The Official Analogue Pocket Thread!

[Video]

Color options would be cool. I might have gotten the glowing system if I'd known about it. Honestly though I'd settle for "being available" even. I don't know when this thing first came out, but 6-12 months for shipping is ridiculous by ANY standards. Think of it being constantly sold out, and how much better sales could be if it was just available. It would also put a damper on price gouging resalers.

 

Anyhow, played more this weekend, then went back to warioland 2 again. This time I deleted it and started over. Pretty cool. So crisp and clean looking. Gbc games look best of anything so far. GB, uh, not so much. That one I did adjust to a true grayscale. The green blue it uses native is just nasty lol.

 

As for virtual boy, I agree that grayscale and a choice of left or right eye should be options. I'm one of the nuts who would wear the glasses though.

[+madman]

7 minutes ago, Video said:

Color options would be cool. I might have gotten the glowing system if I'd known about it. Honestly though I'd settle for "being available" even. I don't know when this thing first came out, but 6-12 months for shipping is ridiculous by ANY standards. Think of it being constantly sold out, and how much better sales could be if it was just available. It would also put a damper on price gouging resalers.

I hear you on availability. Like I said, I placed my order last October and only recently got my black Pocket. When I saw the announcement that Pockets were back in stock 2 weeks ago, it was maybe a week between my order being placed and the white unit arriving. Analogue may not have the money to pay up front for 50,000 units or whatever to be made at a time, who knows what the sales figures are but it is a niche product compared to the Chinese Android emulator handhelds. 

[+GoldLeader]

Even though I do wish for more availability;  At present, it is a boutique type of product,  and at least it Exists! 

 

It's not the small scale homebrew effort of say a Phoenix (Which I also Love),  or the Dragonfly for 7800 (Ditto!),....But seems closer to a mass produced product in the quality (as in it does what it says and there is some slick engineering behind it) while maintaining the style of an exotic (Let's call it the Lamborghini of Game Boys!),  so long as you are willing to wait and accept that quantities are always going to be limited (meaning you may not get one)...

[NE146]

14 hours ago, Video said:

 GB, uh, not so much. That one I did adjust to a true grayscale. The green blue it uses native is just nasty lol.

Hrm? Gameboy is one of the best looking things on the Pocket!  Especially with the DMG/GB Pocket/GB Lite display simulations. What's this green blue native you're talking about? 

 

[+madman]

I agree on the GB displays being very nice, mine was originally recognizing GB games as GBC so I was a little confused I wasn't seeing the old school spinach display option, had to force the Pocket into GB mode. This was from an Everdrive BTW, the one original GB cart I could find was detected properly.

[NE146]

14 minutes ago, madman said:

I agree on the GB displays being very nice, mine was originally recognizing GB games as GBC so I was a little confused I was seeing the old school spinach display option, had to force the Pocket into GB mode. This was from an Everdrive BTW, the one original GB cart I could find was detected properly.

Yes.. with the flashcarts it basically recognizes them as GBC carts, so you do have to force into GB mode if you want the Gameboy display modes.

 

[Video]

Um, the first image is the green blue option. If it was solid color it would be ok, but the weird scan lines thing gust doesn't "do it" for me. Of course, color of games could be an issue, as the handful of games I played were reversed color, like battlezone, which I love. It magnifies the terribleness of the green blue setup I assume because of the weird flickering it does. Maybe ill try some proper correct games on it, like marioland. Ill have to reset it to the green blue color as I've currently got it on grayscale.

 

One thing I really like about the system is it remembers the screen settings, so you can play however you want on all games. Ill also finally try some game gear titles, I'm curious how the analog pocket will handle those, as gg is technically the same resolution as GB. Will it run full screen, or a bit of letter boxing to simulate the game gears wider screen? Find out next time on dragon....oh, that's the wrong line lol.

[+madman]

2 hours ago, Video said:

Um, the first image is the green blue option. If it was solid color it would be ok, but the weird scan lines thing gust doesn't "do it" for me. Of course, color of games could be an issue, as the handful of games I played were reversed color, like battlezone, which I love. It magnifies the terribleness of the green blue setup I assume because of the weird flickering it does. Maybe ill try some proper correct games on it, like marioland. Ill have to reset it to the green blue color as I've currently got it on grayscale.

I have to assume at this point you've never played an original Gameboy. The "scan lines" are meant to simulate the "DOT MATRIX WITH STEREO SOUND" experience of the original unit. I don't have my OG GB nearby to compare, but it's a pretty fair simulation, just less blurry than the original screen during movement. But I can completely understand using other display modes if that one doesn't blow your hair back, there's no one right way to enjoy the games.

[NE146]

5 hours ago, Video said:

Um, the first image is the green blue option. If it was solid color it would be ok, but the weird scan lines thing gust doesn't "do it" for me. Of course, color of games could be an issue, as the handful of games I played were reversed color, like battlezone, which I love. It magnifies the terribleness of the green blue setup I assume because of the weird flickering it does.

That's the thing.. GB/GBC is one of the things the Pocket does the best. Between the Analogue GB/GBC Core, the OpenFPGA GB/GBC Core, and the Super Gameboy Core, there's actually an extensive amount of options when it comes to available palettes. And if you're talking Battlezone that gives you even more options since it's SGB Enhanced!  

 

e.g.

1) If you're running the Pocket GB core (i.e. from the cart slot) sure you get the "green blue" option, but you can also get the GB Lite, GB Pocket (pretty much grayscale), and also the pinball matrix option which works pretty well for the game. 

2). If you run Pocket GBC mode.. you get the game in color which also removes the pixel simulation

2b) You can also get a slightly different color look (no pic taken) if you load up the rom in the OpenFPGA GB/GBC core.. which uses a particular bios from a company that starts with N. The openFPGA core also allows all the GBC Palette combos that you can do on a regular GBC

 

3) Or you can load up the SGB Core and play it with a border.. and other colors resembling the arcade version. 

 

Plenty of options

[Video]

I think somebody, or several some bodies missed something. I didn't say it wasn't a fair view of original gameboy, just that it looks terrible (so does the original game boy, despite being my favorite handheld of all time) its why I went grayscale, or pocket on it instead. I think the only way to be more accurate would be to get a photo of an actual GB screen, it would be hard to replicate that weird metallic gold/green/yellow background color otherwise.

 

Wait, analog can do SGB mode? I'm definitely going to try donkey Kong this weekend. I was always bummed the probably nicest looking SGB game gets dumbed down to a redish brown grayscale on everything else. For a game that topped out at 16 colors, I never understood why it wasn't in color on, well, color handhelds lol.

[NE146]

On 9/7/2023 at 9:24 AM, Video said:

Wait, analog can do SGB mode? I'm definitely going to try donkey Kong this weekend. I was always bummed the probably nicest looking SGB game gets dumbed down to a redish brown grayscale on everything else. For a game that topped out at 16 colors, I never understood why it wasn't in color on, well, color handhelds lol.

Yes it can do SGB and you can get that particular palette and border that way.  However it's ALSO worth noting that Donkey Kong is one of the 40+ or so 1st party Nintendo games that has an "Assigned Palette Configuration" when played on an original GBC that gets you the similar custom palette. To get those colors (e.g. the red girders in the 1st two pics below) the only option for the moment is to play it in the OpenFPGA cores.

Edited September 8, 2023 by NE146

[Video]

Oh, that explains my lack of finding an actual SGB mode. I know lots of games had "custom" pallets, but most were just A color grayscale, like Pokemon was yellow, red, or blue, depending on what game you played. Outside donkey long which got higher color pallets, uh, space invaders had the entire super Nintendo game on its cart, and I don't remember, killer instinct, or maybe it was mortal combat had a two player mode, outside that SGB compatibility usually just meant custom border and a custom color grayscale.

 

I don't know how hard it is, the analog pocket has a micro SD port, I might try one of the SGB options at some time. But I'm missing quite a few games atm. Donkey Kong was one I couldn't find, along side any of my Mario land carts, and I've got the dx versions of both of those. I need to dig around as I know I've got them.

 

I notice the analog pocket has a link port, anybody tried that yet? I imagine like SGB mk2 and game boy player, you can only use analog as player two (since it skips the GB bootup) but it would be cool if you had two AP systems and could link those. I've got multiples of world cup soccer, tetris, and faceball, but somehow no link cables anymore.

[+jgkspsx]

On 9/4/2023 at 5:45 PM, GoldLeader said:

Let's call it the Lamborghini of Game Boys!

👀

 

Can you use different cores with the cartridge slot? Or is it just playing roms from SD cards?

[+madman]

The cart slot only works w/the built-in cores on the Pocket, additional cores access data via the SD card.

[Video]

Oh I mentioned one thing incorrectly. I said the back of analog was glossy, its not, mine just had a sticker over the back (anti scratch thing I guess) but the second week it started peeling so I took that off. Yep the AP is mat all around. Cool. Also, ran into some more prominently stereo games and it has dual speakers (took me a while to figure where the sound came from, it has speakers on the sides of the screen)

 

Speaking of faceball, at least in game boy mode, it plays the proper bass tune like og gameboy, instead of high pitch like all the newer systems. I think SGB mode 1 played bass too, but don't remember, never had the mk2 so I'm about that one.

 

Don't know what battery life on this thing is, but seems good as I run it on the weekend and charge it before going to work. If I hadn't gotten hung up on pikmin 4 I'd play a lot more. Got a second machine, black this time on order. Well see how long that takes to get in.

 

I meant to ask, can the AP read games off its inbuilt SD card, or only through carts? I can use evercard, but I only got the GB and gba versions. It would be pretty sweet to dump everything on one SD and have it all. Idk though, I love carts.

[+madman]

See my above post. If you want to use the native cores you need to use the cart slot. If you want to play ROMs off SD card, you need to download the other cores to your SD card and run the ROMs from there. If you want to use the Analog options like Display you need to use a cart.

[NE146]

I believe the Super Gameboy Core allows you to run the cart.. and if it's a flashcart, then so be it, same as if you were plugging an Everdrive into a Super Gameboy.

[roots.genoa]

3 hours ago, NE146 said:

I believe the Super Gameboy Core allows you to run the cart.. and if it's a flashcart, then so be it, same as if you were plugging an Everdrive into a Super Gameboy.

I think so, yes. In theory you can use carts with openFPGA cores, since the Pocket is not supposed to read ROMs from the SD card "officially" anyway. 😉 But obviously it would have been weird to release cores for systems the Pocket already emulates.

[+GoldLeader]

Let's call it the Lamborghini of Game Boys!

 

Damn!  I like that comment!  Whoever said that knows what's up!  LOL

 

Here's the funny thing:  I swear to God I looked right at that up on @jgkspsx's comment,...Then I got wrapped in that Lamborghini game footage (which looks pretty tight for a Game Boy)...I kind of spaced it,  Started thinking Yeah,  It is like an Exotic handheld;  It's slick and finely engineered,  $$$  Rare and Sweet as Hell!   a n d ...I kid you not,  I didn't realize that was MY Comment!  haha...Looked right at it and thought someone else said it!

[Ninjabba]

Received mine! Now waiting for the adapters.. 

[Video]

Oh sweet, you lucky stiff getting the glowing one. I usually like the color of glowing plastic, even if its not glowing or dark enough to see it glow. Hope you get many years out of it, I know I'm loving mine!

[invisible kid]

Anyone tried running Final Fantasy IV Advance? All my other gb, gbc, and gba games work except this single one and on real Hardware it does kind of a weird jump into the Safety Warning Screen at boot. I wonder if that's the reason. FF1&2 Advance, FFV Advance, and FFVI Advance all work. Contacts are gleaming.

Edited September 14, 2023 by invisible kid

[Punisher5.0]

3 hours ago, invisible kid said:

Anyone tried running Final Fantasy IV Advance? All my other gb, gbc, and gba games work except this single one and on real Hardware it does kind of a weird jump into the Safety Warning Screen at boot. I wonder if that's the reason. FF1&2 Advance, FFV Advance, and FFVI Advance all work. Contacts are gleaming.

 

I just tried it out for about 5 minutes and it worked alright for me

[invisible kid]

Thanks! Only thing I can think of is it's a counterfit. At least it works on real hardware and everything else works.

Edited September 15, 2023 by invisible kid

[invisible kid]

Could be a problem with my Pocket. Going to follow up with Analogue. You might want to check this cartridge if you have it.