In a blog post on the their website today, Rhomb.io, the developers of the hardware due to power the Smach Z have said they are pulling out of the project. Citing communication failures and a lack of understanding of the project timeline by Smach Z – they will no longer be co-operating with the team to bring the Smach Z to life. This project began on shaky ground after their first crowd funding attempt was cancelled, but they successfully funded the project second time around at the end of last year. Unfortunately early bird units were supposed to ship in April, and according to Rhomb this could never have happened since they always said that their board would be available towards the end of this year.

So it looks like another one bites the dust, or at the very least the Smach Z will not be available for many months to come. I only hope that everyone attempting to jump ship on Kickstarter manages to get their refunds. This is the reason I would never back a project like this, being an early adopter is risky enough without the prospect of never even receiving the thing you paid for.

Now, where are those Pyras?

Until recently options were pretty limited if you wanted to replace your ageing and increasingly waggly N64 controller. You could either buy a knockoff from China, pay a silly amount for a third party Hori Mini Pad or replace the analog stick with one salvaged from a GameCube controller. The third option probably the most reasonable in terms of cost and longevity.

Well, if you thought nobody really cared anymore then I have some good news for you! A team going by the name of Retro Fighters have got your back, they’ve designed and are manufacturing a brand new controller for the N64. Gone is the mildly comical 3 pronged design, and gone also is the caveman like Analog stick. The Next Gen N64 controller looks to have all bases covered, and if you’re in need of a new controller then it’s probably a no brainer at $20.

They’ve taken a very logical approach to the L/R/Z issue by simply replicating Z as additional triggers on both the left and right hand side of the controller. By doing so they’ve done away with the need for a 3 pronged design and also managed to keep the size “normal” for a modern day controller.

The campaign has already beaten its goal by a long way, and with shipping supposedly only 3 months away then it’s probably worth a punt if you’re in need of a new controller for your N64. The team do already have at least one other product on the market, in the form of a modernised NES controller available on their website for $25.

I’m not familiar with their products, so I’m reluctant to recommend them but if you reside in the USA then they’re at the very least temptingly cheap. If postage to the UK wasn’t another $20 on top of the controller price then I’d definitely be in for couple already. As it stands, I’ll probably snag some at a later date in the hope I can find 2 of them for less than $80 shipped.

Check out the Kickstarter page here.

Of all the things I could have posted on here in the past 6 months, for some reason it’s yet another GBA emulator that has piqued my interest. I can’t explain it and I’m sorry. Never the less, I absolutely love stuff like this and I’m going to tell you as much as I know about it starting from now. Here goes.

Coolboy are one of those brands that tend to release horrible sub $15 NES emulators in cheap plastic shells with bad screens. So we’re off to a great start with the Coolboy RS-90. The immediate apparent difference with the RS-90 (aka the RetroMini) though is it actually looks cool as hell. I nearly wrote it off immediately for not having shoulder buttons, but when I checked out some more images this morning I noticed they’d done something amazing with what looks to be a completely new mould that I’ve not seen on any other device. Check this out.

Either side of where the cartridge slot would be, and basically exactly where your index fingers would naturally rest they’ve stuck a pair of shoulder buttons. I’ve never seen this shell used on anything before, and if they came up with the design specifically for this device then massive kudos to them!

On my travels around the internet today, I’ve seen some people suggest that this is the fabled Revo K101 mini. At first, I really thought it might be, despite what I’ve heard about the K101 chips being out of production now. The image below is around 18 months old, and shows a mock up of the aforementioned K101 Mini.

Although it looks pretty similar, unfortunately this is definitely not one of those. This is certainly an emulator rather than a hardware clone, and the evidence can be found in this teardown of the device, which clearly shows an Ingenic JZ4725B CPU. That’s a China made MIPS CPU, similar to that found in the Dingoo A320, and used in plenty of other low priced devices.

Whilst this is a bit of a letdown, it also hints at the possibility of community development – such as with the Dingoo A320. It would probably require the device to become fairly popular for that to happen though, and in this day and age I’m not sure how likely that is.

The Retromini houses a tiny 2″ LCD, and comes preloaded with either 36 or 40 games. But it also has a microSD card slot, which allows you to load your own ROMs on to the device. It can apparently play GB and GBC ROMs too, as long as you convert them first.

There are a few videos of this thing on Youtube, and they show that at least the games demonstrated seem to play quite well. Having said that, a review on Amazon states that it seems most ROMs are frameskipping. It’s not immediately obvious if there’s a way to set this manually either, however in the reviewers photographs you can see it does at least has the ability to save state.

There are a few retailers selling this, it can be found for $60 or £50 on Amazon. And at that price I would probably give it a miss, however today it was posted up on Fasttech for a mere $31.71. With discount code LIVIN5 that takes it to about $30.

Do I think it’ll be a great GBA emulator? Probably not. Did I get one anyway? I can’t help myself when it comes to GBA stuff. The awesome shell cemented the deal.

On a side note, it’s kind of interesting to see that in the images on Amazon, if you look closely at the motherboard underneath the shell, the etching reads GBC Mini. So perhaps this was originally destined to be a GBC, and somewhere along the way they decided to add some shoulder buttons and make it play GBA games instead.

Some videos on youtube:

I think the thing that fascinates me about these things, is that they appear out of nowhere. You can see the date on the motherboard in the teardown photos is October. So at some point probably in the middle of 2017, a small team of people in China set about designing and prototyping cases and circuit boards for this thing. They set up a production line, employed staff, created moulds, spent hours testing (yeah, maybe not!) and finally went in to some form of mass production. All with no fan-fare, knowing that it ain’t gona make anybody rich. I can’t help but have respect for whoever those enterprising individuals are! Have my $30!

If you feel like picking one of these up, either for yourself or maybe a youngun’s Christmas present, the cheapest place I’ve found them by far is at fasttech.com. Be aware though, it does say that they don’t ship out for 5 days yet. I paid an extra dollar or so for slightly faster shipping (Sweden Post I think?) so when it arrives I’ll be sure to give it a review.

Everything you need to know about GPD’s next handheld is eloquently and informatively explained by Phawx in the video below. To summarise, the RK3288 in the 2015 model is going out of production soon but GPD want to continue selling the XD – so they’re doing the sensible thing and keeping the exact form factor but upgrading the internals to the 64bit Mediatek MT8176 chipset.

We can expect a significant performance boost in the XD+, with the Antutu benchmark scoring almost twice as high compared to the XD at 75k. And that’s in a pre-production alpha model, a finely tuned Android implementation could easily reach 84k.

Indeed, the raw power of the XD+ is demonstrated nicely as we see the 64bit GameCube emulator, Dolphin, coping extremely well on the new hardware. Skelton has been drafted in again to help with the development of the software implementation so this thing is likely going to be another huge success for GPD.

Thanks to Chad for sending this in.

GPD did say it’d be available in the new year, but I wasn’t expecting it to arrive as quickly as this. The GPD XD+ can now be ordered at Fasttech for $198 shipped. I’ve decided I’m going to get one this time around, though I may wait until I can find a decent discount code. If I have the patience.

US version
EU version

Happy new year everyone!

update//
It’s been noted that GPD have said they’re not releasing these until the end of the month. Whilst Fasttech are a trustworthy shop, they may (or may not) have been a little over enthusiastic when listing these to ship out in 3 days. If you’d rather be sure than have to wait for it, then wait until the product info changes from saying “ships in 3 days” to “in stock”. Thanks to everyone that pointed this out to me.

Hyperkin have apparently developed a Game Boy Pocket clone and will be releasing it in Summer this year. The unit will be clad in an aluminium shell and will of course house a backlit display. The final product will have a dial that allows you to cycle through the entire colour spectrum to find your backlight colour of choice, and a switch to allow you to turn it off entirely. There’s no built in memory so you’re gona need your own carts to play on this thing, and as yet there’s no word as to whether the Everdrive carts from Krikkz will run on it or not.

Hyperkin have been around a while and are known for releasing clone consoles of varying quality. There’s a chance they’ll nail it, but even if they do it’s a fairly straight forward process to stick a backlight in an original Game Boy Pocket. The aluminium shell is a nice idea in theory, but it’ll be far more prone to getting dinged so I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not in reality.

Other improvements over the original are stereo speakers and a proper stereo output, which may appeal to chiptune artists… but only if the hardware is capable of authentically reproducing the sound of the original. It will also house a built in rechargeable battery and USB-C charge port. The pre-release name for this thing is the Ultra Game Boy.

It seems a strange move for Hyperkin, and I can’t imagine Nintendo are gona be too happy about it either. The unit is going to cost about $100, and for that price you can easily buy an original unit, replacement shell, backlight and bivert chip and make your own. There’s also the fact that the GB Boy Color already exists, and has a full colour screen on it. They can be had for about £30 or less, though the aspect ratio is off and the hardware isn’t great.

The unit isn’t on their site yet, and if Nintendo don’t shut it down before it appears I’ll keep my eye out for it in the coming months.

The original K1 hardware is apparently out of production now, though there are rumours on Baidu of a re-release with some changes to the original design. So it was with a mix of excitement and curiousity that I clicked the listing on Fasttech of something that very closely resembles the Revo K101. My excitement soon turned to mild annoyance though, when I realised that the Coolboy RS-97 is simply emulation hardware stuck inside a Revo shell.

However, upon closer inspection the machine does have some potential. The chip is an Ingenic JZ4760 (despite the promo material that states JZ4725B), which is a beefed up (though still painfully out-dated) successor to the chip inside the Dingoo A320. So it’s a possibility we’ll see OpenDingux running on this thing at some point in the future. That’s if anyone cares about devices like this anymore!

Out of the box the unit emulates Neo Geo, Capcom Play System, GBA, SNES, Megadrive, NES, Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy and GBC systems. Rather lazily, Coolboy have kept the K-Card system found in the Revo. Weirdly, if you look closely at the K-Cart you can see the words K_GBA_V1.0 printed on it, along with a date of September 2017. I’m not sure why they would have kept that print because I’m sure the machine has nothing to do with the team that developed the K1 hardware.

I have seen this named the K101 Pro at a few places around the internet, but if anything I’d call it the K101 Amateur. The K101 was a work of genius, but this is just another emulator. I’m sure interest in these kind of things must be at an all time low now, with the likes of the XD Plus and Win2 on the horizon – but I duno, I kinda like stuff like this.

Predictably, as is usual with tat like this, curiosity got the better of me and mine is now in the UK. Hopefully it’ll be delivered this week. If you fancy one, they’re available at a few retailers but Fasttech is once again the cheapest I can find at $50 (£37).

If you decide to use the links on this site to purchase, it won’t cost you any more but I’ll get a few cents towards upkeep.

A minor miracle has occurred over the past few weeks, the “bastardised k101” from my previous post has been given the OpenDingux treatment thanks to a talented fellow on the Dingoonity boards named Steward. The Chinese developer has just released version 1 of the OpenDingux image, which you can now download and flash directly on to the microSD card inside your RS-97.

Whilst it’s fair to say a lot of the emulators are currently quite buggy and/or slow, some more so than the stock ones, progress is being made at an alarming rate. What we will eventually end up with is hopefully an alternative to the GCW Zero, at almost a third of the cost.

For anyone intending to flash their console, there is a video here with links to everything you’ll need in the description. It’s a very easy job, the hardest bit being getting the case apart.

If you think you can keep up, the thread at dingoonity is currently at 56 pages and going strong.

You can find Steward’s github here –> https://github.com/steward-fu
and his website is here –> https://steward-fu.github.io/website/handheld.htm

If you’ve been waiting to grab one of these, now is the time. Although China is on holiday for a few days yet, you can snag a 10% discount on this over at Fasttech by using the code KUNGHEI (discount expires on the 20th 24th Feb). That brings it down to $45 with free shipping – do expect to wait a while for it though. It takes a little while for the juggernaut that is Chinese manufacture and distribution to pick up pace after the CNY holidays are over.

Update// The discount has been extended until the 24th.

The GPD XD Plus is currently 15% off with discount code from Fasttech. A word to anyone who ordered previously and hasn’t had their machine shipped yet: although Fasttech are on holiday for CNY, you can cancel your order for a coupon which arrives in your account immediately. You can then use the coupon to re-order and retain the difference in value, to spend on something else in the store. Be aware this will probably push you to the end of the line for shipping, but you will save a few dollars.

US version
EU version

Use KUNGHEI at checkout. The code is good until the 20th 24th.

Update// The discount code has been extended until the 24th.
Update2// They jacked up the price by $17 the snidey bastards.

Early last year I discovered a Hong Kong website showing off images of what appears to be another GBA hardware clone.

The translation on mponline.hk implies that it was due to be out at the end of last year, but then radio silence until last December when a website called digiretro.com was registered. The digiretro site has no real images of the device, but a plethora of beautiful renders instead.

Looking at the specs, it appears that this could be the K1 hardware or at the very least a clone of the K1 hardware. I am almost certain that it uses the exact same LCD as the K101, K101+ and Retrogame RS-97 due to the weird as hell pixel grid and resulting resolution.

Display

Size of LCD: 3.0” display
Pixel resolution: 960(320×3)x480
No. color of LCD: 16 Million color
5 Levels brightness

It seems to run on the equivalent of a K-Card and can play real GBA cartridges too. The design of the machine is a sort of hybrid of the GB Micro (check the shoulder buttons) and one of Nintendo’s far older Game and Watch devices, which has a screen that protrudes a few mm from the front of the shell. All in all it’s a beautiful looking thing and I hope it does get released, I emailed both contacts at digiretro the other day but haven’t heard anything back from them yet.

The GPD Win 2 hit a whole bunch of Chinese stores today, available for pre-order only. By far the cheapest, as usual, is Fasttech who are taking pre-orders at $753 using coupon code “MAP”. The IndieGoGo site implies that shipping will be at some point in May, but we all know how these things go so it could be earlier (some sites say April) and it will likely be later for non IndieGoGO backers.

The GPD Win 2 promises the ability to run Triple A PC titles on a chunky clamshell handheld, complete with keyboard and full gaming controls.

Buyer beware, the original GPD Win did have a few teething problems in its early days. Whilst GPD claim to have learned many lessons regarding case design and cooling – it will remain to be seen if we have a re-run of the the rocky launch that the original Win had in 2016.

If you’re feeling brave and want to pre-order, there are an additional 200 units released on IndieGoGo at $700 today. However, if I were ordering one of these I would probably get it through Fasttech, as in my experience they have an excellent track record should you run in to any problems. The choice is yours!

It’s been out a few days now, and the v1.2 update brings with it a slew of fixes and additions. For a full list of all changes, see this post by Steward on the Dingoonity boards. A couple of things to bear in mind when doing to upgrade:

• Use the cfw_1.2_fix file to perform the upgrade, rather than the cfw_1.2 file.
• Some people require the gmenu2x fix as well. If your device can’t be woken up from hibernate then you’ll need this fix.

Essentially the 3 files you need are:

1. cfw_1.2_fix
2. cfw_1.2_package.ext3
3. gmenu2x

These can all be found in the repository here.

If you want to see the upgrade being done, there’s a video here:

Once completed, you may want to download the skins pack by m1024 as well. His skins, particularly the OldBoy one, are gorgeous.

If you’re looking to pick one of these up, the cheapest places are Fasttech (discount code LIVIN5 for 5% off) or FunnyPlaying (discount code JUTLEYS for $5 off). Both ship worldwide for free.

As rumoured on the baidu forums a couple of weeks ago, the V2.1 variant of the Retrogame RS97 has now made its way out to at least one customer. Discord user dribbletaint noticed there was a problem with his new unit when he tried to load OpenDingux on it and booted up to a white screen. After asking in the Discord channel and disassembling his device, it became apparent that the unit is the new version – V2.1. It looks like they silk screened the wrong year on to the board.

An upgrade is usually a nice thing to have, but in this case it’s a headache for both the developers and for the customers wanting to run OpenDingux immediately. The upgrade replaces the JZ4760 on the original 2.0 unit with the JZ4760B. I won’t pretend to know the intricate differences, and the datasheet links on the Ingenic website appear to be dead. Suffice to say, both CPUs are from 2010 and any performance upgrade from moving to the “B” version will likely be absolutely minimal at best.

The other difference, and the one that seems to break OpenDingux, is that the LCD has changed. It’s still the same size and same strange resolution but comes from a different manufacturer. The screen quality is arguably slightly better, but a rebuild of OpenDingux with the new LCD Driver will be needed to get the Open Source OS running on this version.

If you’ve received an RS97 and want to know which version you’ve got without taking it apart, you can probably tell from the front of the case. The new version has some screen printing on the widest edge of the screen, and it is also missing the cut out slot that’s present on the original.

Googling the part number EJ030NA-01B links to this site and the manufacturer appears to be Chimei Innolux.

I wouldn’t expect it’ll take very long for someone to build a working version of OpenDingux, so if you’ve got one of these in your hands just sit tight for a bit and keep your eye on the Dingoonity forum for updates.

update//

It looks as though someone on the Baidu forums has got it working.

Also, reading through some of MaxZhou88’s posts on the forum it seems this version may only have the screen change, not the JZ5760B CPU upgrade. Apparently that is to come in yet another update. 

If you’re looking to turn your Raspberry Pi in to a retro gaming machine you couldn’t go far wrong with a NesPi case for it. Like most cases though, the original NesPi doesn’t offer a proper means to shutdown or reset the device. Whilst pulling the plug does the job, if your machine was writing to the SD card at the time then you risk corrupting the card and having to start again from the beginning.

I installed an On/Off Shim from Pimoroni on my old RPi2, which requires a tiny bit of soldering and installion of a script that runs when you hit the power button. Not a very elegant solution, and it breaks compatibility with a lot of cases – but it was better than nothing.

Thankfully a better solution is now available, thanks to Retroflag. Alongside use of the latest RetroPie 4.4, the NesPi Case+ has functional buttons which allow a safe shutdown and reset. An additional script it required to get this to work, but if it’s anything like the Pimoroni script it’s very easy to get working. The script can be found here.

The best price I’ve found for this is on Aliexpress at just over £15 shipped. This one even comes with a fan and some other extra bits and pieces. I’ve ordered mine and plan to build an RPi3 B+ with it once it’s arrived.

After a lengthy and slightly worrisome stint at the sorting office in Heathrow, my GPD XD+ finally arrived earlier this week. I haven’t really had time to get to know it yet, but I have had a good look at the hardware and tested a few bits and pieces from the Play Store.

It’s a bit too soon for a full review, but I do feel like I can share some impressions on other aspects of the machine such as build quality, controls, software and the like.

I did pay for this myself, way back on February 18th when Fasttech had their 15% discount for CNY. It came out to $168 shipped, which was about £124 with PayPal’s exchange rate. I picked up the package from the local depot last Sunday. 64 days total, that’s a long time to wait – but it was a pre-order.

The device came in a similar box to 2016’s model, and I think Fasttech wrapped it in cling film as they seem to do with most expensive electronics. I guess to protect it from any potential disasters involving water! No pictures from inside the box, but it comes with all the usual stuff plus a screen protector which I have yet to fit. With a clamshell form factor such as this, it’s not really necessary.

When the device is closed it’s very reminiscent of a 3DS XL, which is no bad thing. As noted by others on the dingoonity boards, it seems that the top half of the unit is finished in a very glossy, slightly sparkly paint, whilst the bottom half is simply untreated dark grey plastic. I imagined this would look bad, but it’s barely noticeable. The entire thing is a massive fingerprint magnet, I had to polish it for ages before taking any pics.

It’s immediately obvious that GPD are in a different league to any other China manufacturers when it comes to fit and finish of their handhelds. Even compared to their old G5A the build quality is a massive step up. The seams where 2 halves of a case come together are fractions of a millimetre wide, and completely even all the way around. It’s beautifully put together.

The device weighs more than I expected, and overall feels almost like the quality you’d expect from something like a 3DS. I say almost, but there are some giveaways. The first thing I noticed is the hinge, it’s not quite Nintendo quality. The screen locks back in 2 positions – the usual playing position, and completely flat. In the 45 degree position there is a very slight wobble to the hinge. Once locked at 180 degrees it’s tight.

Once I’d finished drooling over the gapless seams and frowning at the waggly hinge I had a look at the controls. First of all, the analog sticks feel wonderful. With a rubberised finish and a silky frictionless glide they feel exceptionally well made. If I was going to criticise them I’d have to say that in some N64 games it feels as though they need to have more travel. It’s very difficult to find the sweet spot between no movement and full movement in games like Ridge Racer and Mario Kart 64. This might be something that can be configured in software, but I haven’t had chance to look at it yet.

The dpad is a bit of a concern for me, it doesn’t really feel like any dpad I’ve used before. It feels like perhaps the central pivot is too broad, meaning there’s a lot of thumb movement needed to go from one direction to the opposite. It’s likely something I’ll get used to, but it has to be said that it does feel strange. By no means is it a deal breaker, and other people may disagree – but I’m not keen on it. I don’t know if the dpad is a different design to the original GPD XD or not since I never had one of those.

The 4 shoulder buttons are both perfectly placed and perfectly made. They are very light to press and respond with a delightful and positive click once depressed. The only improvement would mean a complete redesign to make them analog, but you can’t have it all hey.

The face buttons all feel fine too. ABXY are within easy reach and easy to push, whilst the remaining face buttons require a slightly harder push and respond with a dull click. There is zero rattle to the unit either – with all those buttons you might expect a few to move about and make a racket, but they don’t. Hats off to the engineers at GPD.

On the back of the device you have a microSD slot (to expand the 32GB on board storage), a microUSB port for charging and data transfer, a Mini HDMI port and a headphone socket.

Overall the build quality is fantastic, with a couple of caveats regarding the dpad and hinge. If the leap in quality between the G5A and XD+ is anything to go by, in a couple of years GPD will be making devices to rival Nintendo.

The GPD XD+ comes with Android 7 pre-installed, and has been given a custom launcher by the GPD devs. I must admit I’m not a fan of the launcher, and will probably swap it out for something else.

I was able to uninstall a few of the unnecessary apps that came pre-installed but Happy Chick is baked in so rooting the device might be next on the list of things to do. I’m totally out of touch with emulation on Android so I need to look at what the best solution is. I have installed RetroArch but I don’t know if that’s the best choice or not, any advice gladfully received!

I haven’t noticed any issues with the UI as far as stability or speed goes. It’s very nippy and performs as well or better than the Snapdragon 650 in my phone. The ROMs that came preinstalled seem to work close to perfectly for every system, and my brother installed PUBG which plays great albeit on lowered graphics settings. I ran the Antutu benchmark and the results are below. It’s not a groundbreaking score by any means, but for a budget device running a middle tier China SoC it’s pretty respectable. The first test drained 2% battery, and the 2nd test drained 1% battery.

SoT seems very good as well, I haven’t put it through its paces yet but the battery life on full brightness seems to be better than any phone I’ve had in the past. This is to be expected considering the 6000mah battery is about twice the size of most phones.

After reading some complaints about the WiFi in the original GPD XD, I also ran the speedtest on both my phone and on the XD+ (sequentially of course). Results are from the 5GHz network in my house, and I have no concerns about the WiFi on the XD+.

The screen is also very nice. Although only 720p, the colours are very vivid and viewing angles are exceptional in every direction. There is no blueish hue to the screen either, which is something I’ve noticed in cheaper panels.

Word is that there is a v1.1 firmware update from GPD currently being rolled out. I haven’t received it yet, but it’s good to know they’re not immediately washing their hands of the device now it’s been launched. I need to figure out what the best emulators are for Android nowadays, and then I perhaps I’ll do a full review at a later date. For now, you can find videos of almost any game running on this device so if you’re curious if a certain game runs then YouTube is your best bet.

Fasttech is still the cheapest place to grab one of these, at $196.60 shipped after applying the discount code LIVIN5. There’s no difference between the US and EU versions except for a crappy wall adaptor.

US version
EU version

On an unrelated note, I finally got an SSL certificate for obscurehandhelds.com and all traffic should now be redirected to https. If anyone notices any problems please let me know.

Cheers

In a previous post I mentioned that the Digi RetroBoy could be a Revo K101 equivalent if it was ever released. Instead of relying on emulation it utilises a hardware solution to play GBA games from a customised GBA cartridge with a MicroSD card inside it. It looks as though the unit is released now, although getting hold of one for a reasonable price is not possible yet.

MaxZhou88 got his hands on what I think is a prototype and has posted some photos of it over on Baidu. I thought the previous renders of this thing looked really stylish, but in the flesh it looks a bit cheap. It could be that these are prototype cases and the final product will look better, however they are already for sale at digitopz.com for a hefty $121. They’re also up on Amazon but are showing as currently out of stock.

It’s not known if this houses the exact K1 hardware present in the Revo or not, the OS looks pretty much identical which indicates that it might. It could also be a clone of the clone, in which case it’ll be interesting to see how well it performs in comparison.

He also took the device apart to show us the board and LCD.

I’ve seen this go by a few names including the Digi Retroboy, GBA Hero and GameHero. It looks like gopro-in is either the manufacturer or main distributor. There’s also this site which contains promo material for it. I would expect it to show up on somewhere like Aliexpress in the near future, hopefully at a more reasonable price and with better looking plastic moulding.

HardKernel is a South Korean hardware manufacturer founded in around 2008, although best known for their RPi style Single Board Computers one of their first devices was an Android handheld bearing a passing resemblance to the Bandai Wonderswan. Since then, to the best of my knowledge we haven’t seen another handheld from them until now. To mark the 10th anniversary of the company they’ve released the Odroid-Go, which is sold as a game kit. The parts are sold as a bundle and the buyer assembles the device themselves.

Mine arrived on Saturday and I put it together yesterday. Unless you’ve never taken anything apart and re-assembled it before you won’t learn much from the assembly experience, it is very straight forward and it only took my fat fingered self about 20 minutes. There are instructions on the Odroid Wiki page but even they’re not really necessary. Everything clicks in to place and there’s no soldering required, the only bit you have to be careful with is putting in the screen (it’s a tight fit) and making sure there’s no dust trapped between the LCD and the lens. I can totally see how it would be a great learning experience for a young child, if only to understand what makes a device like this tick.

The device is powered by a custom ESP32-Wrover, which is low cost development board with 16MiB of on board flash memory. It’s compatible with the Arduino SDK which means there’s an opportunity to develop for the platform if you wish. The HardKernel site currently has some basic coding guides available, as well as instructions to turn the device in to a portable weather station and ultrasonic distance measuring app (both with additional hardware). The board has an expansion port at the top, and comes with a 10 pin header to allow you to add additional modules.

The stock firmware contains emulators for Game Gear, NES, Game Boy Color, Game Boy and Master System. It looks like there’s been a firmware update since the version in my photos, but I am yet to find out whether this improves the emulation at all. Currently emulation is a bit rough around the edges with maybe games running too slowly and some refusing to load at all.

The LCD is a 320×240 panel which is fine straight on, but outside and at other angles it quickly becomes a bit washed out. Having said that, it’s all perfectly acceptable when you see that the price is a mere $32. Granted shipping is extra, but it’s still cheap enough for what you get. The controls are great and overall the unit is very solid.

You will need a microSD card to load the OS and ROMs on to, and given the emulators it currently runs I think you can put the entire library for each console on to a 4GB card.

I got mine from odroid.co.uk for £40 + p&p, but if you’re in the US it may be cheaper direct from HardKernel.

Pix Portable aka Gameberry Retropie

The Pix Portable aka Gameberry Retropie (take your pick) is available on Aliexpress and comes in four price tiers depending on what exactly you want. For most people the choice will be the kit, which requires a little home soldering and some assembly. It comprises of a perspex shell and buttons with a custom circuit board, LCD and 4000mAh battery. You supply your own Raspberry Pi 3 and solder the relevant contacts to enable use of the physical controls and whatever else. The unit has a d-pad, analog stick, 4 face buttons, a start and select button and 4 more shoulder buttons on the back side.

The four price tiers are as follows:

A. All components and perspex case. requires soldering yourself.
B. All components and perspex case. this one comes pre-soldered.
C. The cheapest of the options, this is only for a replacement shell made from metal (I prefer the look of perspex i think).
D. Everything comes pre-assembled and a Raspberry Pi 3 is supplied.

I would like to assume that instructions are supplied in the package, but it isn’t mentioned. It’s also unclear as to whether or not they have a custom RetroPie build available for download. I would guess that the stock image wouldn’t work correctly without some serious config for the LCD and controls, so I’d be interested to hear from anyone who happens upon a link for the customised firmware.

This kit is available from Aliexpress and costs about £56 shipped for the DIY kit. There’s a video on YouTube of someone playing a half assembled unit.

Also on the same account is a video of a similar unit in a Game Boy like portrait configuration. There’s also a lone picture of this halfway down the Aliexpress product page, but looking at the sellers other listings it seems that that one comes without a shell or anything, almost like it’s unfinished.

Coolboy / Coolbaby RS-11 aka BeibeiJia RS-11

This one’s a little more unclear. This one also runs using a Raspberry Pi, but it looks as though an auxiliary circuit board is being used to split the USB ports into a row of 4 instead of two stacks of 2 next to one another. It also looks like it has a barrel jack power socket as opposed to the microUSB of the Raspberry Pi. The listing does state that it’s DIY, but translating the big red DIY banner at the bottom of the screen implies that the DIY aspect of this is that it has been put together by hand, and each unit is somewhat unique because it is not mass produced in a factory.

At a price of nearly £170 ($218) you would expect that this also comes with a Raspberry Pi, which again hints at the fact that the unit is pre-assembled and ready to go.

This one’s available at TMall, but you might have trouble ordering it from there. Commonly people use an agent when ordering from places like this. Googling tmall agent or taobao agent will find you someone. The idea is that supply you supply them the link, they give you a quote which covers the price of the item, plus shipping to your country and their fee. They have the item shipped to themselves, they re-package it and send it on to you. superbuy.com is a commonly mentioned agent, but I have never used one so cannot vouch for them.

Link to this handheld is here.

There’s also some chatter about these handhelds in the Other Game Systems section of dingoonity.

The original Bittboy was released in Summer last year, it was a simple machine with a bunch of built in NES games. The only thing that really made it stand out from the mountains of other NES clones was the nice form factor and good screen. Aside from that is was a generic device with a bunch of badly chosen ROMs pre-installed, with no way to swap them out. It was obvious to everyone what they should have done – ship it with no ROMs on-board and allow users to add their own via MicroSD. My review of the original Bittboy is here.

This month the New Bittboy was released and it does exactly that, with a few extra improvements to boot. The Bittboy team were kind enough to send me a free unit for review, and after playing with it for a few days it’s time to share it with you all.

Compared to the original Bittboy, aesthetically it’s pretty much the same. They have however gone for a 2.4″ IPS display over the 2.2″ in the original device. It has to be said, the screen is beautiful. The viewing angles are amazing in every direction and the colours are bright, vivid and crisp.

Other differences include removal of the volume wheel. The volume can now be changed by holding select and pressing A or B to move the volume up or down. The colour scheme has been modelled on that of the DMG-01 and it looks great, though the paint finish is super matte and feels a bit strange to the touch.

The biggest difference between this and the original version though is that when you switch the machine on you’re greeted by an OS that doesn’t look totally shit. The handheld won’t boot at all until you’ve inserted a MicroSD card with ROMs on it, as there are no built in games at all. Simply dump your ROMs with .gb, .gbc or .nes extensions directly on to the SD card and they’re recognised automatically in the 3 seperate pages  of the home screen. You’re not limited to NES this time around, it’ll also play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.

There’s not much to say about the emulation, except that it works as well as you’d expect for systems as old as these. I’ve noticed slight tearing in some games but it’s not really noticeable unless you’re looking for it. A nice touch is the in game menu – by pressing R it’ll bring up a menu that allows you to do 3 things: save state, change aspect ratio, enable TV output.

The aspect ratio can be switched between original and stretched to fill the screen. In GB and GBC the scaling method makes for ugly looking pixels in both original and stretched AR – 160×144 is an awkward resolution for a 320×240 screen which I believe the Bittboy has. NES looks great, presumeably because the 256×240 native resolution is closer to that of the Bittboy LCD.

Taking a look at the internals, we can see the chip is an AllWinner F1C500S.

AllWinner have their own “Melis” operating system for this family of chips, which I believe is based on Linux. Poking around on the internet, it looks as though Steward (Our friend that first brought OpenDingux to the RetroGame) is working on bringing a custom Linux kernel to this handheld. He’s making some progress too.

Overall it’s a good handheld which is limited to emulating older systems by  the current system firmware. I’m sure that if Useless or OpenDingux is ported to the device we’ll see improvements made and other emulators added, but the lack of shoulder buttons and the limited CPU power means we’re not going to be seeing SNES or GBA on this thing.

This is essentially what the original Bittboy should have been, and a vast improvement on the original device.

If you want to pick one of these up, they’re available on the Bittboy website for $39.99 shipped worldwide.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Steward’s github
Steward’s website
Steward’s Baidu thread

The Tieba Baidu forums have come alive with talk of a new machine from a new China manufacturer this week.

The machine bears a striking resemblance to the handheld project that Steward-Fu has been working on for the past couple of years, though Steward has previously said that his machine will never make it to mass production – so I don’t believe that this project is affiliated with him at this stage.

The manufacturer’s handle on Tieba Baidu is Xiaolongwang and he’s being coy about the hardware, blaming copycats as a reason to keep it under wraps for the time being. However, looking at the below screenshot it appears that the handheld is running some version of OpenDingux out of the box. This implies that it’ll be running some Ingenic JZ* variant, just like the GCW Zero, RS-97 and recent mini arcade machines.

So nothing new hardware wise (probably) but definitely an interesting step. This could be the first time we see a machine running OpenDingux (or variant) out of the box from China, and housed inside what appears to be a brand new shell too.

It doesn’t look as though the console is quite ready for mass release yet, there is talk of it being available on TaoBao under the sellers shop in limited quantity – but I’m unable to find it currently. (see below).

The seller shop is 聚游宝数码港, or translated it reads as Juyoubao Cyberport.

The sellers posts on Tieba Baidu can be found here. Google translate is your friend, most of the time. Other times all you get is stuff like this, which is hiliarious

update//
The handheld is available to pre-order here. https://shop68017973.world.taobao.com

Thanks to lazanti for the link.

update2//

Video posted by Xiaolong Wang