Analog Pocket Finally Makes It Possible to Use Old Game Cartridges
Analogue Pocket continues to win accolades despite always selling 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 probably seen a ton of videos promoting cheap, portable emulators that can run a ton of old games. While many of them may bear some resemblance to the Analogue Pocket, none of them are actually anything like it. That’s because Analogue Pocket isn’t just a cheap emulator designed to cram as many games into a plastic case as possible.
Instead, Pocket is designed to work with 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 games, since they’ll actually run on the cartridges themselves—just as if you’d put them in a real Game Boy back in the day. 90s.
But that is not all. You can also buy a variety of cartridge adapters for Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16, and even Neo Geo Pocket Color games. This allows the small laptop to act as a single device for a variety of retro games played on the original cartridges.
How does Analogue Pocket work?
Analogue Pocket uses so-called field-programmable gate array (FGPA) motherboards, which essentially impersonate the original systems that the cartridges were designed to run on. When you enter Super Mario Land , the Analogue Pocket pretends to be a Game Boy motherboard. When you play The Minish Cap , it pretends to be a Game Boy Advance. While this is not standard emulation, it is technically a form of hardware emulation in that Pocket runs legacy software systems on the board at the same clock speeds that the original designers intended.
Not to mention, the Pocket features a 3.5-inch, 615 ppi backlit display with a resolution of 1600 x 1440. That’s 10 times the resolution of the original Game Boy, while still offering true-to-life renditions of every device. display features such as LCD backlight effects, pixel grid patterns, and LCD subpixel patterns.
Thanks to this design, Analogue Pocket can recreate the smoothest visuals, sound and gameplay as intended by the developers, which has long been a problem when emulating some older games that only ran on slow and underpowered hardware.
Is this something you should buy?
Since Analogue Pocket doesn’t support software emulation, you’ll need the physical cartridges you want to play on. This is fine if you’ve been collecting these games for years, but if not, you’ll have a hard time getting your hands on old cartridges. Some of them have loyal fans and command high prices.
So the $250 price tag might not be entirely worth it if you don’t already have a drawer to store the cartridges you can use. After all, there are many other emulators similar to Analogue Pocket. However, they don’t offer the same physicality of play with the original gaming cart that some may be looking for.
Ultimately, Analogue Pocket is a bet on your nostalgia for a time of gaming that has come and gone. This is a great system, especially if you have a bunch of old games that you like to enjoy. But with a $250 price tag and extremely limited supply, it might be hard to get your hands on one unless you strike while it’s available.
To help with existing inventory, Analogue often releases limited edition Analogue Pocket models . The latest batch includes several Game Boy-themed color options that will be available to order on November 17th. Of course, with such high demand, they likely won’t stay in stock for long, so be sure to grab one. before they go, in case you were wondering.
While all other Analogue Pocket models are sold out, Analogue allows you to sign up for email alerts when the original black and white models are back in stock. It’s a shame there aren’t other color options like glow-in-the-dark or translucent options, but if you miss out on this latest sale and want the best chance to snag a Pocket for yourself, be sure to sign up. To do this, go to Analogue’s Pocket product page , scroll down to the black or white version, and then click “Notify me when it’s in stock .”