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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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