fujishig

They raised the price by 20 bucks. It was 200 plus shipping when they initially had preorders (the ones shipping now) and the new preorders are 219.99:

https://store.analogue.co/#pocket

If I didn't have like a ton of GB and GBA games still in my closet I probably would have passed, because I've heard the prices have just skyrocketed since the pandemic hit.

rocket1312

Yeah, prices on old game cartridges are ridiculous. I'm not going to lie, I have a handful of old cartridges, but I bought this with an eye on the inevitable jailbreak firmware.

tanman

Why jailbreak it? I thought the whole point was FPGA emulation. If you wanted software emulation there are a lot of cheaper alternatives.

fujishig

My understanding is that you can still get the accurate FPGA emulation with the hardware, the desire is to do so while reading the game/ROM off an sd card instead of a physical cartridge.

tanman

Really? Wow that's kind of trippy to me.

rocket1312

A cartridge is literally a piece of plastic with a rom on it. The jailbreak just allows the rom to be loaded off an SD card.

There are flash carts that function the same way except they are actual cartridges that hold multiple roms. No jailbreak needed for that, although there have been compatibility issues with some of them on the early firmware. It they get those compatibility issues fixed, I might buy one.

Dan

There are a handful of exceptions; cartridges that have extra hardware inside them that cannot be captured by a rom dump, but yes, 99.9% of the cartridges are just a board with a rom chip that stores the game. It's one reason why 'reproduction' and/or 'bootleg' cartridges are such a problem for collectors who want real cartridges. They're seemingly identical to an original cartridge, but when you open them up (as you should for any 'rare' game that you're paying good money for), you'll see that they're cheap remanufactured copies instead of original production carts.

fujishig

Isn't the ROM basically what's on the cart, and whatever emulator you run on your Pi or computer is what emulates the old hardware so the game will play, right? So I think this is just a hardware emulator taking the place of the software emulator you'd usually use. Though I'm not 100% sure or anything.

Dan

True. FPGA is used for hardware emulation, which is arguably better or more accurate than software emulation (which has come a long way!)
That's why the hardware companies like Analogue don't like to call it 'emulation'. Part of that is marketing, but part is that, if they've done their job right, the performance can and should be undeniably better than anything software can do.
Arguably.

tanman

I guess that's why it's still emulation? I get that the cartridge (in most cases) is just supplying the ROM for the game but in the original hardware that was read directly off of the cartridge and on the CPU/GPU etc. Or was it stored locally on the system to play off of? So if FPGA can read it off of the card there's still some software emulation involved? Or does it just read it directly with the hardware?

rocket1312

I'm by no means an expert, but I think original systems read directly off the cartridge. The cartridges acted, in essence, like an extension of the system's hardware. I don't believe the ROMs were dumped into memory.

How exactly the fpga reads the ROM off the SD card I can not say. I would assume the ROM gets loaded onto some sort of "virtual cartridge" which the fpga hardware then accesses. So yeah, there is stuff happening at the software level. The whole point though is that physical cartridge or digital ROM file, the fpga is (in theory) running the game software exactly as the original hardware would.

Mike86

Analogue had a glow in the dark Pocket variant. Tried for one but like most limited things it’s such a crapshoot and I didn’t get one. Still would like a Pocket eventually.

tanman

Anyone have an Analogue Pocket? How has it been? Are you still playing it?

Still would like to get one but not sure how much I would use it. Love the idea of playing a lot of my original carts but not sure if it would be easier/cheaper to just get an emulation machine. They are whole lot better than they used to be and a lot more convenient. Even if I do have the original carts.

rocket1312

I have one and enjoy it. Generally speaking, I find it to be a more authentic experience than software emulation, but I'm a very casual gamer so take anything I say with a grain of salt. My absolute favorite thing about it is playing original Game Boy games with the classic pea green color scheme.

Also, there are dozens of cores you can download for any number of systems and arcade games. That combined with the dock accessory make for a pretty nice little multi system console.

​​​​​I will say that the d-pad is a bit lacking. It doesn't ruin the experience for me, but it's far from perfect. I also don't love the ergonomics of the shoulder buttons, but I don't play a lot of games that require them.

tanman

The D-pad is lacking? Wow that sucks. That's pretty central to the whole experience and I was hoping for such an expensive machine they would have gotten that right. Maybe that's the excuse I need not to pick one up.

rocket1312

A d-pad is obviously a very subjective thing. The one on the pocket is not ideal for my preferences, but it's ok. I think the small size combined with the the hard edges on the directional buttons make for an uncomfortable feel. I think I'd also prefer it to have some sort of texture. Someone else may feel differently. I know some have complained about false diagonals. I don't play enough and certainly not at a high enough level to have ever really noticed it.

Overall, I'm still glad to have it. Whether or not I could get the same or better experience with some sort of handheld emulator, I cannot say as I've never used one before.