Better Ways to Fill Your Palms

I'm faintly amused (wait, I meant the other one. Bemused) that America isn't just willing to compromise its principles when it's convenient... it'll sell itself at a steep discount for the most petty and trivial reasons. Case in point: after months of warning the world about the dangers of electing Donald Trump as president, MSNBC broadcaster and soulless shell of a man Joe Scarborough immediately went to Mar-A-Lago to schmooze with the president-elect. A real profile in courage, there.

Another, more video game-specific example is when the formerly respected retro gaming blog Time Extension (no link; they can piss up a rope) went out of its way to give a glowing review to the Chromatic, a Game Boy Color clone with an outrageous price tag. 

Stupid? Evil? Now you can
have both!
(image from GameStop)

 

Surprisingly, paying two hundred dollars for a handheld with exactly two kinds of games- Pokemon and crap- isn't the problem here. I'd point and laugh at it for a while, but stupid as it may be, being based on one of the more forgettable handhelds of the 1990s is forgivable. No, it's the baggage that comes with it. The Chromatic was spearheaded by tech magnate Palmer Luckey, who looks like he should be saying "whoa!" a lot on Blossom but in actuality is the kind of guy who would send a fleet of drones to blow up Mayim Bialik. Luckey is a war profiteer, an enthusiastic Trump supporter, and a man who could charitably be called "uncomfortably Nazi-adjacent."

Time Extension didn't think it was important to mention anywhere in its lengthy tongue bath of a review that the Chromatic was bankrolled by Palmer Luckey, mirroring a similar incident when the blog attached its round, tooth-lined sucker of a mouth to Tommy Tallarico's buttocks for a preview of his vaporware console, the Intellivision Amico. It's the kind of journalistic malfeasance that would make even Kotaku blush, but Kiblitizing would like to make up for Time Extension's oversight (...?) by suggesting alternatives to the Chromatic that are cheaper, more versatile, and most importantly, not designed by Colonel Klink.

Taste the surprisingly bland rainbow!
(image from eBay)

GAME BOY COLOR
NINTENDO
PRICE: ~$60

Here's the most obvious solution for a Game Boy Color fix... a Game Boy Color. Personally speaking, I'm not at all a fan of this machine, regarding it as the least appealing of the late 1990s gaming handhelds. (Well, that and the game dot com.) As you may have already surmised, it's a Game Boy, in color, with double the processing speed of the original. And oh yeah, a mountain of film and cartoon licensed games so crummy, Nintendo had to insulate its successor from the imminent avalanche of crap with the quality control program Club Mario. It does play Game Boy Color games, however lackluster they may be, so if that's what you want, that's what you'll get, exactly the way they were in 1998.

Game Boys 2 Men.
(image from Wikipedia)

 

GAME BOY ADVANCE
NINTENDO
PRICE: ~$80

This is the system that brought the Game Boy line into the 21st century, with a wider resolution, 256 colors, scaling and rotation, and even polygons and emulation when pushed to its limits. I love this handheld, full stop, but there are a lot of models available, and not all of them have aged gracefully. I'd suggest skipping the original with its dim screen and the uncomfortably tiny Game Boy Micro, which can't run legacy Game Boy games, and head straight to either the Game Boy Advance SP (the explosively bright AGP-101, specifically) or, for a bigger screen, the Game Boy Player, a device that plugs into the bottom of your GameCube and plays everything but Game Boy Video titles. You don't want those anyway; it's like rubbing your eyeballs against Shrek-flavored sandpaper.

The choice of a new console generation.
(image from Emu-Gen)

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE
SONY
PRICE: ~$80

Speaking of favorite handheld game systems! The Playstation Portable is a worthy addition to any gamer's collection, particularly the PSP-3000, which has the sharpest screen and the most responsive D-pad of the bunch. This system can't play Game Boy Color games by default, but if you've hacked it- and it's so easy in 2024, there's no reason not to- you'll get access to emulators for that system, along with dozens of others. You can run Odyssey2 games on a Playstation Portable. You can run TI 99/4A computer games on a Playstation Portable. There's not much the PSP can't run, including hundreds of games designed specifically for the system, which were impressive enough to drop jaws and fill pants when the handheld debuted in 2005.

Lucille Ball's preferred handheld game system,
the Vita-meata-vega-min!
(image from Wikipedia)

PLAYSTATION VITA
SONY
PRICE: ~$120

The follow up to the PSP was never as impressive or as well supported as Sony's first color handheld, but the lush OLED screen of the 1000 model and the same immense pool of software make it a worthwhile alternative. It's got a fantastic D-pad, too, which is something I don't expect from Sony game systems. By the way, it also plays Game Boy Color games once you've hacked it. (Honestly, not much doesn't. You could play Game Boy Color games on a refrigerator if it's one of those fancy models with a screen.)

Granted, the utility of the New 3DS XL is
diminished somewhat without Miiverse.
Still the best social network for my money,
although Bluesky is gaining ground...
(image from Nintendo)

 

NINTENDO 3DS
NINTENDO
PRICE: ~$100

This is where Nintendo dipped its toe into near console-quality handheld gaming, and some of the games on this system are indeed very close to what you'd play at home. Some highlights include the exhaustively generous Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, a handful of Mario spin-offs, one of the better entries in the Smash Bros. series, and Kid Icarus: Uprising, which is a handful to play but at least looks marvelous. The Nintendo 3DS is also the only semi-recent handheld that officially plays Game Boy Color games, although the selection is miniscule, and if you haven't bought them before the 3DS eShop closed, you won't be buying them now. Once again, hacking is your friend... it'll open up emulators for a wide variety of systems, although it's not nearly as exhaustive as what you can get on the PSP.

By the way, if you should buy a 3DS, make sure it's the New 3DS XL. It's faster than previous models and the head tracking camera means that the 3D actually works consistently. There's also the New 2DS XL, if you're not married to the 3D gimmick.

You get a lot more than you'd expect from
the price with the SF2000 by Data Frog. I
grew up with Radio Shack and Tiger
handhelds for this price, so I'm not
complaining.
(image from Data Frog)

 

DATA FROG SF2000
DATA FROG
PRICE: $20 (yes, really)

Here's your best el cheapo option, a Chinese handheld with support for a half dozen game systems including the Game Boy Color. Truth told, the SF2000 is a bit of a fixer-upper, requiring some work by the user to optimize the experience, but it costs next to nothing and runs games for less powerful systems without too much difficulty. There's also the vertically oriented SF300, which looks more like an actual Game Boy Color and is somehow even cheaper. However, without an analog thumbstick and with a dimmer screen, you're probably better off going for the (ahem) deluxe model.

One of the many, many, maaaaany options
available to retro gamers in need of an
all-purpose emulation handheld.
(image from LITNXT)

ANBERNIC RG ARC S
ANBERNIC
PRICE: $70

There are dozens of aftermarket handhelds from Anbernic, Powkiddy, and other manufacturers, designed for various use cases. Some have square screens, ideal for the Game Boy Color's aspect ratio, while others have the horsepower to run games for much more powerful consoles, including the Playstation 2 and GameCube. My advice is to watch some Tech Dweeb reviews (he's not just informative, he's wholesome, a refreshing change of pace in this increasingly loud and cynical world), then choose the system that's right for you.

The system that was right for me was the Anbernic ARC S, designed to look like a Sega Saturn joypad with six buttons on the face and a floating D-pad. It's got enough juice for nearly every 20th century game system, except (annoyingly) the Sega Saturn, a console which continues to baffle emulator designers with its quirky twin processor architecture. However, the Game Boy Color is not a problem for the ARC S. Consider downloading an alternate operating system like Rocknix; the stock interface is a bit plain and janky.

So there you have it. That's over a half dozen handheld game systems that play Game Boy Color games perfectly well, without that Reich-y aftertaste. As for alternatives to Slime Expulsion, well, I'm working on that. There's Indie Retro News for starters, but it's awfully British, and I'm just not that into the ZX Spectrum. I'm open to suggestions for retro blogs if anyone's got any!

ARC-S Odyssey

We're not going to talk about the thing. The thing bothers me beyond measure, and I feel like we've lost a little of ourselves by making that thing a permanent thing. But like I said, I'm not discussing the thing. The ugly, rotting thing that grows like a malignant tumor at the base of our neck, sapping away our vital fluids and our will to live. That thing. Not talking about that. No.

The Anbernic RG-S uses the same clear plastic
design as the Skeleton Saturn, released only
in Japan. It's easy enough to ignore if you're
not down with the late 1990s, iMac
aesthetics... you're just going to look
at the screen anyway.
(image from Anbernic)
(which sounds like a celebrity coupling.
You know, like Bran-gelina or Ben-nifer.)

 

But hey, I got one of those fancy-schmancy aftermarket retro handhelds! It's the Anbernic RG ARC S, and it looks a heck of a lot like a Sega Saturn controller with a screen built into it. So it bookmarks well with my Data Frog SF2000, which looks just like a Super NES handheld... that inconveniently has trouble playing games for the system that inspired it.

Yeah, there are problems with the ARC S. It could have been just about perfect for a Sega lovin' guy like myself, but the hardware (the RK3266, which doesn't pack the necessary muscle to handle anything past the original Playstation, and the Dreamcast at a stretch) coupled with a trio of interfaces, each uniquely annoying to use, combine to keep this from totally obsoleting my previous emulation handheld, the Playstation Vita.

First disappointment: It plays Saturn games. Kind of. If "kind of" is as much enthusiasm as you can muster for the Sega Saturn, you'll be happy enough, but for those of us who made it our game console of choice in the late 1990s, the performance offered on the ARC S just won't cut it. Games that only need the 2D half of the Saturn's brain will work more often than not, and you might even shake a good game of Bulk Slash out of it... by the way, if you've never seen that one, imagine a 3D hybrid of Virtual On and Desert Strike and you're on the right track. 

On the flip side, even some of the 2D games run slowly (Blast Wind) or have weird broken graphics*, and 3D games are going to run a little slowly, if they run at all. Even Tempest 2000 is a big nope on this system, despite its seemingly humble hardware demands. My recommendation is if you can find the same version of the game for another system (Playstation for the 3D games, and Neo-Geo or CPS2 for the 2D games), play that instead and just pretend it's a Saturn game. With Capcom's Marvel vs. series, the arcade games are pretty much indistinguishable from the arcade ports anyway.

* EDIT: I mistakenly said Tryrush Deppy had broken graphics. Actually, that one has aggravating bouts of slowdown... it's Purikura Daisakusen that has issues with graphics vanishing at random. Apologies for that.

Dreamcast and PSP fare better, but your mileage may vary. You can get a pretty good game of Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX out of the ARC thanks to the button arrangement, although you'll need to give the PPSSPP emulator a good whack upside the head and move a few buttons around for a more arcade-like experience. Capcom vs. SNK 2 on Dreamcast is practically perfect, with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Mortal Kombat Gold, and Under Defeat close behind, but Dead or Alive 2 is too slow to play comfortably, and the port of Samurai Shodown: Tenkaichi for the Atomiswave runs almost comically badly. (There are better SamSho games; play one of those instead. Not the third one.) 

Overall, Dreamcast borders on very good... not quite there, but within grasping distance. PSP is not as impressive, but 2D games and some 3D titles won't give you much trouble. Resist the urge to play the God of Wars or the Burnouts, though.

Let me touch on the other problem... there are three interfaces available for the ARC S, including the painfully plain stock OS offered by default, the more attractive but hardware constraining Retro Arena, and Rocknix (nee JelOS), which I hated with a bitter passion in the beginning but adjusted to after putting both it and all my games on one SD card. There are two SD card ports on the ARC S; Rocknix is supposed to read them both but only seems to recognize the first. Weird quirks like this and inconsistent button mapping (A is advance and B is back, until it isn't. Good luck figuring out which is which and when!) are profoundly aggravating, but it runs arcade games faster than Retro Arena and looks a fair bit nicer than the stock OS.

Beyond the gripes, the ARC S is a pretty good system for a pretty specific audience. Most players have fallen out of love with Sega's hardware design in the twenty plus years since it left the hardware business, but I still carry a torch for it, using Sega or Sega-like controllers on any console or computer that will accept them. A floating D-pad on the left and six buttons on the right is just how I like it, and Anbernic left plenty of room in the middle of the ARC S for a crisp, colorful screen. It's not on par with the OLED in the original Vita, but you won't find much else to complain about, whether you're playing fast-paced 3D shooters (Ikaruga, Under Defeat) or arcade classics (Donkey Kong, Black Tiger, and the Metal Slugs).

The RK3266 isn't quite beefy enough for Saturn and some PSP games, but for everything before that, fehgeddabawdit. The overwhelming majority of MAME and Final Burn NEO games run beautifully*, a boon for arcade addicts, and game systems that use the same 4:3 aspect ratio as the ARC S, particularly the NES, Super NES, Turbografx-16, and Genesis, look terrific, showing off each console's respective strengths and quirks. Even the relatively humble ColecoVision looks grand... I took my game Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons for a spin on the ARC-S after hammering out an issue with a missing BIOS, and it's never looked better, putting my actual ColecoVision's meager composite video to shame.

* not on Retro Arena. Kindly fix this.

If you're into 1980s and 1990s gaming, and prefer the feel of the D-pad and buttons on later Sega game consoles, the ARC-S gets an easy recommendation. It's not perfect, and it's aggravating how close to perfect it would be with a better user interface and a faster processor, but Anbernic is definitely on the right track with the ARC-S. (Just get Saturn games running on the follow-up. Running properly, not kinda sorta running.)