I own almost every console from the second generation to the current generation. Strange consoles like the FM Towns and Wonderswan are the few I’m missing. The Analogue Pocket and the Value Steam Deck are my two most play consoles. Both are perfect for play retro games. Both are well made and have very impressive custom operating systems. I sincerely hope Analogue takes some notes from Valve and releases an Analogue Pocket XL.
To my knowledge, in 2009, the Nintendo DSi XL is the first handheld console marketed as having a larger screen as a new feature. It could be debated that the Gameboy Light and the Neo Geo Pocket Color had it beat by a few years. But a light and the existence of color were the selling features of those consoles.
The Nintendo DSi XL is when i bought my first DS. It is when it felt large enough to be usable to me. I also waited for the New 3DS XL to launch before purchasing my first 3DS. The larger screens made the games feel that much bigger, in a still manageable hand held size.
The Steam Deck is fantastic at emulating all the way to the Playstation 3 era of games. Depending on the game, you may be able to upscale, add wide screen mode, and other tweaks that would not exist on original hardware. For most people, using EmuDeck or Batocera on the Steam Deck is more than enough. However, with all software emulation, input and screen latency exists. On power systems like the Steam Deck or Xbox Series X, it will hardly be noticeable unless you are playing a souls-like game or a platformer that requires perfect timing. Even simply games like Super Mario Brothers or Devil’s Crush could feel “off”. It could make you feel like you are a far worse player than you actually are. Processor intensive solutions like run ahead can help. But see what’s happening here? All you want to do is play a game. But now you are doing tech support.
Enter FPGA. In short, an FPGA chip can alter itself, via code, to work just like original hardware. This is not software emulation. Many wouldn’t even label it as emulation because it is a hardware solution. An open source FGPA solution, MisterFPGA can play games all the way up to the Nintendo 64. MisterFPGA could still have USB latency, but SNAC and Blisster mitigate it to almost nothing.
The Analogue Pocket uses an FPGA chip along with the OpenFGPA standard. To keep it the size of an original gameboy, it uses a smaller FGPA chip than the MisterFGPA uses. The Pocket and only run games as powerful as the Neo Geo and Sega CD. It cannot run Playstation or Nintendo 64 games. In fact, it even struggles to run some CD systems because the FPGA also has to emulate separate microprocessing unit to stream the BIN/CUE CD images.
The Steam Deck has the perfect form factor to a powerful CPU, heat dissipation, a large screen, and a larger battery to keep it all running for about two hours.
If Analogue released an FPGA device with the same general layout as the Steam Deck, it would be the perfect emulation system. It would be able to emulate all 32 bit systems, have a long enough battery life, a larger screen, and built in analog sticks for those 32 bit games. It would likely be able to be docked and played on a TV with bluetooth wireless.
Please, Analogue, make this happen. Take my money! Would you purchase a Pocket XL? Are there other features you’d like to see in it?