The company Analogue has long history of remaking your favorite video game consoles from years past, enabling them to play on the current generation of televisions. Therefore, it’s only natural that they would venture into the wonderful world of portable gaming. Today they made the jump and officially announced the Analogue Pocket, which looks like the most complete Game Boy system we’ve ever seen. The company boasts that it will be able to play any and all games from the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and much more with the display of 10 times the resolution of the original handheld.
According to Analogue, the Pocket will not play games via software emulation. You’ll actually be able to bust out your old game cartridges, insert them into the system, and play them as if it were an actual Game Boy. The fact that it will eventually support other handheld titles, besides Nintendo, is a nice bonus. Analogue is making special adapters so the Pocket can play Sega Game Gear and the Neo Geo Pocket Color titles, both with an excellent library in their own right. They didn’t state if this would be readily available when the system launches, or if it will be an additional add-on sometime afterwards.
The Pocket will have a 3.5-inch, 665ppi, LCD display, with a 1600 x 1440 resolution and built-in backlight. In layman terms, it will look beautiful and vibrant in comparison to older handhelds. The system will also come with a rechargeable lithium battery that uses a USB cable, as well as an SD card slot, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. On top of all that, it has a built in musical synthesizer called the Nanoloop, because making your own creations on a handheld device is always a recipe for success.
The Analogue Pocket will be able to play all Game Boy family titles and will feature the most advanced screen on a handheld system.
One of the last things that Analogue mentioned was a dock that connects to modern televisions, as well as supporting both Bluetooth controllers and wired ones. The company made it a point that this will be an additional item that will cost a little bit extra, though no price was given. Similar to the adapters, it’s also unknown if the dock will be available when the Pocket launches sometime next year.
As we already stated, this isn’t Analogue’s first foray into modern remakes of old systems. They’ve developed modern iterations of the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis, all of which use the actual game cartridges of their respective predecessors. If their past work has any indication on the upcoming Pocket, then we’re very excited for this and can’t wait to get our hands on it. The Analogue Pocket will launch sometime in 2020 and will cost $199. The company states that it will be in “limited quantities” so if you’re interested you can sign up at their main site to hear about it first.