If you’re like me and you’ve held out on buying an Analogue Pocket for this long, now might be a radical time to finally jump in.
Premium retro hardware company Analogue has announced a brand new line of ‘beautifully clear’ color variants of its lauded FPGA handheld console. These transparent limited editions will hit the official website for pre-order on September 29 at 8AM PST for $249.99 each (ships in two weeks, apparently), and customers are limited to two units per order. Seems like a great setup for a sellout, but maybe that’s by design.
The new shell colors include Smoke, Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Purple and a back-to-basics Clear, which is literally just a crystalline nothingness with zero pigment. That last one calls to mind those tubular kids phones from the ‘90s that were in everyone’s messy middle school bedrooms. Thirty years ago, products were simply cooler if you could look at what was inside. I don’t make the rules.
Truth be told, all the versions look really good, though I’m leaning toward the Green and Purple. The latter, of course, is a callback to Nintendo’s own Atomic Purple Game Boy Color, which I definitely owned in 1998. On that note, Analogue isn’t a stranger to limited editions, as this new launch of different Pocket shades comes on the heals of a sleek glow-in-the-dark model that was released not too long ago. I’m sure those who pounced on that one are a slightly irked about seeing even more options appearing so soon.
Analogue definitely knows its audience, which is mostly nostalgic millennials clamoring for a return to a time when colors were bright, SNICK was on every Saturday and hot pizza rolls accompanied every link cable Pokémon battle. That’s right, Analogue should let me write ad copy for them. We’re a match made in ‘the past was better’ heaven.
For those who aren’t in the know, the Analogue Pocket natively plays (through FPGA, not emulation) Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges. It can also play Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket Color and Atari Lynx titles via special cartridge adapters, sold separately of course. Does it play ROMs as well? I’m sure you can figure that out on your own, good gamer.
The golden bit that sets this handheld apart is definitely the dual FPGA chips, which theoretically ensure much better game compatibility across the board than emulation, which can sometimes be riddled with graphical and technical issues. This device is obviously aimed at people who’ve amassed a decent collection of physical carts, though like I’ve mentioned, you can use the machine in other ways, too.
Speaking of which, I do have literal piles of boxed Game Boy Advance games just begging to be played on the Analogue Pocket’s 1600×1440 LCD screen, so I may be waiting with mouse in hand on September 29 to snag one of these throwback beauties. Do I have an extra $250 laying around, though? That’s another question entirely.
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