This Premium Glow-in-the-Dark Game Boy Plays All the Classics

On the lookout for a dependable technique to play basic Recreation Boy video games? The Analogue Pocket is a sophisticated third-party handheld that performs the complete vary of old-school Nintendo Recreation Boy video games—and the newest rendition provides a glow-in-the-dark end, simply in time for Halloween.

Revealed Monday, the Glow within the Darkish model of the moveable console can glow for as much as eight hours when charged with a lightweight, Analogue claims. It will likely be obtainable in “extremely restricted portions,” in line with the corporate, with gross sales starting September 1 for $249.99, and delivery set to begin on September 5.

The Analogue Pocket was first introduced in 2019 and commenced delivery in 2021—and it’s been very troublesome to come up with till now. The system was lengthy backordered after its preliminary launch, and Analogue tweeted immediately that each one remaining earlier Pocket pre-orders will likely be fulfilled this week.

What’s the purpose of the Analogue Pocket? Whereas basic Recreation Boy consoles are nonetheless floating round secondhand outlets and on-line marketplaces, Nintendo stopped manufacturing the unique {hardware} in 2003. The third-party Pocket offers a technique to play the complete vary of basic Recreation Boy video games—after which some—with trendy facilities.

The smooth {hardware} contains a 1600×1440 show that’s 10 instances sharper than the unique “inexperienced display” Recreation Boy, plus it’s full shade and able to enjoying all Recreation Boy, Recreation Boy Shade, and Recreation Boy Advance cartridges. That’s over 2,780 whole video games, per Analogue, plus it has a built-in music synthesizer and sequencer.

It’s additionally not operating the video games by means of emulation, which might produce surprising points or variations from the unique expertise. Analogue sourced the identical type of elements wanted to play old-school Recreation Boy cartridges natively, and packed it into a sophisticated type that fees by way of USB-C cable and presents a sleep/wake possibility.

It might probably play many extra video games too, due to elective plug-in adapters that allow compatibility with cartridges made for Sega’s Recreation Gear, the Atari Lynx, and SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket Shade.

At $220 for the bottom mannequin and $250 for the glowing version, the Analogue Pocket isn’t low-cost for what’s primarily a modernized Recreation Boy—nevertheless it’s a high-end possibility for die-hard retro gaming followers, a lot of whom have been attempting to get their palms on the {hardware} over the past couple years.