| As regular readers may have noticed I’m a fan of emulation handhelds, allowing retro games for many machines to be played through an emulator, so for the benefit of those who maybe newcomers to the hobby I thought I’d do a post detailing some of my personal favourites that are available for less than £100…… | |
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Powkiddy V90
This is heavily inspired by another favourite handheld of mine, the GameBoy Advance SP. It’s available in three colours Red (although it’s more like Orange), Yellow and just released, Black.
It is a perfect ‘pick up and play’ machine for newcomers with simple to use software and really very little to set up other than copy your roms to an SD card pop the card in the side of the machine and away you go!
It supports all the classic machines you’d expect - GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Color, SNES, Megadrive but also other less known machines such as NeoGeo Pocket Color and NeoGeo.
The build quality does feel a little cheap but as a starter handheld it’s ideal, currently available from powkiddy.com for around £30.
Retroid Pocket 2+
This handheld runs on Android and contains a much more powerful processor than the V90 above meaning it can emulate well more high end machines such as PS1, Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, N64 and PSP.
It is available in a variety of colours including Black, Purple, Yellow, and a SNES inspired design to name but a few. The build quality is excellent, the machine feel great to hold and use and the analogue stick, d-pad and buttons are all extremely responsive, the shoulder buttons on the top of the machine are also of high quality and stacked and are in the perfect position to access when playing.
The screen is a little on the small side but is still very bright and sharp meaning your games will look fantastic.
Being an Android device it does take a bit more setting up than the V90 above so probably not recommended if you’re a newcomer but if you know what you’re doing this is a great choice!
I’ve already done a review of this terrific little handheld on this blog so please have a look at that for my full thoughts on it but I will say that this is a miniature device that looks and feels great to use with an almost bezel-less screen and excellent performance on everything up to and including PS1.
Best used with the superb OnionOS custom firmware. Available for around £40-55
And lastly on this list we have the Anbernic RG351V, a device styled on the original GameBoy, available in translucent black, white and this rather fetching woodgrain effect.
As is a trademark with Anbernic the build quality is excellent and it plays all the usual machines up to and including PS1 but also N64, PSP, Dreamcast. It is also possible to play some Naomi and Atomiswave arcade games. This machine has been around a while so there are a few custom firmwares available for it, the best in my opinion is ArkOS offering an improved interface, extra features and improved performance.
It is quite large machine but still feels great to hold and use and is recommended if you want a device which brings back memories of the original GameBoy!
So there you have it just some of personal favourites, you may have your own but these are my own choices, whichever you choose you’re in for an enjoyable and nostalgic time!
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