones being point and click adventures or strategy games. These can be played on the Pocket, but the control scheme is far too fiddly to be practical. These issues can all be solved though.
Hybrid creature
The one accessory that I would recommend is an essential purchase alongside the Pocket, is the accompanying Dock, this device essentially transforms the Pocket into a hybrid console, just like the incredibly popular Nintendo Switch. Pop the Pocket into the Dock and it not only conveniently charges the device, but via an HDMI out, it transfers the display of the Pocket onto any attached screen, with minimal lag.
A multitude of different controllers can be synced to the Pocket wirelessly via Bluetooth or 2.4g, 8BitDo controllers work seamlessly, such as the SN30 pro, which is perfect for 2D/retro gaming and versatile enough that I use mine for all gaming, not just retro.
Four controllers or arcade sticks can be synced up to the Dock simultaneously, so if you and your friends want to play 4-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Arcade Game, not a problem. Playing with a controller eliminates the Pocket's pesky shoulder button issue with SNES and GBA games, so you can drift round corners like a Pro in F-Zero again. Peripherals can also be connected to the Dock via two USB ports, including keyboards and mice, so Amiga games can also be played in the optimal way.
Let's Accessorize
There are more accessories than the dock and aforementioned Nanoloop cables available for the Pocket. There are adapters for Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, PC Engine and Neo Geo Pocket cards/carts, allowing them to run on the Pocket. The cores for these have been done in-house by Analogue so you can guarantee they will have unrivalled accuracy. As of writing, only the Game Gear one has shipped and I do not have one to test yet.
A tempered glass screen protector, fast charging USB-C power supply, Pocket to Pocket link cable for multiplayer and a Pocket hard case for travel and display, are others extras that you can order along with your Pocket. I plan to cover all these in a dedicated accessories review in the near future.
Summary and Verdict
Just in case you did not notice all the gushing praise that I have been pouring on the Analogue Pocket, then let me make it clear, I absolutely love this machine for many reasons. It is a tribute to handheld gaming and the golden age of video games in general, the authenticity and accuracy of the cores, the fact that it is aesthetically gorgeous, the spectacular screen and Analogue's dedication to preserving video game history. There are a few little design flaws with the machine but the good points definitely outweigh the bad.
Whether you are a seasoned gamer who is schooled in retro games, or a post-millennial kid looking to delve in to the history and origins of their favourite franchises, the Pocket is a perfect gaming machine. If you love video games, then I thoroughly recommend getting a Pocket, but you had better hurry before they are sold out.
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