The Analogue Pocket is a thing of minimalist beauty.
Back when I reviewed the amazing Analogue Pocket in 2021, it fulfilled so many of my classic handheld desires. So how does it fare with these three new adapters?
To clarify, the Analogue Pocket at launch natively supported Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. You could also pick up a Game Gear adapter too, but the important thing here is that none of these systems were emulated.
This is because the Analogue Pocket uses two fpgas (or field-programmable gate arrays) to recreate the original architecture for each gaming system. That means no emulator lag of any kind, just a very pure and accurate delivery of all the classic games you could ever want.
However, on top of all this frankly wondrous excellence, there were plans to support even more gaming systems. Now after a two year wait, these adapters are finally here and are thoroughly magnificent.
Specifically, the three new adapters cover the following family of systems: TurboGrafx-16, PC Engine, SuperGrafx, Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Atari Lynx. The last of these has a particular significance for me, because back when I played the Game Boy as a kid, the Atari Lynx was something all the rich kids at school had instead.
It was an impressive system at the time but had practically no battery life. Over time fell it also into insignificance compared to the breadth and quality of both Nintendo’s and Sega’s handheld gaming output.
Knowing that these adapters were coming I bought both the Gates of Zendocon and Todd’s Adventures in Slime World to see how the Analogue Pocket would handle Atari Lynx. The first game was a side scrolling shmup and the second was a Metroidvania clone. I remember playing both as a kid, so I was especially curious as to how the Analogue Pocket would handle them.
The Analogue Pocket now has three new game adapters.
The results were impressive, both games played great and it’s interesting to see that the gameplay hasn’t held up quite so well compared to many of my favorite Game Boy games. So even though all the rich kids had Lynx’s at school, I now realize that I probably had a more fun time playing games on the Game Boy.
The other major elephant in the room is the PC Engine game support. This was a legendary gaming console and one with a positively epic gaming library. It also birthed the PC Engine GT.
The PC Engine GT was and in many ways still is an impossible unicorn of gaming handhelds. Put simply, it was a portable PC Engine, which in 1990 was actually insane. It was also the source of many of the rumors surrounding a color Game Boy, long before that ever saw the light of day.
Considering how hard it is to get a working PC Engine GT these days, this is now by one of the best option for collectors.
So if you haven’t already picked up an Analogue Pocket, you should do so now. They are readily available on Analogue’s store for $219.99. The Game Gear adapter is also still available at $29.99 and this set of three new adapters is also going for $99.99.
We often talk about preserving our gaming history and that not a lot is being done to secure that, but this is one of the rare occasions when gaming history has its back covered and that is a wonderful thing indeed.
Disclosure: Analogue sent me these three new adapters for the purposes of this review.
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