I’m having more fun with the Analogue Pocket than any mobile game I’ve played

I’ve never considered myself the biggest mobile gamer. Sure, I’d jump into a few reliable titles while reviewing a phone, but I just hadn’t found a game that made me come back over and over. Or, if I did, I’d play it to death right up until I hit a paywall and then put it down, never to be touched again.

Then, Pokemon TCG Pocket came along, and like my colleague Nick Fernandez, I was hooked. Not necessarily hooked on the gameplay itself, but on the nostalgia that opening packs of Pokemon cards brought and the want to catch ’em all — or, rather, pull ’em all. It was the same type of nostalgia I remembered getting each time I went home for the holidays and dusted off my slowly dying GameBoy Advance to play titles from when I was ten.

This time, though, it hit me in such a way that I wanted more of that feeling, but I wanted to escape the slow, painful fading of my classic handheld. So, I did the one thing I thought made the most sense: I hunted down an Analogue Pocket to relive my gaming glory days. Now, I wish I had done so much, much sooner.

And yes, I hear you yelling at your screen that I should have tried an emulator instead. Sure, that would have been an easier, cheaper way to get my fix of nostalgia. I won’t argue with that. However, I’ll also say that I did try the emulator life. I bounced between a few different options in the hopes that one of them would feel just like the games I loved as a kid — none did.

Instead, I realized nostalgia wasn’t just about the games for me. It was about sitting down with a dedicated device and separating myself from the other social media notifications and email reminders that the holidays are rapidly approaching and that I should probably be buying gifts for friends and family. The nostalgia I was after was the ability to wail on the B-button while my Poke Ball rocked back and forth, trying to catch a Pidgey on my way to Pewter City. It was the ability to blow on a physical cartridge when it had trouble starting up (which hasn’t happened with the Pocket, fingers crossed). And for that, I needed an FPGA device like the Analogue Pocket.

Now that I have one, I have physical controls almost like those I remember — a set of buttons, two triggers, and a D-pad — though they’ve all been smoothed out to match the Pocket’s sleek aesthetic. Also, there are four buttons rather than two because the Pocket plays so much more than GameBoy cartridges, but you have to grab adapters for Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, and TurboGrafx-16 separately. And yes, I have the classic black version of the Analogue Pocket because I wasn’t quick enough to land any of the limited classic, transparent, or glow-in-the-dark colorways that dropped. Believe me, I tried.

No matter the cartridge, it runs on a 3.5-inch, 1,600 x 1,440 LCD that’s as bright and sharp as I remember my GameBoy Advance SP being. In reality, though, it’s so much brighter and sharper that I’m not forced to relive the days of attaching a flashlight to the top of my handheld so I can keep playing after dark. It’s not slowly fading like the TFT display of my GameBoy Advance SP, nor is the plastic frame chipping due to age.

Yet, I don’t think the best part of using the Analogue Pocket comes from the buttons or the display. It comes from the fact that I’m playing the same games that I grew up with. Even though plenty of classic titles have been rebuilt as emulators or apps, I’m playing the same cartridge I unwrapped as a kid on Christmas morning.

Once or twice, that even meant coming back to a saved game that I haven’t touched in who knows how long. I’ve loaded up battles that I couldn’t pass in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, only to breeze through them now like I wished I could do back then. Have I then restarted the game to feel like I earned that win? I sure have, but I still feel like I was doing a younger version of myself a favor.

Oh, and the Analogue Pocket charges via USB-C, so I no longer have to keep tabs on the annoyingly specific charger I needed back in the day.

As you might imagine from a handheld with a slot for original GameBoy cartridges, the Analogue Pocket doesn’t need Wi-Fi, either. I mean, of course, it doesn’t — my GameBoy didn’t have it, and it’s not like Game Freak has put out an OTA update to Pokemon Fire Red since it first launched (Analogue has pushed a few firmware updates to the Pocket over the last few years, but they require installation via the microSD slot). However, I didn’t think about the convenience of Wi-Fi-free gaming until I found myself in a position where Wi-Fi wasn’t readily available: In the middle of the ocean.

Yes, I broke free from the cold of the Mid-Atlantic for a few days of warmth on a weekend cruise for the OnePlus Offshore event and found myself incredibly glad I didn’t have to rely on Wi-Fi the entire time. That’s not to say I didn’t have Wi-Fi — I had it on one device at a time, which is a significant handicap for a tech reviewer. So, when faced with switching my Wi-Fi connection several times a day, I was all too happy to take gaming out of the equation.

It meant that when we were told we wouldn’t be docking in Nassau and that the entire ship would be on the same spotty, Starlink-powered Wi-Fi all day, I could still find a way to pass the time without worrying about a drop in connection. The Pocket, of course, worked like a charm for my flights to and from the cruise, too, but I already knew that would be the case.

Thankfully, that lack of Wi-Fi also means the Analogue Pocket doesn’t suffer battery drain while in sleep mode. Rather than passively searching for a reliable connection in case it needs to download an update, the Pocket pretty much just sits, waiting for you to press its mint green power button and jump back into the action.

When powered on, you can expect six to ten hours of gameplay before charging the 4,300mAh battery. For me, that meant topping off my Pocket the day before my flight home, as I started to see low battery warnings while training my way toward the Kanto region’s Elite Four.

Unfortunately, if you forget to charge your Analogue Pocket before a trip, you might be in for a tough time. It’s not very fast, taking about two hours to fill with an 18W wall charger or closer to four or five hours with a slower charger that you might have lying around. You can keep playing while you charge, but you might not get much extra juice if you play for a three-hour flight.

So far, I’ve just gushed about the Analogue Pocket for about 1,000 words, and I’ve meant every one. It’s been great for travel and offered just the right amount of nostalgia without bogging me down in the ads that often plague mobile games. However, there’s one thing that might give prospective retro gamers pause: The price. Yes, the base price of $220 is steep (unless you hunt down an all-aluminum model that will run you more than $500), especially when you could probably buy replacement parts for your current GameBoy and repair it yourself, given a little technical know-how, but the real cost comes when you have to buy games.

Like most things retro, certain GameBoy cartridges have skyrocketed in value in the last few years. Titles like Pokemon Fire Red (my first-ever Pokemon game) that launched for $40 now cost more than $100 and come with no guarantee that they’ll work after 20 years of sitting around. Other games I loved dearly, like Avatar: The Last Airbender (don’t judge me) and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, are more attainable, costing between $15 and $25, but the cost can add up quickly. I’m fortunate that my parents saved most of my original games from when I was younger, but it’s tougher to recommend someone starting from scratch if they don’t already have a few games.

And yet, I’m okay with the fact that I don’t have limitless titles at my fingertips. I still get frustrated with battles against firebenders, and I still get bored with grinding out levels before challenging the Elite Four, but I’m not about to delete the game or stump up a few bucks on a microtransaction to get me past each little obstacle that gets in my way. Instead, I have to keep trying new things and spending time in the small, pixelated universes I grew up with. I would much rather sit and think through a puzzle in a Pokemon gym than watch an ad to earn enough tokens for a power-up — wouldn’t you?