Hey y’all. First post on Lemmy!
I want to go back and play my favorite GameBoy games, and want to find the best way to do this on a handheld device. I have lots of cartridges, but ROM support would be nice! I’ve looked at Steamdeck but I’m not sold on it yet… the Analogue Pocket looks lush but expensive. The Miyoo Mini Plus looks promising, and the RG353V almost looks too good to be true. I specifically want to play GameBoy and GameBoy Color games, bonus points if it can do GameBoy Advance.
What say y’all?
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Miyoo Mini plus and Ambernic RG35xx are probably what you want. I have these two devices and the 353V, all three are quite nice but the MM+ and RG35xx are better to your needs and are probably better for beginners.
Personally I would go for the MM+. Definitely install OnionOS if you get a MM+ or GarlicOS if you go for thr 35xx. (JELOS is my pick for the 353V) These custom firmwares are far more polished and have more performance than the default OS and have tons of great features and community applications.
The PowKiddy Pocket 90 is fantastic, plays 16 bit and older games very smoothly, and has the nice clamshell design of the Gameboy SP, making it very practical for actually carrying in a pocket.
The one drawback is it gets unstable when the battery is low. But being aware of this issue helps.
I find playing Nintendo games is always best on Nintendo systems. I use a hacked 3ds for all my handheld games including Gameboy, a hacked Wii U for Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U games, and a hacked Switch for everything else.
I didn’t consider using newer Nintendo hardware to play these old games. They definitely have “that feel” to the controls. Any good websites to check out or keywords to search for to help figure this out?
If you want to use a 3ds check out this guide Then search for “gameboy on 3ds” on google. mGBA, Injection and open agb firm should come up. gbatemp is a good ressource.
My absolute favorite way to play is with a Gamecube and a Gameboy Player! Gameboy Players can be cheap, but the boot disc is expensive. To get around this there is home brew software for the Gameboy Player that is very good, although I haven’t tried it myself. To use it you need an Action Replay and a cheap SD card to GC memory card adapter. The software will boot the Action Replay first, then boot whatever is on the SD card. (I bet there are ways to load roms too but I haven’t looked)
All Gameboy Advances play GB, GBC, and GBA. The best GBA is the SP model AG-101 which has a factory backlight screen. However, there are tons of modifications available for Gameboys out there. I say get a used GBA and go to https://www.retromodding.com/ and go to town on it. Customize it the way you want
For ROMs only get a Nintendo 3DS or 2DS and install home brew software. And as a bonus you can play the entire DS and 3DS library as well.
FYI the Nintendo DS can play GBA games, but it does not support GB or GBA.
I’m surprised no one mentioned the Analogue Pocket, especially if you had cartridges. It does have support for ROMs as well. One of the best features is that you can sleep your device on even original cartridges
After a long time of going to the Analogue website and looking at the Pocket, I ended up ordering one. I usually play on my GBA, but the Analogue Pocket is really promising as the best device to play the original GB/GBC/GBA cartridges!
Every handheld made in the past few years plays GB/GBC/GBA at 100%.
Except the Playdate, which can’t come close to full speed even with the original GB.
I have both am R4 card for my 3DS and a 353V. Loving the 353 as it covers so many systems. Ripping all the games from my Dreamcast from back in college has been awesome. GB, GBA are flawless on that device
