Analogue Pocket announced; can play a variety of handheld systems' games through FPGA

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Analogue is a company that has been taking retro video game consoles, and adapting them to use in the modern day, by providing a system that can play oldschool 90's game cartridges in 1080p, without any emulation. Previously, they've created the Analogue Mega Sg and the Super NT, "perfected" variations of the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo, respectively. Now, Analogue is taking on a new front: handheld gaming, with the announcement of the Analogue Pocket. This new system will play nearly any handheld game you can throw at it, from Game Boy, to Color, to Advanced, or even Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and Neo Geo Pocket Color; over 2,780 different games are compatible through two FPGA chips.

The Pocket will feature a 3.5" screen in a case similar to that of a Game Boy Color. The LCD has a resolution of 1600x1440, and offfers a ppi of 615. It will also have a function for those who wish to create music using game's soundfonts through a built-in synthesizer called Nanoloop.

Addtionally, there will also be a dock sold seperately, which can allow you to place the Analogue Pocket onto it, and play your games on a TV through HDMI, much like the Nintendo Switch.

Analogue's Pocket will launch sometime next year, for $199.99.

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FAST6191

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I can tell, the image will be clean sure, but I'll see subpixels, is not the same.

That's what I was thinking too. maybe nobody has the equipment to do such a low res screen anymore so they are forced to use a very high res screen to achieve as close to the same result as possible. with such high dpi is less likely to see the subpixels, but you can still tell.

Assuming they don't smoke all the crack and somehow make lag/ghosting with nearest neighbour scaling (for others playing along then for a 2x scale you copy the pixel to make a 4x4 grid of the same pixel, which is why you want clean multiple scaling) and the pixel aspect ratio is suitable then unless the subpixels have a different colour or are dead then I would say you see them in the same way someone with oxygen free copper hears better sound.
 

Rahkeesh

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At that high a resolution on a tiny screen, with a half-decent interpolation like retroarch's "sharp bilinear", you aren't going to need to stick to integer scaling. You can also get some very accurate filters to recreate the quirks of each display type. The individual dot matrix on your gameboys, the scratchy grid on your gameboy advance, etc. It really comes down to how much effort they put into the display scaling software to take advantage of this display.

Also waiting to find if this has an SD card slot like every other analogue console, and the inevitable jailbreak that will follow to use it. Bringing over at least some 8-bit home console cores doesn't seem out of the question either.
 
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AkikoKumagara

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I can play gameboy on every handheld device I own. Does humanity really need another device for that?
The difference is every other handheld device you own that you do this on which isn't a GameBoy is using software emulation. FPGAs create a perfect clone of the hardware so it'll play exactly like the original consoles, while including the modern benefits the system adds.
 
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cearp

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I was waiting for the email from them today - it will be an instant buy for me and I personally never do instant buys.

I hope this gets 'jailbroken' like their other stuff :)
 
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AkikoKumagara

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They are trying too hard with this one.
That resolution is a 10 times bigger, which is good, but totally overkill and unnecessary unless they are trying to do gba too, but is unlikely.
Even there 240x160 doesn't scale perfectly to 1600x1440 without black borders.

They likely decided to use such resolution to be able to use shaders or a similar filtering technique, but nothing beats native resolution.

It supports GBA out of the box.
 

Sakitoshi

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Assuming they don't smoke all the crack and somehow make lag/ghosting with nearest neighbour scaling (for others playing along then for a 2x scale you copy the pixel to make a 4x4 grid of the same pixel, which is why you want clean multiple scaling) and the pixel aspect ratio is suitable then unless the subpixels have a different colour or are dead then I would say you see them in the same way someone with oxygen free copper hears better sound.
the ghosting is totally replicable to a believable extent, gambatte has an option called frame mixing that does just that and is very accurate (I have a gameboy light to compare).
the thing with the subpixels is not that the color reproduction between pixels may fail, is that having two or more subpixels represent a single pixel doesn't look the same.

look at this quick example of what happens when you represent pure colors with subpixels compared to native resolution.
subpixels.png

at the left we have subpixels and to the right a single pixel.
a red sprite would show evenly lit as opposed to have a space between pixels like the good old gameboy color/advance display it.

thinking more about it this could benefit gameboy mono if they leave an intentional row of subpixels off between gameboy pixels, displaying things as blocks like the monochromatic screen does.
but gameboy color will look different.
 
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cearp

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I'd buy one if it featured save file dumping and restoring as well. Any words on that matter?
haha we just found out about this today.
the supernt though can dump stuff, not sure about mega sg.
this thing probably will be able to, plus you can see that they made it dev friendly, so... yeah I think lots of things will be possible for it.

although if you really just want to dump and restore gb/a carts, you can buy cheap devices to do that.
 

Clydefrosch

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The difference is every other handheld device you own that you do this on which isn't a GameBoy is using software emulation. FPGAs create a perfect clone of the hardware so it'll play exactly like the original consoles, while including the modern benefits the system adds.
i mean i get that argument.
but who can honestly tell the difference between a good emulator and the original? also, if someone demands the original, do they want accurate ghosting too?

really, once crackling and screen tearing are off the table, 99.5% of the entire potential market for this is satisfied.
 

Naendow

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Well, the price is pretty heavy. But it seems to be a great handheld. I'll think about it.
Edit: Well, I've just seen that it can't play ROMs. I can play my physical games on original consoles. I'll just stay with my GPD XD+ then.
 
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AkikoKumagara

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i mean i get that argument.
but who can honestly tell the difference between a good emulator and the original? also, if someone demands the original, do they want accurate ghosting too?

really, once crackling and screen tearing are off the table, 99.5% of the entire potential market for this is satisfied.
The people who don't care about accuracy aren't the market the device is going for.
 

Naendow

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Yea the screens resolution is great you're right. But for this price I also want some more features and not only the ability to play original games. I'd love to play Pokemon hacks on such a device, which I just can't do. And that is pretty bad if you think about the price.
 

DKB

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Switch Mini, which undoubtedly will be hacked in the future. Costs 200 dollars, and will be able to emulate all of these games plus far beyond what this thing will be able to do. It can also play Switch games. The machine looks nice, but honestly I don't know why they keep making these devices.
 

Harsky

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Yea the screens resolution is great you're right. But for this price I also want some more features and not only the ability to play original games. I'd love to play Pokemon hacks on such a device, which I just can't do. And that is pretty bad if you think about the price.
If the Super NT and Mini NT are anything to go by, a jailbroken firmware could be released that allows roms to be running off the SD card.
 

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