I've Been Waiting YEARS For THIS! - Analogue Pocket
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
3,085 words · ~15 min read
0:01
- It's "Retro Time".
0:04
And I dropped it. (man laughs) This here is an AGS one-on-one Game Boy Advance SP.
0:11
Now why am I showing you a Game Boy Advance? The reason I'm showing it to you
0:15
is because it has a similar form factor to what we are going to be looking at.
0:19
What we're looking at is also running the same cartridges.
0:23
That was still on, I think. No, it wasn't.
0:27
Great. (man laughs) This is the Analog Pocket.
0:31
They're similar in concept to the MiSTer we just looked at
0:34
and like everything else they've made, it's using an FPGA.
0:38
And that's why this is so interesting to me because they're not efficient chips.
0:43
Not at all. They're very good at what they do. They're versatile.
0:46
There's not a whole lot on here except for a nice glowing green sticker on the bact
0:50
that says Analog Pocket Console black USB-C cable, which I guess is just the package contents.
0:54
So, let's get it out of here and see what it looks like. I've been waiting so long for this.
0:58
They announced this console years ago,
1:02
before short-circuit existed and it looks fantastic.
1:08
That matte finish along with the glossy screen, you can kinda see that there's a bezel around the screen
1:14
and it's a little bit chunkier. This is the GBA SP and it's just closed here
1:18
and it's about the same thickness. Actually almost exactly.
1:21
The GBA is a little bit thicker. It's not unwieldy or anything.
1:25
In fact, it feels really nice in the hand. Oh, I've got a banana for scale.
1:29
Of course. Ah, now we can tell that...
1:34
- [Man] Nothing. - Now the buttons, on the original GBA SP
1:37
they're kinda cliquey. You can...
1:40
Yeah, this one's kinda well used. I don't think the buttons are new, but they're clicky.
1:44
They click in. These buttons are more like, what you'd get on a Super Nintendo controller.
1:47
They've got rubber membranes. So, they've got smoother actuation
1:52
as opposed to these just click, click,
1:55
which I personally prefer. The only thing that has touch switches that I can see
1:59
are the shoulder buttons and probably the start and select an analog buttons.
2:02
Yes, those are touch switches as well. It doesn't look through the battery bay opens up at all.
2:06
So this is a fixed lithium-ion battery. It looks like we've got a power button here
2:10
plus add/minus volume. Speaker on that side and another speaker on this side.
2:14
So we've got stereo speakers. USB type C, headphone Jack
2:19
and a link cable port.
2:22
The same link cable port. We'll be testing that later.
2:26
And by default it takes Game Boy style cartridges.
2:29
So Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color and it has cores for all of those.
2:35
It also has cores for the second Game Gear, the Neo Geo Pocket and the Atari Lynx
2:40
which is actually very rare. I've seen a Lynx once in person.
2:44
In this case, this is a Game Boy Advanced cartridge. It's an Everdrive GBA. It's got one of these nice little micro SD cards in it
2:49
with games. These actually can put extra strain on these older pieces of hardware.
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So it's actually kind of a good thing that I've got it plugged into something
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that's a little bit more robust. It is a little strange
3:01
to see the Game Boy Advanced Character just kind of hanging out back here
3:04
with a big gap there, but when your finger touches it,
3:09
when you're holding the shoulder buttons,
3:12
it's a little weird. I could see that being a little bit annoying.
3:16
If you have the dock, you probably don't have that problem. And also I think it has Bluetooth support built in,
3:20
so you could in theory, pair an 8BitDo controller or something.
3:25
Although, there's no stand or anything, So that would just be bad.
3:31
The screen is actually supposed to be really good. It's exactly 10 times the resolution
3:37
of the original Game Boy. Which means that not only is it high resolution,
3:41
but it's a straight one-to-one scale. It's not going to be interpreted in any way.
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It's just gonna be. So, that's a thing that I'm looking forward to seeing.
3:49
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3:53
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3:58
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4:03
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4:07
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4:12
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4:16
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4:20
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4:27
All right, actually I was going to turn it on, but first there's some extra stuff in the box
4:31
that I realized I hadn't talked about. So there's the USB type C cable
4:35
wrapped in this rather Apple-like cardboard wrapping that I approve of.
4:39
A USB type C to C cable is also included. Although I don't see a charger in here
4:44
which may or may not be a problem for you. I mean, I'm ambivalent towards it.
4:48
I can't get this out, whatever it is. (man laughs) Ah, here we go.
4:52
Okay. - [Man] Are these stickers? Ooh. - FPGA. Let's just put that right there.
4:56
- [Man] Got them. - Yeah, got them. (man laughs) Let's see.
5:00
Analog Pocket quick-start guide for more information. Clean your game cartridges thoroughly before you use.
5:05
A lot of old cartridges are real dirty. It's probably got some corrosion on it
5:09
and that can kinda spread to other contexts that it touches
5:12
so you should probably clean your cartridges before you try. - [Man] Like blowing it.
5:16
- Spit on it. Let's power it on and see what happens.
5:19
This is not an OLED screen by the way. This is a IPS LCD.
5:22
It looks like it's got a tutorial. You know what? Let's do it.
5:26
Let's let's do this together. Press this button to continue, press this button to go back.
5:29
Well, okay, let's go back. They lied.
5:33
Press Analog for menu, but it didn't do anything. This is a bad tutorial, you guys.
5:38
Hold Analog and press left or right to cycle original display modes. Okay.
5:41
So LCD filters as well as different color palettes.
5:45
Oh my God, it's got an end user license agreement and it's not properly centered.
5:50
Come on. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.
5:53
Oh my God it's huge. - [Man] That's what she said.
5:57
- Oh, (beep) they've got a class action waiver in here. (man laughs)
6:00
So it's got a bunch of systems. Game Gear is listed here
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even though Lynx should also be listed here and Neo Geo Pocket. I'm not sure.
6:07
There's a couple of different things that are built into this. So there's Nanoloop.
6:10
That's a digital audio workstation for basically GBA music.
6:14
So you can hook up to your computer and basically use it for sequencing.
6:19
That's pretty cool. Settings. So we can change all of the different things
6:25
for all the different hardware. Which is actually quite good because the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance
6:30
had very different screens. And even the Game Boy color had a pretty different screen
6:33
to either of those as well. And you can set the control so you can mirror
6:37
B and A to Y and X. So B and A is right here. I think Y and X are right here.
6:41
Wait, no that doesn't make any sense. Okay.
6:45
I was hoping that the Game Boy Advance section would allow you to map the shoulder buttons
6:49
to these face buttons that are here, but that's apparently not a thing.
6:52
There are some games that I prefer that with like "Castlevania: Circle of the Moon" comes to mind
6:57
where it's actually, I think better with four face buttons.
7:01
If I had an SD card with any kind of user made content,
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I could probably go into the library here. But the library will not support things like Game Boy ROMs.
7:13
They're very explicitly not using this for piracy.
7:18
I literally have one of the games we're gonna be playing right here.
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And the reason I have that is because I'm gonna use
7:25
a link cable to see if I can get multiplayer going on this.
7:29
Yeah, that's a pretty bright screen. It's a little squished.
7:32
I think the Game Boy Advance did have a different aspect ratio to the standard Game Boy.
7:37
Okay. So analog GBA, that's just pixel scaling, nearest neighbor.
7:42
Yeah, that's nearest neighbor. It's sharp. Hit right once, you got a original GBA LCD.
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It's got an LCD filter on there that it makes it look pretty decent.
7:51
It's not amazing. I don't think it's perfectly accurate.
7:54
I don't know, it might be. No, it is. The next over is originally Game Boy Advance SP one-on-one.
8:00
Oh, I just happened to have one of these right here.
8:03
That's all the modes. Oh, that's a little disappointing.
8:07
But I guess for the Game Boy advance you're not gonna want that many different modes anyway.
8:13
Oh, that's loud. (game music)
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I was hearing clipping. I'm not sure if it's the volume.
8:25
Instruments aren't amazing sounding in "Sonic Advance".
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Let's go to the sound test here. (game music)
8:33
Let's try "Sonic Advance" on the original Game Boy Advance.
8:37
Obviously you don't get the BIOS boot up sound on the Analog Pocket.
8:42
Oh, okay. (game music)
8:48
Yeah. No, that sounded about the same. Anyway, let's get back into "Sonic Advance"
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to see how that plays. The volume is much higher.
8:57
Holy crap. (game music)
9:00
That's about as loud as the other one was. The colors are darker,
9:04
perhaps more accurate in the Analog Pocket. Fun fact about the GBA, it didn't have a backlight
9:09
so a lot of games actually over brightened their colors.
9:13
So a lot of GBA games, even though they could look really good,
9:17
look like trash on emulators or whatever, because they were compensating for this
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to try and brute force through that dark LCD.
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Okay. There is very little if any delay
9:31
and the buttons feel pretty good. Okay, the screen is real bright.
9:35
It is a little weird how it's not quite the right aspect ratio,
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but I get that they're going for the original Game Boy aspect ratio first,
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rather than Game Boy Advance. I think statistically more people would favor the original Game Boy aspect ratio.
9:49
Let me throw a "Tetris Worlds" into... I guess either one of these, it doesn't matter.
9:56
That's as bright as this one gets by the way. Yeah, so the colors are very different.
10:01
It looks like there's more saturation
10:04
on the original Game Boy and also the color temperature is very different as well.
10:08
Obviously, if you're looking for the original experience, it's not quite that.
10:12
No, it looks closer to what you would see if you fired up an emulator.
10:17
Wait, hang on. Oh, I'm stupid. I was in original Game Boy mode.
10:21
Yeah, there's still more green in this screen
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and none of the colors really line up properly. There might be some degradation, I don't really know.
10:30
But I do think that the way this screen looks is...
10:36
You can actually see the (indistinct) and stuff. So there's the thing you can't see on
10:39
the original Game Boy screening. You kinda make it out. But all right, let me turn this down
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so we don't have both of them going at once. Now the colors are again very different.
10:48
Now, this is more purple than this is. This is a red or a shade of purple.
10:54
Obviously the controls feel a lot better
10:57
on the analog pocket. At least to me.
11:01
Now I'm very curious. This game does support multiplayer via link cable,
11:04
I'm pretty sure. Don't quite know how this multi cable works.
11:09
Why couldn't they use this music for the gameplay?
11:13
(game music) This isn't gonna work with an original GBA.
11:19
- [Mark] It's 'cause it's not Zelda. - Ah. - [Jono] God damn it.
11:22
- That's the problem. Well that's disappointing. For whatever reason,
11:26
it might be that the version of the game that I have on the everdrive here,
11:29
is different than the version of the game we have here. And supposedly this does work in Game Boy to pocket mode
11:36
as well as pocket to pocket. However, when I was poking around, I did notice something else.
11:40
There's this high quality audio option here. You also have things like frame blending,
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which kinda simulates that blurry kinda motion
11:47
on the old LCDs. Well as sharpness filters, which I'm not sure what that does exactly.
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It just says plus three, but I don't really see it doing anything. I'm not sure.
11:56
Also size and position doesn't seem to be possible to adjust.
12:00
Maybe there's still some stuff that needs to be updated.
12:03
Anyway, let's try "Sonic Advance". See if that audio cleaned up any.
12:07
(game music)
12:15
Okay. Well I just added myself as an emulator user. That sounded a lot better.
12:19
I wanna take it apart. - [Jono] Throw all the bits in and see which one fits.
12:22
- See which bit fits. It's a little small, but it works.
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Big screws. So I felt this kinda...
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Okay. - [Jono] There you go.
12:35
- So that's the battery. 15.91 watt hours.
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It seems pretty repairable. The battery's in this this little caddy here.
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There's a connector for it. And then this plate.
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I think there's extra screws or are these just clips?
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I'm not sure if we want to wrench on it too much more though. But it's nice to know that the battery's replaceable
12:55
and it seems to be pretty repairable. There we go.
12:59
So, the Analog Pocket.
13:04
What are my thoughts? The battery life that I've observed so far is pretty decent.
13:10
This is a 600 maH power battery by default and it runs for just as long as this 4300 maH battery.
13:15
It's a power hungry piece of hardware, but they made it work.
13:20
The original GBA... What was the original GBA's...
13:23
All right, sorry. GBA SP's battery life. - [Man] Seven to 10.
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- So seven to 10. So it's just comparable. Pretty good form factor.
13:30
I like the buttons. I like the screen.
13:34
The operating system, everything is kind of skewed over a little bit,
13:38
which is a little bit weird. And I would like to see more controls
13:42
because I'd like to be able to map the L and R buttons to the face buttons for some games on the GBA.
13:47
It just makes more sense that way, even though the original hardware you would have to use those buttons.
13:51
The original hardware just used that because it didn't really have a choice.
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But now we do. - [Man] It says all buttons are mappable though.
13:59
- Yeah, but it doesn't let me do that. It just let's me mirror buttons.
14:04
Maybe that's something that's coming later. They do add more features later on down the road
14:08
when they release these consoles, so. But I like the screen.
14:12
I like the screen quality. It's a different screen.
14:15
There are some times compatibility issues with these FPGA emulators
14:19
but usually analog is pretty good about fixing them.
14:22
They do have a bit of a reputation in the community for boasting a hundred percent accuracy
14:27
and all that kinda stuff, but it's not. But what they've created here is a really solid piece of hardware.
14:31
I really dig it. And I think for $200 you could do a lot worse.
14:36
You could get an Amber Knack, you could get a Retro, you can get any number of emulation handhelds,
14:42
but the experience wouldn't be quite as good. This boots up in two seconds.
14:45
It's the advantage of having the FPGA. Again, I'm not gonna say it's perfect, but I like it.
14:50
And I would like to have more of them
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to kinda try out more of this link cable stuff. And I would like to have the dock
14:57
to try and see what that's like, because right now the only way to couch game a GBA
15:02
is either if you have the Game Boy player, which is expensive to find with a disk.
15:08
The players themselves aren't all that expensive, but they're worthless without the disc and emulators.
15:14
That's basically it. - [Man] The dock is a hundred bucks. (coughs)
15:17
- A hundred bucks for the dock, okay. - [Man] And $30 for each adopter.
15:20
- 30 bucks for each adapter, that's not bad. As for the dock...
15:24
But at the same time, the dock's got an HTMI connection to it. If you don't want to faff around with old hardware, scalers,
15:31
all that kinda stuff, yeah. They're not gonna say that it's the best value thing out there,
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but it's quality and it's convenient.
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And I don't really have any major complaints.
15:45
Hopefully they make more for stock and hopefully they send us another one 'cause we're gonna need one.
15:48
'Cause I'm heading home now. Go watch the MiSTer multi-system
15:52
if you want more on this kind of FPGA goodness.
15:55
Again, FPGAs are not a silver bullet, but when they work, they work real well.