59
« on: January 25, 2022, 11:19:11 AM »
Well I did get my Pocket when they first shipped in December. It seems like life is much busier now than it was when I pre-ordered so I haven't had as much time to play it as I would like. Gee, I guess that can happen if something gets delayed a year. But I recently got Kirby and the Amazing Mirror for the GBA and that seems as good of an excuse as any to play it.
This is my first Analogue product and it feels like a quality product in your hand. It has a bit of weight to it, not in a way that would affect portability but just that it doesn't feel cheap. The screen is the most impressive part. It's very clear and bright. It has different display modes to simulate different system models and they're fun to experiment with. By default you can play a pixel perfect mode but there also modes to make it look like the old green Game Boy screen where the pixels are just slightly separated. I usually try out scan lines and such on retro style devices but this is probably the most authentic looking display options I've ever seen.
I also got the dock and the Game Gear Adapter. The dock is not a impressive as I would have liked. Those cool display modes are not enabled for a TV screen, so you only have the pixel perfect mode. It appears to always send some sort of signal through the HDMI connection. I have an auto-switch for my TV to have multiple devices connected but this doesn't work with it because the TV always thinks the dock is sending something. That's a very specific issue with my set up though. I'm also concerned about how the Pocket connects to the dock as it connects to a port at the bottom but otherwise just sits in a little pit with a brace behind it. What if someone knocked it with their hand? It doesn't snap in so I fear it would bend the connector.
The Game Gear Adapter is very nice though. Usually when using cartridge connectors, like the Super Game Boy, there can be challenges with connections because you need to connect twice. But I find this works like a charm. I had to give my Game Gear games a good cleaning first but after a round of that everything has been consistent.
There were some bugs I initially encountered but they were all fixed by updating the firmware. The Metroid GBA games had a horrible distorted sound in their intros for the spaceship engine. Castle of Illusion for the Game Gear did a weird thing where the screen viewed seemed zoomed in with the edges getting cut off. The Game Gear hardware is really just an extension of the Sega Master System and many games released for the GG here were SMS games in other parts of the world. I wonder if Castle of Illusion's code is literally identical between the two and displays in a different mode depending on what system is running it. So maybe it initially thought it was running on an SMS and displayed a TV resolution in a handheld sized screen? Anyway, that was fixed by the firmware. Though one note with the firmware is that the Pocket uses a micro SD card to update firmware but the dock uses a USB stick. So you need two different storage devices to update what is essentially two parts of the same product?
I haven't played a game that really relied on the L&R buttons so I don't really know if those are an issue or not. I played a race or two in F-Zero and was fine. The cartridge slot doesn't hold the games as tight as a real Game Boy but it isn't like if you tipped the system upside down the cart would fall out. I haven't had any issues with a cart loosening during gameplay.
So far I like it. Is it worth the money? Eh, not sure on that one. I think for me it will be once the other systems get cartridge connectors and then I've got one mega-handheld. If you have no way to play GBA games otherwise though, yeah this is a must own.