Analogue Pocket’s FPGA-fueled features revealed: $200 pre-order on Aug. 3 ~ USA Latest Games

After its reveal last October, Analogue's portable, retro powerhouse system, the Analogue Pocket, is getting closer to reaching our hands. Today, Analogue has confirmed that Pocket's pre-order program will kick off Monday, August 3, for $200. That news comes with a delay, however, with the portable system's original "2020" window being pushed back to May 2021.

As we learned last year, there's a lot built into this $199 device. The biggest sales pitches include dedicated support for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges, a "hardware-emulation" backbone as powered by a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board, and an overkill display resolution of 1600×1440 pixels. Today, Analogue answered most of our remaining questions, and most, but not all, of the answers are good news.

Subpixel gaps, thick glass, and cartridge adapters

Analogue Pocket pre-orders go live next week, ahead of the system's May 2021 launch. [credit: Analogue ]

First is the screen, which Analogue confirms will ship with a 1.5mm Gorilla Glass covering on its 3.5-inch LTPS LCD display. Though we haven't gotten exact clarification on the hardware's in-game color options, particularly for classic monochrome Game Boy games, Analogue is keen to show off its newly announced "original display modes" feature. This takes advantage of the system's overkill resolution to emulate the subpixel gap inherent in original portable Nintendo hardware, as shown on games for GB, GBC, and GBA, and the sample images thus far look quite handsome. We've yet to notice any uneven pixel scaling or other faulty image-scaling issues.

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