Analogue Pocket | A Casual Gamer's Review
Playing the Analogue Pocket feels like stepping back in time, but unlike most nostalgia trips, this futuristic rendering of gaming history actually exceeds your childhood memories.
Two Years in the Waiting
I nearly gave up on the Analogue Pocket. After almost two years on the waiting list, I cancelled my order at the start of 2023, convinced that demand would always outstrip supply. But Analogue kept chipping away at the backlog, dropping limited runs including a glow-in-the-dark edition I just missed and a set of seven transparent colours. I managed to grab one of the blue ones, and the moment it arrived I understood why people had been so patient.
That transparent blue finish is frosted rather than fully clear, and depending on the light you can see different depths inside the casing. You can make out the motherboard, the small Analogue logo soldered onto it, the internal architecture of the whole thing. It’s a small touch, but it says a lot about how much care has gone into building this device.
What the Pocket Actually Is
The Analogue Pocket isn’t just another retro emulator. It uses open FPGA — a form of hardware emulation that replicates the original silicon rather than running software on top of it. In practice, that means you can play original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges straight out of the box, with a fidelity that software emulation can’t quite match.
The device is physically larger than a Game Boy Color, which might sound like a downside until you actually hold it. Adult hands, it turns out, appreciate the extra real estate. The D-pad is crisp and accurate with a satisfying click to it, and there are some additional buttons included for emulating more advanced consoles. The main one is the Analogue button, which opens the menu and doubles as a brightness control. That display is genuinely impressive — bright enough to use in direct sunlight, dim enough to use in a dark room without blinding yourself.
The Games
If you’re coming to this with a cartridge collection, the Pocket is a joy. You can cycle through different display settings on a per-game basis, from a vibrant modern rendering right back to the washed-out green tint of the original Game Boy screen. Hearing the stereo speakers at full volume after years of tinny handheld audio is a genuine surprise, and there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the base if you want something more private.
Going back to Pokémon and Super Mario after years on a Switch or Steam Deck does take a moment of adjustment. The form factor is narrow by modern standards, and that takes some getting used to. But that same narrowness makes the Pocket genuinely pocketable in a way that larger handhelds aren’t. It was the one device I packed for a recent weekend away with my wife — small enough to slip into a bag, with six hours of battery life and USB-C charging. Pulling it out to play Pokémon or Fire Emblem at any idle moment felt completely natural.
The connectivity is a nice touch too. You can use an original Game Boy Link cable to connect to another device and trade Pokémon or play multiplayer. It’s completely unnecessary in 2023, and that’s exactly why it’s great.
Emulation Beyond Game Boy
If your cartridge collection is thin or nonexistent, the Pocket can still earn its keep. The open FPGA platform has a strong community behind it, and unofficial cores allow you to emulate games up to and including the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive (I refuse to call it the Genesis). These aren’t officially supported by Analogue, but they’re stable enough to be genuinely usable, and if you have ROMs on a micro SD card they’ll run well.
The main limitation worth knowing about is that the SNES and Mega Drive cores don’t currently support save states, which matters for longer games. But for something like Street Fighter II, which was never meant to be played with a save file anyway, it’s a non-issue. Games designed for a television or arcade system look vibrant on that Pocket display, and there’s something almost absurd about how good they look on such a small screen.
Final Thoughts
For me, part of what makes the Pocket special is memory as much as hardware. Playing Sonic the Hedgehog through Emerald Hill Zone on a transparent blue handheld, I kept thinking about my brother sitting next to me playing as Tails. The Pocket doesn’t just run old games well — it honours the feeling of playing them.
Is it expensive? Yes, especially compared to a cheap Android emulator. But those cheaper devices leave your cartridges sitting in a box doing nothing. The Pocket is the reason to dig them out. If you’re trying to get one of the transparent models right now, eBay is probably your best bet. Find one at a fair price and you won’t regret it.
My recommendation: If you grew up with a Game Boy and still have cartridges, the Analogue Pocket is the best way to play them. Seek one out.