Pocket universe

The best way to play Game Boy games? That’s just the beginning for Analogue’s retro handheld

At last, here it is. Analogue Pocket, a handheld console which natively runs cartridges for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, and supports Game Gear cartridges with an adaptor. With future support promised for Neo Geo Pocket Color and Lynx, Pocket will soon cover much of handheld gaming history up to DS and PSP. But once its doors open to developers to add other systems to its roster, it will be in a position to cover much more of gaming history, including 16bit consoles and potentially beyond.

And it should have been released months ago. But such is the reality for any company trying to manufacture electronics during the pandemic. “One day I will tell the story of the nightmare spectacular of what we have gone through to get this fucking product to ship,” Analogue founder and CEO Christopher Taber tells us. “It’s truly unbelievable, the effort people at Analogue have put in, the amount of hustling. It’s been ceaseless.”

Analogue’s newest voyage into high-fidelity retrogaming is its most ambitious by far. This is its first console with a screen and buttons; its first to support multiple systems; its first accompanied by software, including an onboard operating system and forthcoming system management software for Mac and PC. With a Pocket in our hands, we can report that the ambition has been realised.