First-time poster, long-time reader. I created a site that isn’t monetized to report on interesting tech and gaming, covering news and reviews, and wanted to share this post as I’m a huge fan of retro gaming and would love to see the Game Bub succeed. Rest assured, although this may appear to be self-promotion, I’m not earning anything from the site; it is completely ad-free.
Back to the subject at hand. We already have a few portrait handhelds that can play physical Game Boy carts, but we still don’t have one that plays landscape. There are rumors that Modretro will make a GBA handheld, but so far, there’s no news on that front. In comes the Game Bub, which is still in crowdfunding, but it does appear a manufacturer has been secured. Hopefully the project finds enough funding to get made, cause I would love to add the Game Bub to my collection.
Not only is it open source, it can play physical carts, which is a big deal to collectors like me, as I prefer single carts over flash carts. Of course, it has an SD slot, so you won’t even need a flash cart if you don’t want to use one.
I can’t be alone in wanting to see this funded, right? We absolutely need an FPGA handheld with a 3:2 screen for GBA.
It’s all about the screen ratio. The Pocket is 10:9, same as the original Game Boy. This way all Game Boy and Game Boy Color games perfectly fit the screen. The Pocket can play GBA, sure, but GBA was 3:2, so it’s heavily letterboxed on the Pocket. The Game Bub is a 3:2 screen, while using similar underlying tech of FPGA. Basically, the Game Bub is the right landscape layout and right screen ratio to best play GBA games.
huh, neat.
I can see that being a draw for enough people to own both
Oh for sure. Heck, I have all 3 black Analogue Pockets, and a couple colors of the Chromatic too. I love me some dedicated hardware. But the modded Game Boys just aren’t cutting it with their buzzing sound, I want perfected dedicated hardware with backlit screens.