Introducing The Analogue Pocket
Christopher Taber and Kevin Horton take us inside this innovative handheld that will supercharge your old games
There’s a horrible truth that many of us in the retro gaming community don’t want to admit: our original equipment is vulnerable, and the risks to our devices only increase as they age. Maybe the disc drive in your Playstation has spun for the last time, or your Amiga disks have failed, or those dodgy capacitors finally ruined your Game Gear. Sometimes, it’s not even the hardware but the technology that supports it – imagine your SNES still works fine but your old TV gives up the ghost, and the new one can’t play it because it doesn’t have an analogue tuner, or even a SCART socket. So what can be done about this? Well, you can carry on with your old hardware, and there are people willing to help you do that. You’ll have seen modding and repair services that keep your old hardware going, and products like the XRGB-MINI Framemeister and Open Source Scan Converter, which get your old systems running on modern TVS. But one option that is becoming increasingly attractive is just getting new hardware to replace those vintage systems.
Arguably, the most ambitious company making retrocompatible hardware right now is Analogue, and its next system is the Analogue Pocket. “I’ve wanted to make Pocket for ten years,” says Christopher Taber, CEO of Analogue. “Nearly all of Analogue’s history leads up to this product.” After years of making home consoles, this is Analogue’s first portable device, and it’s designed to run handheld games.