The Analogue Pocket - REVIEW - Game Sack

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to gameset analog is back with another system this time to cater to levers of handheld games and is finally releasing here at the end of 2021 it's called the pocket and it retails for 199 us dollars 200 for this well let's check it out on its own the pocket lets you play game boy game boy color and game boy advanced games using fpga cores with some optional adapters you'll eventually be able to play game gear neo geo pocket color and atari lynx games it has a 3.5 inch lcd screen with a resolution of 1600x1440 that's pretty high and you may be wondering why use a screen with such resolution for the types of games that it plays i'll get to that in a bit regardless the screen quality is quite good and everything looks very sharp there are four unlabeled buttons on the face of the unit two of them concave and the other two convex just like the super nintendo controller in north america not everyone's gonna agree but i actually really like that the d-pad isn't as tight as you'd find on say a game boy or game boy color but again i really like this d-pad it and the buttons are super easy to press it does have a hair more travel so that may or may not affect tetris champions i'm no champion so i couldn't tell you all i know is that i like it there are also two shoulder buttons on the back of the unit these feel okay but are perhaps a touch small that's what she said there's also three super tiny buttons towards the bottom middle of the unit the left one is concave and acts as the select button the middle one is the analog button which you use for the menu and other features and the right one is convex and acts as start on the left side you've got your volume up and down buttons as well as the green power slash standby button the cartridge slot isn't actually much of a slot as the connector is right there at the top without a dust flap or what have you you'd think that the cartridge wouldn't be very secure but it actually feels really tight in there without much wobble again that's what she said sorry your fingers can sometimes touch the cartridge when pressing the shoulder buttons if you're not careful but so far it hasn't jostled the card enough to cause any glitches there's also a slot for a micro sd card that can be used for various things but analog says it needs to be formatted to fat32 anyone remember fat32 i tried using a card formatted for exfat to update the firmware because that's the police it worked fine but analog says they want fat32 so do this at your own risk i guess it also comes with a usbc cable for charging analog states that the typical battery life is about 6 hours if you keep the screen at the default 75 percent brightness mine was 50 percent charged when i got it and it took quite a bit of use before it finally died i'd say that analogs estimate is pretty close powering it up you're greeted with a menu the first item lets you play whatever cartridge you have plugged in but the selection i'm interested in talking about now of course is the settings under systems you can select one of the four systems currently supported and adjust various options in here you can play with a video audio control and hardware settings under video you have your choice of different color palettes and display modes that's right i said palettes anyway for example selecting original dmg under game boy gives you a look that's pretty close to the original game boy just without the blur as the screen scrolls this is where the super high resolution screen comes in as it can now draw a very convincing lcd grid pattern as needed and i've got to say that it looks incredible you can also select from different hardware models to mimic their look as well or just keep it all turned off the screen runs at the exact refresh rate of whatever system you're playing a game on see i didn't need 20 minutes to explain resolution and refresh rates like some channels the frame blending option is really interesting for example this stage in castlevania 2 on game boy has mountains that flicker in the windows if you turn the frame blending mode on they no longer flicker at all this can even help you with fake transparencies like in the f-zero games on the game boy advance where the map normally flickers not anymore for the sharpness i'd advise keeping it cranked all the way up because lowering it will blur the screen but hey that's up to you the size and position settings let you adjust the screen to your whimsy but i think the default settings are pretty awesome even if they don't fill the entire screen for example the game boy advance is wider than the original game boy so that's why it's letterboxed here each nintendo portable has a super gameboy control option thankfully so that in effect jump his b and attack his y for lack of better description it's just how it should be under the hardware option you can find various things you can force gb mode under game boy so that the game thinks it's running on a game boy and not a game boy color on the game boy color you can select run as gba so the few games that have enhancements when run on the game boy advance will take advantage of them unfortunately graphical and sound enhancements for the super game boy aren't currently supported hopefully that comes in a future firmware update lastly for the gameboy advance you can enable a high quality mode under the audio this seems to be a low-pass filter to take out some of the typical scratchiness the gba is known for unfortunately it also makes it quite a bit more quiet so you'll have to turn it up anyway for an example here's one of the scratchiest sounding game boy games that i can think of castlevania circle of the moon [Music] all in all there are plenty of options here and although i'm not usually a big fan of handhelds i do like what this one brings to the table and there seem to be plenty of options to get everything looking and sounding how you want it there are also tools you can use which i'm not truly equipped to review very well nanoloop here allows you to make some music with the device create yourself some rocking beats like i'm doing here your challenge is the only limit and mine is quite limited at this time gb studio allows you to make homebrew games with the help of a pc app or at least i think here's an example of a game called daedalus that someone else made with gb studio maybe you can do this too playing the games here is generally a good experience you can press the analog button during gameplay to get to the menu to adjust things but keep in mind that this does not pause the game be sure to pause it in game before you press it you can tap the green power button to put it into sleep mode you can even remove the cartridge from the system put it back in and you're good to go when you tap it again to wake it up this makes me think that it would be somewhat trivial to add save states which i'm sure is coming in a future firmware the newest firmware now has a beta save state feature where you can save your state by pressing the analog button and up to save your state and analog and down to load it only one save state can happen at a time and if you power the pocket down it goes away i'd like to see this updated so that it writes the save states to the sd card if possible still it's pretty crazy to be able to do this with a real cartridge and not a flash cart the pocket can even run everdrive cartridges just fine which is great however the sleep function does not work with flash carts the games all seem to run great so far with faithful video and sound i did encounter some audio issues with metroid zero mission but they already had a new firmware update that seems to have fixed this before i could even report it so be sure to update your firmware [Music] okay now we've seen most of the capabilities and performance of the basic unit it's amazing this thing only costs 199 and has a screen of this caliber but wait there's some optional accessories that you can get that i want to show you i think this might be how analog makes up some of the cost of the pocket first up let's check out the game gear adapter which is already available for thirty dollars i'm rounding up a penny on these prices by the way if you're incredibly smart you've already figured out that this lets you play game gear games on the pocket and it does so quite well the default screen looks bright and colorful you can change the screen to the original gg or original gg plus this gives you the lcd grid and it looks kind of washed out but nowhere near as bad as the original game gear screen the only bad thing if you can even call it that is that the cartridge sticks up higher than the unit itself unfortunately there aren't any options for the controls here yet so you jump and attack with the equivalent of the bna buttons this makes me sad as it just doesn't feel right but i'm sure they'll fix it right beyond that though it looks and sounds fantastic it's nice to finally be able to play the game gear on something with a decent screen without having to mod the original clunky unit [Music] one thing you may want to keep in mind for now is that if you use a master gear adapter or play a game like castle of illusion that runs in master system mode the screen will be too big and cropped i don't own any of that stuff though so you'll have to check out my life and gaming's video i'm sure this will be fixed sometime in the future though there's also a screen protector that you can get that's made of tempered glass for sixteen dollars it even comes with a wet and dry cloth for installation and upkeep you can also get a transparent hard plastic case to transport your pocket around this will set you back thirty dollars there are also several midi cables you can use with the nanoloop app that's built in these are twenty dollars each and you can get a pocket to midi in cable a pocket to midi usb a cable and a pocket to analog sync cable you can also get a link cable for head-to-head gameplay analog seems to be pretty serious about the music making capabilities in the pocket that go far beyond what i showed you earlier this is super cool and i'm curious to hear what kinds of music people are able to make with all of this stuff [Music] last up is the dock this will cost you an extra one hundred dollars but for me it's essential what does it do well simply put it charges your pocket when you set it on it isn't that incredible we are truly living in the future oh wait i guess it does have some other minor features that i should mention it has an hdmi connector so that you can play your games on the big screen in 1080p that's really awesome and it makes the games easier and more comfortable to play at least for me you can also connect controllers via usb or even wirelessly so far i've had the best luck using a playstation 4 controller in the menu you can go in and see that there's a grayed out option that you can't select for button mapping that will be available in the future i can't wait but the playstation 4 controller's configuration mirrors the pocket itself pretty well still i'd absolutely love to be able to hook up my sega astra city mini controller to the usb port and map it right now the firmware for the dock which has its own firmware mind you is pretty basic before you start the game you can play with most of the normal options you can in portable mode however you can't engage the display filters like the lcd overlays i hope that they add these in the near future because i think they'd look great on my tv as well frame blending mode can't be engaged yet either it also doesn't currently work with analog's dac thingy so you can't output the video to your crt but hey who knows what the future holds you can adjust the size and position but since you can't currently call up the menu while the game is running you need to do it all blind before you play the game the default setting has the game filled the screen vertically however you can set the size to perfect integer scales 7x for the gameboy gameboy color and game gear and 6x for the game boy advance these will all give you a slight black border on screen even though it's pretty basic right now the games all still run great via hdmi the super game boy enhanced games still play in regular game boy mode here for now but at least the super game boy controls carry over except for the game gear of course the weirdest thing about this is that analog wants you to physically remove the pocket from the dock anytime you want to change cartridges and then reinsert it and power the pocket back on still i can't wait to finally be able to play my neo geo pocket color cartridges on the big screen another thing i want to say about the pocket is that when you update the firmware you don't have to reset all of your preferences oh god thank you all in all i feel that the pocket really delivers usually these things are pretty buggy when they're first released but right now there are no glaring issues sure some features still need to be added and they will be but what we have here is already really good is so is this thing worth two hundred dollars uh yeah i mean at the end of the day it's really up to you but i sure think it is of course the optional accessories definitely do add to the cost but maybe you don't want all of those maybe you don't want any of them for me the dock is essential as are the various cartridge adapters for the other systems and once the sink is jailbroken it's going to run cores from all sorts of different platforms so who knows anyway are you thinking to get in a pocket what do you think of it let me know in the meantime thank you for watching game shack [Music] who needs this thing when you can have the best portable system marvel at triple a titles like ryan's challenge wow ryan you are challenging or step up to the pinnacle of entertainment jeff's rescue hold on jeff i'm gonna rescue you i'm gonna rescue you real good like you'll see get the vr troopers game wizard today yeah i don't think so

Channel: Game Sack

Views: 63,349

Keywords: sega, nintendo, turbografx, gameplay, videogames, retro, genesis, snes, nes, msx, analogue, analog, analogue pocket, analog pocket, game boy, game boy color, game boy colour, game boy advance, gameboy, gameboy color, gameboy advance, gba, gbc, game gear, gamegear, gg, games, neo geo pocket color, neogeo pocket, neo geo pocket, neogeo pocket color, ngpc, review, top 10, top ten, trending, trend, lcd, led, high resolution, portable, portable gaming, portable game system, portable game console, switch

Id: IyLeCQ3IENo

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/IselfDevine]

A Monday video? Weird

[u/yoshinatsu]

Does anyone know the track that starts at 0:31?

Thanks for any help guys!