I’m having more fun with it than any mobile game

I’ve never considered myself the biggest mobile gamer. Sure, I jump into some solid games when reviewing phones, but I just didn’t find one that kept me coming back over and over again. Or, if I did, I’d play it to death until I hit a paywall and then just put it down, never to be touched again.

Then, Pokemon TCG Pocket Here I am, and like my colleague Nick Fernandez, I’m hooked. Not necessarily a fascination with the gameplay itself, but the nostalgia that comes with opening Pokémon card packs and the desire to catch them all—or rather, pull them all out. I remember feeling the same nostalgia every time I came home for the holidays, dusted off my slowly dying GameBo Advance, and played the games I had when I was ten years old.

But this time, it hit me so hard that I wanted more of that feeling, but I wanted to escape the slow, painful fade of my classic handheld. So I did what I thought was the most meaningful thing to do: I found an Analogue Pocket to relive my gaming glory days. Now, I wish I had done this much sooner.

Yeah, I hear you yelling at the screen I should try it emulator instead. Surely this would be an easier and cheaper way to ease my nostalgia. I wouldn’t argue with that. However, I also want to say that I did Give emulator life a try. I was torn between a few different options, hoping one of them would be like the games I loved as a kid, but none of them did.

Instead, I realized that nostalgia wasn’t just about my games. It’s about sitting down with a dedicated device that separates myself from other social media notifications and email reminders that the holidays are coming and that I should probably buy gifts for friends and family. The nostalgia I’m after is being able to press the B button and wail as my Poké Ball sways back and forth, trying to catch a Pidgeot on my way to Pewter City. It’s the ability to blow air when the physical cartridge has difficulty priming (this doesn’t happen with the Pocket, fingers crossed). For this I need a FPGA components Like an analog pocket.

Now that I have one, my physical controls are pretty much the same as I remembered them—a set of buttons, two triggers, and a D-pad—although they’ve all been smoothed out to match the Pocket’s sleek aesthetic. Also, there are four buttons instead of two, since the Pocket has far more playback capabilities than a GameBoy cartridge, but you have to get adapters for the Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, and TurboGrafx-16 respectively. Yes, I have the classic black version of the Analogue Pocket because I wasn’t fast enough to get hold of any of the limited classic, clear, or glow-in-the-dark colorways. Trust me, I tried.

No matter which cartridge you use, it has a 3.5-inch, 1,600 x 1,440 LCD that’s just as bright and sharp as I remember from the GameBoy Advance SP. But it’s actually much brighter and clearer, and I don’t have to go through the days of mounting a flashlight on top of my handheld so I can keep gaming after dark. It won’t slowly fade like my GameBoy Advance SP’s TFT display, and the plastic frame won’t chip with age.

However, I don’t think the best part of using the Analogue Pocket comes from the buttons or the display. It’s because I’m playing a game I grew up with. While many classic games have been recreated as emulators or apps, I’m playing the same cartridge I opened on Christmas morning as a kid.

Once or twice, it even meant going back to a saved game I hadn’t touched in a while. I loaded up a few battles in Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga that I couldn’t get through, just to finish them as easily as I hoped I could at the time. Do I then restart the game and feel like I’ve earned the victory? I do, but I still feel like I’m doing the younger version of myself a favor.

Oh, and the Analogue Pocket charges via USB-C, so I no longer have to keep tabs on the annoying specific charger I used to need.

As you might imagine, the Analogue Pocket also doesn’t require Wi-Fi for a handheld device with a factory GameBoy cartridge slot. I mean, of course, it doesn’t – my GameBoy doesn’t have it, and Game Freak hasn’t pushed out an OTA update since Pokemon Fire Red first launched (Analogue has pushed a few firmware updates to the Pocket over the past few years, but they Requires installation via microSD slot). But I didn’t consider convenience Games that don’t require Wi-Fi Until I found myself in a location without Wi-Fi: in the middle of the ocean.

Yes, I escaped the mid-Atlantic chill for a few warm days on a weekend cruise to the OnePlus Offshore event, and found myself extremely happy that I didn’t have to rely on Wi-Fi all the time. That’s not to say I don’t have Wi-Fi—I can only use Wi-Fi on one device at a time, which is a significant hurdle for tech reviewers. So when I need to switch Wi-Fi connections multiple times a day, I’m more than happy to be able to leave gaming out of the equation.

This meant that when we were told that we wouldn’t be docking in Nassau and that the entire ship would be using the same wonky Starlink-powered Wi-Fi all day, I could still find a way to pass the time without having to worry The connection is interrupted. Of course, the Pocket also works like a charm for my flights to and from the cruise, but I already knew that was going to be the case.

Thankfully, the lack of Wi-Fi also means the Analogue Pocket won’t drain the battery in sleep mode. Rather than passively looking for a reliable connection in case an update needs to be downloaded, the Pocket just sits there, waiting for you to press the mint green power button and get back into action.

Once powered on, you can expect six to ten hours of gaming before recharging the 4,300mAh battery. For me, that meant filling my pockets the day before heading home because I started seeing low-battery warnings while training toward the Kanto Region Elite Four.

Unfortunately, if you forget to charge your Analogue Pocket before traveling, you might run into difficulties. The speed is not very fast. It takes about two hours to fully charge the 18W battery. wall charger Or charge in about four to five hours using a slower charger you might have with you. You can keep playing games while charging, but if you’re playing on a three-hour flight, you probably won’t get much extra power.

I’ve gushed about Analogue Pocket in about 1,000 words so far, and I mean every word. It’s great for traveling and provides just the right amount of nostalgia without bogging me down with the ads that often plague mobile games. However, there is one thing that may give future retro gamer Pause: price. Yes, the base price of $220 is high (unless you find an all-aluminum model that costs over $500), especially when you have a bit of technical knowledge and you can probably buy replacement parts for your current GameBoy and fix it yourself It-how, but the real cost comes from having to buy the game.

As with most retro items, the value of certain GameBoy cartridges has skyrocketed over the past few years. Games like Pokemon Fire Red (my first Pokemon game) originally cost $40 and now cost over $100, with no guarantee they’ll still work after 20 years. Other games I love dearly, like Avatar: The Last Airbender (don’t judge me) and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, are more attainable and cost between $15 and $25, but the cost will increase quickly. I’m lucky that my parents saved most of the original games from my childhood, but it’s hard to recommend starting from scratch if they don’t already own some games.

However, I can accept the fact that I don’t have unlimited titles at my fingertips. I’m still frustrated with fighting the firebenders, and I’m still tired of grinding through levels before challenging the Elite Four, but I’m not about to delete the game or spend a few bucks on microtransactions to get me over every little obstacle This gets in my way. Instead, I had to keep trying new things and spend time in the small, pixelated universe I grew up with. I’d rather sit in a Pokémon Gym and think about a puzzle than watch ads to earn enough tokens for power-ups – wouldn’t you?