GPD haven’t had much competition when it comes to clamshell handhelds. Over the past few years they’ve done an excellent job of cornering the market with high quality devices spanning most niches from Android gaming and Windows gaming to general computing and even IT support with the upcoming GPD Micro.

It’s long been said that GPD most likely won’t release another XD successor, and with the XD+ due to go out of production soon it could be that the market is open for someone else to step in.

Who are Powkiddy? No idea, but the X18 name makes me wonder if they’re affiliated with CoolBaby and/or CoolBoy. Whilst the latter 2 are apparently not recognised companies in China, PowKiddy do in fact have a Chinese language website and the X18 Black Lion has been on it for a couple of months now.

Their X18 Android clamshell is inferior in spec to the GPD XD+, but the price is set lower to compensate. The X18 runs on a MediaTek MT8163 which is a 4 core ARM A53 chip at 1.5Ghz. Compared to the XD+ MT8176 ARM A72 at 2.1Ghz, it is certainly a step or two back. In fact even the original XD beats it in single and multi core performance, though the X18 MT8163 has the advantage of being 64bit and running on Android 7 out of the box.

With that said, the jump in performance between the original XD and the XD+ wasn’t particularly impressive. The XD+ was reaching for the dizzying heights of Gamecube emulation, but never really made it. For all intents and purposes both machines were perfectly capable of emulating your favourite retro emulators just fine. And I’m going to guess that the X18 will be perfectly capable of that as well, as long as their software implementation is good enough and the control mappings work OK.

I can’t find any actual review footage of this machine on Youtube yet, but the listings on Aliexpress only appeared a couple of days ago so it’ll be a little while yet.

At time of writing the Powkiddy X18 costs around £93/$120 shipped. If you’re in the market for an Android handheld and can’t afford an XD+, this might be exactly what you’re after. It might be advisable to wait for a couple of reviews first though.

With the rising costs of reproduction AGS-101 LCD panels it was high time that a better solution was made available to modders, and it looks as though BennVenn is coming to the rescue.

Over the past couple of years, the price of a third party AGS-101 panel has risen from around $20 to $52 or more in some cases. These panels replace the non-backlit TFT panel in the original GBA, providing a beautiful vivid backlit image at the same original size and resolution. It’s the same panel that was used in the hard to find AGS-101 model GBA SP and is a huge improvement over the original screen.

Rumour has it that China are not manufacturing any more of these repro screens, and due to that fact the price has more than doubled in the past year or two.

BennVenn’s solution takes a custom circuit board and couples it with either the top or bottom LCD from the NDS Lite. Reproductions of this screen are available for around £3.50 shipped from China, and BennVenn is hoping to sell his custom board for between $20 and $30.

The main drawback of this mod is that the NDSL LCD has a slightly higher resolution of 256×192, compared to the 240×160 resolution of the original GBA panel. This probably means that the image will be smaller than that of the original GBA whilst maintaining the resolution.

Pre-orders aren’t open yet, but the new board has a placeholder on BennVenn’s site and is due to go on sale once the prototypes have had the once over. Check it out here.

It also looks as though he’s working on a backlit solution for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. This will use a custom LCD but there’s nothing on his site about it just yet.

It’s been mere weeks since Xiaolong Wang released the LDK Game, a Linux based JZ4760B handheld running OpenDingux. But the same designer is now talking of a sequel, and this time he’s set his sights on some more powerful hardware.

The post in the Open Source Handhelds forum of Baidu is met with mixed reaction, some are annoyed that he’s planning a sequel so soon whereas others are excited to see where this might go. Xiaolong hasn’t hinted at what OS this would run, and I could be wrong but I imagine porting OpenDingux from MIPS to ARM would not be a trivial task. However, plenty of people are requesting it and few have suggested asking (and paying) Steward to help.

Some others have suggested using Android, though it looks to be a mostly unpopular suggestion and I would agree. We don’t need another Android handheld!

Based on the conversation going on over there, it’s quite clear that this machine is nowhere close to mass production time. Xiaolongwang is merely asking what people think to his suggested specifications to gauge interest.

He has proposed the AllWinner A31S quad core SoC and the 640×480 LCD below. More info on that LCD here.

You can follow the thread at this link.

This is a longshot, but if anyone has either of the 2 handhelds listed below knocking around in a cupboard somewhere that they’d be willing to sell to me, I’d be very interested. Feel free to leave a message below or contact me through the Contact page.

Letcool N350 (aka N350JP)

Gemei A330

Things are finally changing, it seems. The New Bittboy and the LDK are both shipping directly from China with OpenDingux/RetroFW pre-installed on them. Thanks in part to the commitment of Chinese developers Steward-Fu and Tony-jih, it seems that we might be at the brink of a new era regarding retro gaming handhelds.

It’s been just over 10 years since the Dingoo A320 was released, a console whose lifespan wouldn’t have been a fifth of what it was without the hard work and dedication of those who brought Dingux and later, OpenDingux to the device. 10 years later it seems as though the penny has finally dropped as we see 2 separate Chinese manufacturers embrace the Open Source OS for what it is – an ever evolving platform that offers a huge spectrum of opportunities for developers and gamers alike.

It’s a surprise that the GCW Zero didn’t trigger this change of tack back in 2013, but it’s easy to imagine that the stifled availability and somewhat shady business practices of Justin were to blame for its lack of widespread popularity. If we had to name a catalyst for this current round of consoles, the credit should probably go to 2018’s RetroGame RS97. Although shipped with one of the worst proprietary firmwares we’ve ever seen, the device hit crazy heights of popularity once OpenDingux, and later RetroFW were ported to it.

But the software isn’t the only remaining stumbling block to overcome. Back in 2009 when the A320 was released, it was powered by an Ingenic JZ4732 – a processor roughly 2 years old at that time. Moving forwards to the RetroGame and LDK (they both contain the same hardware) we’re utilising an Ingenic JZ4760 to do the grunt work – a more powerful CPU but one that’s now 9 years old.

The New Bittboy has bucked the trend of relying on Ingenic and whilst the AllWinner F1C500S is newer, it is still based on ageing technology that offers very little to nothing over the 9 year old JZ4760 in terms of performance.

All that said, the LDK is here and it’s a rather wonderful little device. I picked one up from retromimi.com a few days ago and I’m going to waffle on about it for a bit now.

The LDK comes in a yellow box whether you order a yellow console or not. I did ask for transparent, but they sent me yellow anyway. I can’t be bothered sending it back, so I’ll either paint it, sell it or live with it. It’s OK in yellow I guess.

The unit itself is smaller than it appears in pictures. It is very squat with the controls stuffed on at the bottom.

The unit actually came with an old build of OpenDingux installed, but it took a matter of days from release for the current RetroFW build
(for RS97) to be ported over to this thing. They do share the same hardware, however the LDK has a 320×240 LCD instead.

Flashing the new software is easy. Just whip out the battery to reveal the MicroSD card that carries the OS. Take it out, clean the partitions, format it, flash it, and put it back. The latest image and instructions can be found here. It’s worth noting that my console didn’t need to reboot as per the instructions in that link, it just booted straight up and was ready to go.

I’m not going to talk about the software all that much. It’s changing all the time in terms of the UI and the bundled software. Emulators are improved frequently, new games are being ported often and at this point I would expect most of you are familiar with OpenDingux from some other device or other. It’s still not a particularly polished piece of software, for example certain emulators or programs require a different button or combination of buttons to quit out. A symptom of the fact that these programs have been developed over many years and by many different people.

But to say it’s not polished is a bit of a dis-service. Nowadays it is a very stable operating system. I haven’t experienced a single lock up in hours and hours of play time, compared to the first iterations of the OS on the A320 where people were modding their hard reset buttons so that they could be reset without a needle or pin.

The handheld comes preloaded with all the usual emulators. ReGBA, Picodrive, PocketSNES, Temper, ScummVM etc. Basically there’s an emulator for pretty much every system up to and including the Playstation 1. Quake, Quake 2, Cave Story and Open Tyrian comprise some of the ports that come preloaded too.

The build quality of the LDK is fine. It feels very solid, it has an actual lens over the LCD unlike the RS97 and the plastic shell is fairly thick. The buttons do rattle when you shake it, and the shoulder buttons are especially clicky. But the d-pad feels good, none of the buttons stick and overall it’s perfectly usable. The placement of the shoulder buttons is not perfect, but it’s a million times better than the Retromini and is OK once you’re used to it. I have big hands, smaller hands may find the placement ideal.

So the release of the LDK is bitter sweet. It’s great to see China embracing Open Source (whether they’re compliant with GPL or otherwise – one thing at a time!), but I’m sure we’d all really like to see a move towards more powerful hardware. Hardware that can bring us N64, Dreamcast and even GameCube emulation without having to rely on Android.

If you’d like to pick one of these up, they’re available at Aliexpress or on retromimi.com for about $60 or £45.

7 months ago a thread on reddit started by the “creator” of the RetroMini promised us a follow up device with improvements in almost every area.

Although the thread quickly took a downward turn as people accused the OP of being a drop shipper with no claim to the original device, a couple of photos of the new shell prototypes at least filled us with some hope that this wasn’t all hot air.

Well the device is now available to purchase, but it looks like something terrible happened to their funding or development plan somewhere along the way.

Whilst they addressed some of the issues of the original RetroMini by creating a larger shell with more accessible shoulder buttons – they’ve rendered all of that effort useless by stuffing a Famiclone board inside and pre-loading a bunch of NES ROMs.

Why 4 face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons if this thing can only play NES games? We can only assume that the shell was at one point destined for greater things, and at some point they had to abandon those plans and lump for a Famiclone board instead. Such a shame!

Their official site is showing Out Of Stock pre-orders for $29.99 in both smokey and transparent variants – however you can pick these up on Aliexpress here or here under the Data Frog brand for about £11.

No-one needs another handheld Famiclone, but I’m almost tempted to get one just for the shell. I sincerely hope that a manufacturer re-uses this shell for something that doesn’t suck.

If you do fancy one, be quick. They’re currently 20% off but that’ll end tomorrow apparently.

Nobody panic! The RetroMax is not the successor to the RetroMini after all.

We earlier reported that the RetroMax was listed on retromini.com (it has since been removed) and Aliexpress, and knowing that a sequel to the RetroMini was due anytime soon we assumed that the RetroMax was it. This is thankfully not correct, here’s the official word on what’s happening.

The team behind the original RetroMini are working with Data Frog to bring a successor, with a view to making some improvements over the original device. A larger shell with bigger screen, more ergonomic controls and better software & emulation as the main goals.

Their shell is finished and ready to go, and this is the shell you’re seeing being used for the RetroMax. The RetroPlus however will have a totally different and very nostalgic colour (no spoilers!). The current hold up is apparently the software, bugs are being ironed out to bring a more stable and capable device to market.

So why the RetroMax? Data Frog wanted to release a machine to fill the gap until the RetroPlus is ready. The staff at retromini.com were offering pre-orders of this device, but cancelled them when they realised that the machine came with preloaded ROMs. From here on out, their devices will not contain any ROMs – for obvious reasons.

The RetroMax is available on Aliexpress however, and the reason it has 4 face buttons and shoulder buttons is that we’ll be seeing the shell again soon – in the form of the RetroPlus.

It all sounds like a bit of a mess, but it also kind of makes sense from a business stand point – as long as they make a little money from the RetroMax in the mean time.

More to come when info on the RetroPlus emerges.

Now that we know the RetroPlus (aka RetroMini 2.0) will be sharing the same shell as the cheapo Famiclone RetroMax, I thought it’d be a nice idea to compare them and see how they differ.

The new shell is better in every aspect. A larger 3.0″ screen as well as a larger overall shell, redesigned shoulder buttons and an increase from 2 to 4 face buttons makes the it very comfortable to hold and to use.

It feels like a higher quality mold to the RetroGame RS-97 with no burrs or sharp edges to be seen. This could be the best portrait mode original handheld shell we’ve had so far. Have a look at some pics.

I would not recommend picking up the RetroMax as a games machine, it runs a generic 188 in 1 Famiclone chip and even then it can’t emulate all the games properly. However, it would make an excellent shell for a Raspberry Pi project, since it can be had for around £10 shipped from Aliexpress.

I was kindly sent one of these a couple of weeks ago, though I wasn’t asked to review it and I have no retailer or other beneficiary to promote in this post – just so you know!

The Digi RetroBoy’s been on my radar since last year but strangely it has never appeared on any of the usual sites. I can only assume that the manufacturer was very selective about who they allowed to sell this thing, in order to keep the price up high. It’s been available on Amazon and eBay under the seller GZW-Shop and also JZW-Shop, and I’ve even seen it on some more obscure Japanese retailer websites too.

The Digi RetroBoy is either a clone of the K101 hardware (a clone of a clone?) or it is the exact same hardware. Either way, the important thing to note is that this is not a GBA emulator – it runs GBA games natively through reverse engineered hardware. It was the work of the K-Team back in 2011-2012 that attained this feat of engineering, and is what brought us the original Revo K101 and K101+ too.

The problem with the Digi RetroBoy though is the price, at just shy of £100 it’s never going to be one of those impulse purchases. It simply costs too much, especially considering it’s offering a similar if not identical hardware setup to that of the Revo K101, which cost considerably less when it was available.

So through its limited availability and high price The Digi RetroBoy manages to conjure an air of mystery and intrigue, but for me the draw isn’t quite strong enough to warrant the hefty cost. But maybe, just maybe, if this thing ends up being the most perfect console to play GBA on, maybe in that case the £95 price tag is worth it?

Let’s have a look at it then.

The console comes in a small, classy looking grey box whose footprint isn’t much bigger than the device itself. Inside you’ll find the usual set of stuff: an instruction booklet, charging cable and video cable.

At first glance the console looks quite beautiful. It’s a shell I’ve not seen used anywhere else and it is rather smart. It’s not until you begin to examine it closely and test the controls that the illusion is broken.

The first thing to notice is that there is a pretty bad design error made with the shell. The top and bottom halves of the shell sit nicely flush on the far edge behind the screen, but on every other side there is a 1-2mm overhang where they just don’t line up properly. This doesn’t look like irregular molding because the edges are clean and straight, it looks like a mistake made in the design phase of the shell. It’s not a huge deal, but you can kind of feel it when playing.

You can also see that they skimped on some other areas of the shell. There are 3 LEDs along the bottom right side that indicate power, charging and turbo and they should really have had proper light pipes for each. Instead the case was just molded with slightly thinner plastic over these LEDs to allow the light to shine through – and it looks cheap. The shell would also have benefited from some detail around the speaker grill and the screen printing is not as sharp as it should be either.

I do like the design of the slightly raised LCD, and the protective plastic lens covering it is good to see (especially since the Revo K101 did not have one). Overall the design reminds me of something between a Game & Watch and a GBA Macro, and with the shoulder buttons of a GBA Micro.

The d-pad barely protrudes 2mm from the shell and requires almost no force to push down. The face buttons are setup similarly but at least give out a soft, silent click when pushed. The shoulder buttons feel fine and are positioned well, though they require pressure to be applied away from the corners to function reliably – which is OK.

The LCD is passable. Not as good as a genuine 240×160 LCD, and not as good as a 4:1 960×640 LCD would be either – but it uses a non-standard pixel arrangement similar to the RS-97, which also seems to be quite high resolution. The combination of these 2 aspects really helps to soften the scaling issues that GBA usually has on non-native resolution screens – but the scaling issues are still very obvious. The viewing angles are OK from left and right, but from above the screen quickly goes dark, and from the bottom it soon washes out.

To get started you will need to provide your own MicroSD card, and all it takes is to drop your GBA ROMs on to it, and insert it into the cartridge. The system also plays retail GBA cartridges.

Everything points to this being the exact same hardware as the Revo K101, albeit rejigged into a different shaped board to accommodate this shell. The software looks identical, albeit with a blue and orange colour scheme. The button shortcuts for screen ratio, save states etc are all exactly the same and the additional software such as the music player appear to be the same too.

Others have said that this runs a firmware akin to the first Revo K101 version, even with the save game bugs. I haven’t had any issues saving games on this thing, so I’m not sure about that. The DigiRetro website does have a link to download a firmware, but the link is broken.

The console contains a functioning link port, and it links successfully to the Revo K101 with an official or unofficial link cable (not supplied). Compatibility is better than any emulator for GBA, with 99% of games playing perfectly. I did notice the same infrequent lag in Legend of Zelda that the K101 also suffered from, but it in no way spoils the game.

Overall the DigiRetro Boy is a solid attempt at a reshelling of the K101, but it’s a bit of a shame that they cheaped out in some areas. With some better molding, light pipes, better d-pad and a better LCD this could have been perfect. For £95 it’s hard to recommend, for £40 it would be an easier sell. Never the less, it is still available at Amazon UK for anyone interested.

Update 16th April: Surprisingly, a couple of days after posting this review the price on Amazon dropped to £74 with free delivery.

It’s been a good few years since I did this, and a few people have asked. Below is a table of some of the more obscure handhelds that are currently available. I’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive, indeed I have purposely left out all of the Famiclone style devices and some of the older machines that have since had successors (even if the predecessor is still available).

The PocketChip didn’t make it, due to the lack of gaming controls, and I left out the Raspberry Pi based machines as they probably deserve a post of their own. I struggled to leave out the Revo K101+, it was a somewhat ground breaking device but it can now only be found 2nd hand or for a ridiculous cost – so it stays out of the list too.

The below Pros and Cons are purely subjective and I’m sure people will disagree with me on some points, but this is my perspective – and bear in mind that some of these opinions are formed from what I’ve seen and read online as I have not owned all of these consoles. In fact it might be better if you ignored the pros and cons altogether

⁽⁰⁾ Plus model not as well supported (do not buy). Non standard pixel arrangement.
⁽¹⁾ Non standard pixel arrangement.
⁽²⁾ From some retailers it may still ship with the factory firmware.
⁽³⁾ Reverse engineered GBA hardware.
⁽⁴⁾ Monochrome.
⁽⁵⁾ UK buyers may find it cheaper from Amazon.
⁽⁶⁾ With discount ‘happy2019’.
⁽⁷⁾ Custom Linux based OS in the works.
⁽⁸⁾ GPD Win1 may still be available at some retailers for less.

Having said that, my favourite machines are in the first 5 rows. It’s no surprise that the two consoles running the beautiful, deeply flexible and actively developed RetroFW are in positions 1 and 2. This firmware represents everything that’s great about this community and contributes hugely to keeping this niche (and this website!) alive. The machines listed after the top 5 are not in rank order (they’re alphabetically listed).

I am eager to see what the RetroPlus (aka RetroMini 2.0) brings, if only because the shell is one of the best portrait mode shells I’ve ever used (currently available housing the shitty RetroMax). There’s also the possibility of a custom firmware for the RetroMini on the horizon, which is great to see. Not to mention Steward’s RetroV3S which looks like it might be bringing another RetroFW variant to ARM in the near future. 2019 is shaping up to be an interesting year for obscure handheld gaming, stay tuned!

The RetroMini was released back in November 2017 and despite its good looks and authentic 240×160 Game Boy Micro LCD, it never really found its feet. The problem for the most part is that the factory firmware is very poorly implemented making many GBA games painfully slow or plain unplayable.

Many thought it would never happen, but after a reported 400 hours of work pcercuei has released the first iteration of OpenDingux for the RetroMini (aka CoolBaby RS-90).

This paves the way for a similar level of development as the RS-97 has had, although it is important to bear in mind that the RS-90 is not as powerful as the RS-97.

Currently the ReGBA emulator is available for the device and it already out-performs the emulator from the factory. Having said that it’s worth noting that there are a few quirks to be ironed out if you’re not in to tinkering. I was unable to flash the device under Windows 10, despite the instructions saying it was possible, but in Linux it was simple enough. Also currently it doesn’t look as though you can load ROMs from the external SD card. I have been transferring ROMs from the SD to the internal memory through an SSH session in Putty.

The details and downloads for flashing your device can be found on pcercuei’s blog, and he’s graciously accepting donations for his efforts if you’re feeling generous.

The RS-90 can still be had at Aliexpress, and for a measly $28 it’d be rude not to. It’ll be fun to see what happens next for this cute and capable little handheld!

Update May 2nd: SD cards are now supported, you can flash the device as normal following the instructions on zcrc.me and external SD card loading will work. Also, there is a guide for flashing from Windows 10 kindly written by Great Crippler.

One of the problems with last year’s BittBoy is that many of the systems it can emulate require use of shoulder buttons, which weren’t implemented on the portrait oriented version from last year.

The PocketGo looks to be the same hardware as the BittBoy (AllWinner F1C100S) but re-jigged in to landscape mode to allow for a more versatile layout.

The PocketGo has a tempered glass screen lens covering its 320×240 LCD and runs the same custom firmware as the BittBoy V3. Although not as powerful as its Ingenic JZ4760B cousins (the LDK and Retrogame RS-97) the AllWinner F1C100S is a fairly capable CPU and there is a decent level of community support for it in terms of emulators and ports.

The biggest advantage that this thing has over the the LDK and RS-97 is the price, you can pre-order the BittBoy PocketGo for just $36 over at retromimi.com, which is an incredible price for such a versatile little machine.

There’s a short video of the PocketGo in action on Youtube, which demonstrates Mario Kart running fairly smoothly with the ReGBA emulator.

The PocketGo is due to ship out in mid June, so get your order in quick if you want to be at the top of the list when these things start shipping out. Mine’s already in the bag!

This thing appeared on Tieba today, and from the comments it looks to be a prototype of a new revision LDK Game.

There’s only this one photo, and from what I can gather it’s only a change of form factor from the original LDK.

Xiaolong Wang has previously asked what people would like to see in a true successor to the LDK, but we might expect to see more of a fan fare when the real successor (aka hardware increment) is announced.

It’s true that the LDK form factor is a little uncomfortable for those of us with big hands, so assuming this is the same machine in a new shell it could be a better handheld for some.

One difference to the LDK v1 that’s immediately noticeable is the analog nub. It’s unfortunately very easy to make the comparison to the RS-97 Plus in this regard, which also came with an analog nub “upgrade” – but came bundled with a huge downgrade in the form of an LCD locked at 30hz.

It’s possible that the nub on the LDK v2 is analog, but it’s also likely that it’ll just be replicating the digital inputs of the D-Pad. As of now though, this is all speculation. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more info in the next few weeks.

The thread on Tieba is here if anyone’s interested.

The updated landscape version of the LDK is now available to order. Housed inside a similarly chunky looking shell, the LDK Landscape is more of an iteration than an upgrade.

The hardware matches that of the original machine, and there’s an additional analog nub added to the bottom left hand side. It looks as though the LCD in the upgraded version is a whopping 0.1″ bigger at 2.7″. It’s yet to be seen whether this LCD is actually better than the previous one or not, let’s hope they didn’t mess up by using one locked at 30hz (ahem RS-97 Plus).

It’s hard to get too excited about this update, but if you were a fan of the clicky shoulder buttons and the chunky look of the original then it looks like the update has been designed with the same aesthetic in mind. The new landscape version should offer a much more comfortable orientation for those of us with larger hands to play for extended periods of time too, so there’s that.

The new LDK Landscape is now available at Aliexpress and at RetroMiMi for about $60 if you’re interested. Links to buy below.

Aliexpress
RetroMiMi Yellow
RetroMiMi Crystal Clear

Not by name perhaps – but this thing sure looks familiar.

The RG-300 is another portrait oriented OpenDingux handheld, this time with a 3″ LCD display similar to that of the Revo K101 in that it has a resolution of 960×480. We can take that to mean it has a non-standard pixel arrangement, which should make the awkward GBA resolution look pretty decent on it.

Due to be released this coming week, it’s still unclear what CPU is in this device but I strongly suspect it’ll be another JZ4760/B machine. How many of these do we need? Well another one can’t hurt but it’d be nice to see some advancements at some point!

The shell of this device is very reminiscent of the RetroMax, but it looks like some alterations have been made to the shoulder buttons.

The RG-300 will apparently come in 4 colours – smokey transparent (as above), transparent, blue transparent and grey (below).

The front facing buttons are different to those on the RetroMax too. Above start and select a brightness button and a sleep button have been added.

Rumour has it that the RG-300 may even appear on Aliexpress today, so if anyone spots it do let us know!

The last week or so has seen a whole load of Pocket-Go reviews go up on YouTube, with almost nothing but amazingly positive conclusions. Mine arrived yesterday and I’ve spent the last couple of days playing around on it. Are the YouTubers right? Let’s find out!

First, a bit of history. If you cast your mind back to Summer 2017 you might remember the release of the original BittBoy. It was a simple Famiclone on a chip, no SD card and no other bells and whistles either. It was a novelty item, at a price to match. 18 months after that saw the release of the New BittBoy, an improved device with removable storage and the ability to also play Game Boy and GBC games. This was running a proprietary Linux based OS called Melis.

It wasn’t long after that the New BittBoy was hacked by Chinese developer Steward. The first revisions of the New BittBoy were a pain to hack, some even requiring solder work on the motherboard.

A little while later saw a reworked motherboard that allowed for easy replacement of the Operating System without any soldering. Finally, a while later units started shipping with the NxHope firmware pre-flashed and ready to go. This is when the device saw its real success, and is the precursor to what is available to us all today – the Pocket-Go

The Pocket-Go has the same AllWinner F1C100S SoC as the New BittBoy did, a low power chip apparently (ahem) capable of up to 900Mhz and paired with a modest 32MB of DDR1 RAM.

The improvements made to the Pocket-Go over the New BittBoy are largely aesthetic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a worthwhile upgrade. In fact, some of these aesthetic differences are quite stunning.

Starting with the fit and finish, this thing is miles ahead of the New BittBoy. In my review I mentioned that the paint finish felt strange to the touch, very matte and generally cheap feeling. Well, they’ve sorted that out. Not only is the paint job pretty much perfect but the buttons look and feel great. The shoulder buttons looks similar to those on the RS-97 but they’re smaller and there is no wobble on them, and they have a far shorter travel too. They’re good. The d-pad is also an absolute dream to use, with soft rounded edges and an almost perfectly configured pivot.

The whole device feels like it’s made of very high quality plastic, and with far more thought put in to the overall design. It’s really hard to find fault with the execution of this design at all.

Likewise, the tempered glass screen protector is gorgeous. It would have been easy to slap a flat piece of glass over the front and everyone would have been happy, but this lens has domed edges which curve down gently towards the shell. Without getting too carried away, it’s a really nice touch and helps give the Pocket-Go a very premium feel from the outside.

Things keep getting better once you’ve dismantled the thing and fitted the alternative ABXY buttons. The SNES colours really make the device pop.

A word of caution to anyone about to swap out the buttons on their device – use a screwdriver with a thin stem when removing the screw holding in the motherboard next to the battery. A chunky screwdriver will at best dent the Li-Po and at worst you could end up puncturing it.

The Pocket-Go has a 320×240 2.4″ IPS display inside it, and although it’s apparently the same display as found in the New BittBoy it looks spectacular behind that crystal clear glass lens. Honestly it’s been a long time since we had a display that looks this good in a Chinese handheld. Photos do not do it justice at all.

The device is incredibly dinky, only about a third bigger than a GB Micro. It’s very cute looking and I find it even more comfortable to use than the RS-97 despite being so small.

In case you thought this review was just going to be me gushing over my new toy, I’m afraid it’s not all great news.

The screen tearing issues from the New BittBoy have not been resolved. It was only a few seconds into Mario Kart Super Circuit that I noticed that the problem is still apparent. It’s not terrible but it can be distracting and it’s frustrating that this isn’t something they figured out, considering they’ve had nearly 6 months to do so.

Reading discussions about this, it’s not necessarily something that can only be fixed with a hardware revision. It’s possible that a driver is to blame, but whether it will ever be resolved I have no idea. I should also note that it doesn’t seem to affect all emulators, and fast moving scenes are the most obvious. Sometimes it’s unnoticeable but when it’s there it’s quite annoying. I find this a huge shame because it detracts from what is otherwise one of the most vibrant and colourful displays we’ve ever seen in a (very) cheap handheld.

The other problem, one that was also apparently present on the New BittBoy, is that the speaker gives out a quiet high pitched whine or hiss even when the volume is all the way down. If you’re in a silent room, it’s noticeable when the volume is off – but with any ambient background noise you’re probably not going to hear it unless you put the speaker to your ear.

Again, it’s not a deal breaker but if this was present in the previous generation too it’s very disappointing that they didn’t bother to fix it in this generation. Whether it’s down to bad shielding or something that can be fixed in software or by soldering in a resistor I don’t know – but I will definitely be keeping my eyes out for a solution.

As far as performance of the device goes, it’s the same as the New BittBoy. In short it’s less powerful than a JZ4760 device such as the RS-97, LDK or RG-300 but it’s just about good enough. How’s that for vague?

Some PS1 titles are playable, but not many. The device struggles with SNES, with only maybe a third or half of the titles I’ve tried running at an acceptable framerate. GBA is better for the most part, and Mega Drive seems to run very well indeed. If SNES is your thing, you’d be better off with one of the JZ4760/B handhelds – there are plenty of them at the moment.

The Pocket-Go comes preloaded with emulators for the following systems:

• Game Boy
• GBA
• NES
• SNES
• Master System
• Mega Drive / Genesis
• Atari 2600
• Atari Lynx
• PC Engine
• PS1
• MAME
• Neo Geo
• DOS
• Wonder Swan

and a slew of ports including Quake and Quake 2, Rise of the Triad, Open Tyrian, Heretic and more.

You can expect new and updated emulators to make their way on to this device in future, but for now there’s plenty to keep us entertained. It’s worth noting that the the device comes with an SD card which you need to insert in order to boot – and mine at least was packed full of ROMs.

The biggest redeeming feature for these flaws is the price. Even with the screen tearing, the speaker hiss and the underpowered CPU – what you get for $40 is quite astonishing. You could argue that the first two flaws wouldn’t have actually cost anything to make right – chuck in a decent powerful CPU and add another $10 or $20 on to the price and that’d be close to the perfect machine for me. Oh well, maybe next time!

If you’re interested in picking one of these things up, mine arrived from retromimi.com in only about 8 days. Very impressive considering I opted for free shipping too.

Full disclosure though, it’s not impossible that they will release a new hardware revision that fixes the screen tearing and/or speaker whine in the future – so bear that in mind before parting with your $40.

The hugely popular RetroGame RS-97 from December 2017 has already seen one update in the form of the RS-97 Plus, which features an “analog” nub tacked on to the lower left corner. Unfortunately for the early adopters this first version of the Plus model also swapped out the LCD for one locked at 30hz. This meant that many games suffered from screen tearing and the community developers refused to support the hardware due to this.

Newer versions of the Plus variant now have the 60hz LCDs in them and aren’t a bad choice if you really want that analog nub.

But this week has seen yet another new variant of the device hit the shelves, the RS-97 Plus V3.

Currently this version is only available in the “Anniversary Edition” colourway which features a transparent purple shell and some rather tacky silk screening on the front and the back.

The V3 has the analog nub seen in the Plus models, but it also comes with a real LCD upgrade in the form of a 60hz 320×480 IPS panel.

The IPS panel promises superior colours and viewing angles over any of previously released versions, and due to this is around $15 more expensive currently costing just over $70 on Aliexpress.

If you’re in for the upgrade but aren’t sold on the Anniversary Edition colourway, there should be some more standard colours released in the coming days or weeks. I’ll update this post once they’re available too.

This version should have developer support so you can expect to be able to flash a RetroFW variant to it shortly.

Aliexpress “Anniversary Edition” RS-97 v3

For the past few months speculation has been rife on Tony Jih’s forthcoming RG350 handheld over at the Retro Gaming Handhelds discord server. Finally we have some photos of the brand new open source dual analog device!

We’ve known for some time that this handheld will be powered by the JZ4770, which is the same CPU as found in the GCW Zero. It’s a fairly substantial upgrade over the JZ4760/B that we’ve been force fed in a myriad of handhelds over the past year or so (RS-97, LDK, RG300 etc) – allowing for much better SNES emulation and a larger selection of playable PS1 titles too. In fact, photos of the desktop also show icons for an N64 emulator, but based on the GCW Zero performance I would only expect a small handful of N64 titles to be playable.

Yesterday Tony finally leaked some engineering sample images, which show the device in all its glory. The dual analog device will contain a 3.5″ 320×240 IPS display at 60hz, a 2200mah battery, 4 shoulder buttons (L1, L2, R1, R2) as well as L3 and R3 on the analog sticks. The machine will also have 512MB of DDR2 RAM, HDMI output and (dual?) USB-C charging and data transfer ports.

DIYGameModz also uploaded a video of the device in action playing Metal Gear Solid via the PS1 emulator today.

The handheld will of course be running some variant on OpenDingux, most likely RetroFW so development for the machine should be red hot right from the outset.

Reactions to the reveal are mixed, and some criticism comes from the fact that the D-Pad takes second rank after the left analog stick. Whilst this is a layout that should be familiar to those with modern consoles, the majority of the games played on a device like this will rely heavily on the D-Pad and the placement of it looks less than ideal.

Whilst it’s nice to have an IPS display in here, it’s also a shame that we’re stuck with 320×240 again. Maybe most people don’t mind it too much, but for me GBA scaling on this resolution doesn’t look good.

The RG350 is due to be released later this year. Initial rumours stated by Christmas, but now we’re being told it could be sooner.

It looks as though the manufacturer and/or distributor will be Anbernic – who do have a shop on Aliexpress, so it’s probable that it’ll be available there once it’s released. The price is said to be under $100, so I would expect to see it for a cent or two less in the initial days or weeks.

Despite being almost 10 years old, the JZ4760/B SoC from Ingenic is currently living it up in a whole host of different handheld systems. It’s said that they can currently be had for as little as $5 with a large enough order, so it’s hardly surprising that this capable little chip is so prevalent at the moment.

The RetroGame 300 (or RG300) is the latest in a line of handhelds powered by this SoC, and by now we should all be very familiar with its performance. In short, it’s good for everything up to and including the SNES, though some more demanding SNES titles could benefit from extra juice. A very small handful of PS1 games are also playable, but you can forget about N64, Dreamcast or anything from that era and later.

The RG300 is the 2nd portrait mode handheld to contain the JZ4760B and the design is very reminiscent of the RetroMini, albeit it’s a good bit bigger and more comfortable to use.

The first thing that I noticed lifting the thing out of its box is the weight on it. at 150g it’s almost double the weight of the PocketGo and a good 25g heavier than the RS-97 too. This can be attributed in part to the choice of battery. We usually see the 800mah BL-5B clone in these devices, but the designers of the RG300 have opted for the mammoth 1800mah BP-5L in this thing – which gets you between 5 and 6 hours of game play.

We also have a larger LCD than normal in here, it’s a 3 inch TFT panel and it sits underneath a tempered glass screen lens. The LCD is the devices weak point, it’s by no means bad but we’ve been spoiled by the beautiful IPS panel inside the PocketGo.

The viewing angles are actually decent from all but the bottom edge where the image inverts at around 45 degrees. But the biggest issue is with the brightness, it’s not as bright or vivid as the PocketGo panel and outside in direct sunlight it really shows its weakness. It’s actually not quite as good as the panel in the latest non-IPS version of the RS-97 either – but it’s pretty close. To tell the truth, before the BittBoy and PocketGo I wouldn’t have really thought twice about this LCD considering the price of the unit – but as mentioned earlier we’ve definitely been spoiled by those IPS panels.

The D-Pad is the same as the one found in RetroMax and RetroMini as well as some of those newer Famiclone handhelds. It has some shallow textured cut outs for grip, it’s firm but easy to manoeuvre and the pivot is set just right. Likewise the face buttons are perfectly good with a couple of millimetre travel and a soft click once pushed all the way in.

This shell is very similar to the RetroMax and the (apparently) forthcoming RetroPlus, but one major difference is the shoulder buttons. I actually prefer the shoulder buttons of the RetroMax, but only really for aesthetic reasons. These have a short travel and respond with a quiet dull click once pressed. They’re also very well placed for larger hands. You can easily use either your finger tips or the middle of your fingers to hit them without any trouble.

Overall this is one of the most comfortable devices I’ve ever played and if you’re an adult with adult sized hands you’ll be able to play this thing for many hours without cramping up.

It goes without saying that RetroFW is available for this handheld, and to install it’s as simple as removing the SD card from behind the battery and flashing the image. There’s no disassembly required.

My unit came with a 16GB microSD behind the battery, and a 32GB microSD in the slot on the left hand side which will be more than enough. I know some people tend to replace these SD cards as it’s claimed that they’re unreliable – however I’ve not yet had any issues. In fact for what it’s worth the ones in this unit are branded by Toshiba (whether or not they’re genuine though is anyone’s guess).

This is also the first device to come with USB-C on board and it of course comes bundled with a cable too.

In my opinion this iteration of the JZ4760B wins. The obvious alternatives being the RS-97 which is great but has no screen protection and wobbly shoulder buttons and the LDK Portrait which is too uncomfortable to use for extended periods of time. The LDK Landscape is probably better than the LDK Portrait, but it uses the slightly less powerful non-B version of the chip, and they all have a smaller screen and a less powerful battery.

The only weakness of the RG300 is the LCD, but it’s by no means a deal breaker. There is talk of the possibility of manually replacing the LCD with an IPS panel – I’ll be watching out for results on that because that would make this the absolute best JZ4760B machine possible I reckon.

The RG300 can be had at any of the below stores. I got mine from Aliexpress but it’s worth shopping around for the best deal.

Aliexpress
RetroMimi
Retrogame300

The Raspberry Pi Compute Modules have never gotten much love from manufacturers of obscure handhelds. In many ways they’re the perfect candidate for driving these things – the software is already there, the developer community is large and active and best yet, it’s almost guaranteed that a substantial hardware improvement will be released once every few years.

We have seen the RPi Compute Module 3 (CM3) used once before in the FreePlay CM3 kit. This kit uses a heavily modified GBA shell to accommodate a custom board which the CM3 docks with – it brings all the power of the RPi3 to a familiar handheld shell. I love the idea, but for me the FreePlay kit isn’t executed very well. A fully custom shell would be a much better solution.

Enter the Creoqode Lyra then.

The Lyra is a handheld console powered by the soon-to-be previous generation CM3L, a version of the CM3 without onboard flash memory.

The company have launched a KickStarter campaign to raise £30k to bring the Lyra to life – a goal that is already met. For your money you can choose whether you want a pre-assembled unit or a kit that you put together yourself – a task that requires no soldering and can apparently be achieved in 15 minutes.

The kit comes with a custom made shell, contacts and buttons, as well as their own motherboard, an 800×480 LCD, a 3000mah Li-Ion cell and the required screws and tools to put the thing together. It also ships with a CM3, so you don’t need to source this yourself.

The handheld will run RetroPie, which allows for a huge library of well optimised emulators to run on this device.

It sounds great, apart from a few rather large drawbacks. The first and most obvious being that unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock you’ll know that the RPi4 has just been released.

Whilst the CM version of the RPi4 isn’t out yet, it will presumably be released at some point soon and it might have made more sense to hold out for that before launching this project. However, Creoqode have said that you’ll be able to swap out the board yourself for the CM4 once it’s available – though this will obviously cost you extra.

The second issue for me is that it’s just ugly, and I also wonder whether recessing the controls like that was a great idea from an ergonomic standpoint.

A 4:3 ratio 640×480 LCD might have made more sense too, rather than the widescreen that they’ve gone for.

I might have been able to overlook these drawbacks though if it wasn’t for the price. The DIY kit costs a whopping £149, and if you want a pre-assembled unit you’re gona have to part with £179 for this thing.

I understand that they’ve had to manufacture their own board and housing, but given that the rest of the components (apart from the CM3) cost pennies to source it seems rather a high asking price for a very sparsely populated motherboard and a plastic shell.

However, this is definitely a step in the right direction I reckon. I really hope that other companies take note of this form factor and run with it. If we could get some Chinese manufactured kits like these in a variety of form factors we might finally be able to leave those ageing Ingenic chips behind and move forward toward N64, GameCube and Dreamcast emulation in a non-Android handheld – and with any luck for a far more reasonable price than this.

If you’re interested, head over to the KickStarter page for some more details.