Analogue Pocket Review

An emulator guesses at hardware. An FPGA becomes it, and the Analogue Pocket is the argument for the difference. Inside are two programmable chips, one configured as a Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance at the logic level, the other opened to the public in 2022 as openFPGA so anyone can write a core for it. Slide in a cartridge you have owned since 1992 and it behaves the way the original silicon behaved, save quirks and all, with no frame pacing tricks and no lag added in software.

The screen makes the other half of the case. It is 1600 by 1440 across 3.5 inches, exactly ten times the original Game Boy grid in each direction, so every one of those 160 by 144 pixels lands as a perfect square with nothing interpolated, and the display modes will put back the green tint and the dot grid of the 1989 panel if you want them there. Adapter cartridges handle Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, Atari Lynx and PC Engine.

A dock puts it on a television. Nanoloop ships on it for people who make music rather than play it. The reservations are money and patience: $219 before you buy an adapter or the dock, and Analogue's stock has spent most of this machine's life on backorder. If you kept your cartridges, nothing else is close.