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

genxor · Oct 17, 2019

I wonder how warm it could get. Looks nice!

Rahkeesh · Oct 17, 2019

Bullseye said:
How would this one be better than a 3DS playing GBA injects? Or the GB/GBC injects from VC?

Edit: or where could it be better and by how much?

3DS has a comparatively trash screen that can't be well scaled to, and it has to emulate GB/GBC rather than playing "natively" like GBA, meaning additional input lag and incompatibilities.

Bullseye · Oct 17, 2019

Rahkeesh said:
3DS has a comparatively trash screen that can't be well scaled to, and it has to emulate GB/GBC rather than playing "natively" like GBA, meaning additional input lag and incompatibilities.

Agreed that the screen is not the best (it never was with the original GB and GBC) but how much input lag are we talking about between VC and original?

cearp · Oct 17, 2019

Bladexdsl said:
$200 lol who the fuck is going to buy this trash just to play carts!

Some people spend close to that to mod their gameboys as it is.
Get a custom metal housing, backlight, rechargable battery... that all adds up.
Plus the labor $ that you pay if you want someone to do it for you/buy premodded?
Have a look at these ebay items:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/202792601405 - £120
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113859031621 - £160
https://www.ebay.com/itm/274011854976 - $215
https://www.ebay.com/itm/273946143337 - AU$350
https://www.ebay.com/itm/153682486808 - $468

Now, this brand new device Analogue are selling is fantastic value.
(Fantastic value to the right person! If you are not into gameboys, or gaming for that matter, sure, it's dumb to spend your money on it.)
- it plays all gameboy games virtually perfectly due to the guy/team reverse engineering the real hardware
- it accepts real carts
- a real link port
- rechargable battery
- amazing screen
- it has not 1 but 2 FPGAs. I'm not sure which ones, but FPGAs are not cheap chips due to their nature. With the 2nd one they are letting us do what we want with, e.g. supporting some other game consoles virtually perfectly as well!
If you buy the separate dock, you can even connect it to your tv, and it has a DAC so you can get perfect audio out of your games/synthesizers.
It's really a phenomenal system, and 'sad to say' but I know that Nintendo wouldn't have made a 'Gameboy Classic' as cool or as good as this. You can't even play carts in the SNES Classic... it's really just a fun little cash grab.
But Analogue make things for the enthusiasts.

zxr750j · Oct 17, 2019

I've got a really nice FPGA lying around, my passme

Xalusc · Oct 17, 2019

Chary said:
from Game Boy, to Color, to Advanced, or even Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and Neo Geo Pocket Color

That's cool and all, but how about WonderSwan?

SuperDan · Oct 17, 2019

$200 .. No chance .. I'm out

FAST6191 · Oct 17, 2019

Bullseye said:
How would this one be better than a 3DS playing GBA injects? Or the GB/GBC injects from VC?

Edit: or where could it be better and by how much?

For most purposes and most games until you hit speedrun territory (possibly even tool assisted speedrun) I imagine it would be good enough, give or take the screen scaling and general quality. The GBA is reasonably potent compared to the older consoles with similar looking games but at the same time not all that tricky to emulate -- unlike many other systems of the time there is only one core in one CPU to emulate, the memory handling is fairly basic, and cartridges themselves don't add anything to the mix, or if you prefer there is a reasonable chance you could play the entire GBA library more than well enough to say you did with the emulator made about the time the GBA hit North America (the pre Japanese release emulators might be a bigger ask).

I don't really have too many games to stress test this sort of thing though (at least not in the style of https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/ and https://web.archive.org/web/2014112...index.php?title=SNES_games_with_special_chips ).
Most times we are more concerned with anti piracy and similar such things ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/buying-a-gba-flash-cart-in-2013.341203/page-18#post-4756995 ). Still the Golden Sun audio is a fairly notable torture test for emulators, and the game called payback can tax emulators fairly heavily. If you want to try to find some of the old GBA slot supercard compatibility lists you might get something that struggles with low speed devices (the main one went offline years ago and https://web.archive.org/web/2008030...mans.joskeonline.com/supercardsite/index.php/ is limited. https://web.archive.org/web/2009050...pocketheaven.com:80/?system=gba&section=patch has a few for another similarly tricky cart), and the supercard DSTwo GBA emulator list might be of interest here as well ( https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/DSTWO_GBA_Emulator_Compatibility ).
https://mgba.io/tag/emulation/ has a few interesting articles which might yield some games with some quirks you can test.

PatrickD85 · Oct 17, 2019

Cool little device though but ... well I am pretty content with all the available options already.
Sure wish though that Nintendo would do something when it comes to their GB, GBC, GBA library on Nintendo Switch Online. But that is a story for a different day / time I guess...

cearp · Oct 17, 2019

Xalusc said:
That's cool and all, but how about WonderSwan?

possible theoretically, but I don't see a wonderswan fpga core https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki, so I don't think anyone has made it.
but if it was made, and it worked with the analogue pocket's fpga, sure, that's exactly the sort of thing analogue want us to do

SG854 · Oct 17, 2019

Sophie-bear said:
Fact is nothing like this has ever been made before. If you're comparing this to the likes of those Chinese emulation handhelds (even the halfway decent ones), you're way off-base on what this product is.
The fact that you're comparing Switch being able to play the games via software emulation assures me that you're making that kind of comparison. Software emulation is incapable of the things FPGA can manage. Watch some videos where Kevtris explains what an FPGA can do and maybe you'll understand why these things are the future of retro gaming, and why they're going to allow you to continue to enjoy your classic games long past the time when the original hardware can no longer do it. Here's some stuff I dug up to start with.

Are they really? I prefer using the Higan Cycle Accurate Emulator over the Nintendo Switch's Emulator. Run that in retroarch's with it's run ahead feature and you can have input lag that's better then original hardware.

Right now FPGA's are expensive and I would consider them a viable option for myself when the price goes down. I can see them as the future for Nintendo's mini series of consoles. That's the route Nintendo should go down when they become cheaper. But there is no difference between hardware simulation and software emulation. It depends on how good the developer is for both solutions.

spotanjo3 · Oct 17, 2019

No thanks. I will stick with homebrew on the go with Switch. It is priceless to me!

sarkwalvein · Oct 17, 2019

azoreseuropa said:
No thanks. I will stick with homebrew on the go with Switch. It is priceless to me!

If hackable (hoping someday) to be honest the Switch Lite looks like a perfect portable emulation machine to be honest.
And that is also $200.

PS: it seems obvious that I am not such a perfect-emulation 0-lag advocate.

cybrian · Oct 18, 2019

Chary said:
View attachment 182887

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.

Source

The one thing that’s sexiest to me about this is the screen. It sounds too good to be true and until I see one it is, but Analogue has made pretty hard-to-believe things in the past.

It probably sounds too high a resolution to be useful, but I can argue that its super high DPI and large area are perfect for recreating the subpixel layouts of specific screens. Like, the actual geometry and layout of the pixels in the screen of a Game Boy, or a Game Boy Color, or what have you. You can draw gaps in between the pixels. A filter can do all this in hardware on the FPGA.

Hell, you could easily even emulate some dust and scratches on the lens if you’re on the crazy side and want something a little too authentic.

Is this useful? Well, Analogue’s traditionally marketed themselves based on the accuracy of their products as a niche for the sort of hardcore retro gamers that might collect Sony CRTs.

Personally, I think that at this DPI, with appropriate filtering and scaling a GBC screen will look better than it could on virtually anything else. I might buy one, even if it costs the same as an Xbox One, because if nothing else it’s an insanely high resolution screen that fits in my pocket.

the_randomizer · Oct 18, 2019

Godofcheese said:
Are third party consoles illegal? ^^
Don't they fall into the same gray zone like emulators
if they don't use anything Nintendo owns, It's chill.

Yes because emulators are illegal. Oh wait, not they're not, look up copyright law please, like Sony v. Connectix and Sony v. Bleem! where Sony lost on all lawsuits.
FPGA is an approximation of hardware, not emulation, so yeah, Nintendo can't do jack.

darkdev · Oct 18, 2019

It just lacks the HuCard support.
I wonder if the Master System adapter (Master Gear) will work out of the box.

J-Machine · Oct 18, 2019

darkdev said:
It just lacks the HuCard support.
I wonder if the Master System adapter (Master Gear) will work out of the box.

it will need a cartridge adaptor for anything not GB/gbc/gba. these things get a jail broken firmware fast though possibly in a month after release it will

darkdev · Oct 18, 2019

Indeed I'm talking about the "master system - game gear adapter" on its game gear cartridge adapter

Godofcheese · Oct 18, 2019

the_randomizer said:
Yes because emulators are illegal. Oh wait, not they're not, look up copyright law please, like Sony v. Connectix and Sony v. Bleem! where Sony lost on all lawsuits.
FPGA is an approximation of hardware, not emulation, so yeah, Nintendo can't do jack.

What, I never said that they were.
Fucking hell man

chaoskagami · Oct 18, 2019

Pocket is designed for FPGA development. We added a second dedicated FPGA just for developers to develop & port their own cores.

Sold. I needed something to replace my dead DE0-nano with. I wonder what FPGA it uses, though. Because, you know? I. Hate. VHDL. Verilog or death.

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