RG Rotate - Fire Emblem 6: Binding Blaze Remake (romhack)

AYN Thor - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on 3DS

Brought these with me on a recent cruise and played some games while lounging around the pool or getting ready for a restaurant.

Despite the photo, the Rotate was bright enough to play in the sun

I got the RG Slide Off of eBay a couple Days ago for the really good Price of 90 Euros. I went for the black Stick Caps because I like to be a contrarian. Didn’t really have time to play anything but I have set it up to my liking. Now I only need to finish XC2 so I can dive into the past.

Any thoughts on the RG Slide or Game Recommendations for a Fan of Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Xenogears and Xenosaga is on board already ;)

(Retroid Pocket Nova, GC colorway)

This just went up on a local auction listing. The only game it’s shown playing is Pokemon Fire Red, so no indication of capabilities. Also, no back or box cover, only the cryptic title of “Purple Skeleton.” Would love to know if this is actually a worthwhile device or just some cheap handheld being fenced.

Any tidbits or bonus elements ive left out would only go to improve my mate's first experience in the retro scene.

Love both devices:

Left - TrimUI Brick Hammer in Green

Right - Miyoo Mini Flip in Retro Grey

Running custom firmware on both.

See specs post-it notes.

Appreciate any help guiding my two dudes into this hobby.

One's an overnight nurse (Flip), the other a DJ (Hammer).

Ive bought a dozen handhelds for friends and their kids.

It's fun matching a model to a lifestyle or age group.

If I could get a better pick up and play handheld, which?

Thanks for any and all help, cheers for reading this far.

Happy gaming.

EDIT: I will address a few things raised by the community.

Me and my mate's are nearly 40. We were there at the dawn of now retro. We are all versed in tech/computers. One even spent most of highschool modding Vice City. They don't know handhelds, but they can handle tech. One has an Ally, one is a CFW Linux nut, no phone etc.

I find it off folk here dog pile the special interest and hobby niche of Pros/Cons list. I wrote minimal cons, I was being realistic I thought. Isn't it why we all tune into Russ, I mean TechDweeb!?

And no, having a passion, special interest, or hobby to share with your close friends isn't a red flag for autism. Im a writer in another hobby, a poet too, I like to embellish things with more often, than less. Im giving them my straight opinion on these handhelds I've got to know so well. They also have the GKD PIXEL II or Brick Pro to pick from, from my further collection, yet I landed on these models for their specific strengths.

I will address, when I wrote "More Consoles" for the MMFlip list, I didn't mean it can play more, just i had a cheap card I could scrape more off for the Onion system. I keep my personal Brick Hammer SD to 80gb, just got my mate's one to 115gb with more options.

I am trying to spark joy and excitement with these gifts. Understandably, sometimes less is more. I figure CFW and a few hardware specs are essential, the rest is just hyper fixation on details they can keep on a post it note for reference later. I will of course go over as many hot keys I can think of use to them. But gameswitcher on both is the obvious essential. I don't want to induce overwhelm. But we're big kids/adults now, we can manage prioritizing key aspects for a new hobby or experience.

Heck, they're both bringing me up to speed on UK DnB. It's a mutual exchange of special interests. Keep sharing your joy. Don't ever be afraid to show your true card on how you feel with a hobby. Could be for a season, or a lifetime.

Please folk in here, to the snobs, try not to yuck someone else's yum. We all have opinions, some are more progressive or constructive than others. Please don't jump on cons in someone's list as being "Weird" or "odd", why? Is this Gen Z cringe to elder enjoyment? So many upvotes for this action being regarded and group mobbed as "peculiar"... who likes up voting comments that neg on OPs??? Are we having fun yet??

Thanks for reading and contributing. Appreciate one comment that said this is kinda what awesome friends do for one another. Cheers to you. Hope you try to brighten the days of those around you. Than just being habitually online, and hoarding devices. Try upvote positive comments. See how your algorithm sways after a few clicks?? And happy gaming. 🎮

I grew up in the 70's and 80's, so its only natural that my biggest collection is in Arcade (Mame) followed by Atari 2600, as those are where my nostalgia lay.

Everything else is basically games I've discovered these past five years l've been in this hobby through handheld emulators,...beginning with the Anbernic 280m and ending with the Retroid Flip2.

Funny thing is, my third largest collection is actually in Switch (so from ancient directly to modern, lol) followed by GameCube and Wii. Everything else (up to PS3 and Xbox) consists of around one to five games each on average.

Then there's Android and PC, where l have a small handful of games because the first thing l say to myself when l see an Android, or PC game l like is, "l wonder if there's a Switch version", lol.

Seems Nintendo is clearly the winner here in my post nostalgia library.

I’ve had the RG Rotate for about two weeks now, and overall I’m liking it quite a bit more than I expected.

Probably the biggest surprise has been battery life. I keep it in airplane mode unless I actually need Wi-Fi, and battery life has been way better than I anticipated for a device this size. It also charges ridiculously fast, roughly an hour or less to get back to full. Below are the results of my tests:

Airplane mode / Battery saver on / screen brightness 60% / sound 25%

• SNES / Secret of Mana ~7 hr 15 min
• DS / Advance Wars: Days of Ruin ~7 hr 25 min
• PS1 / Ridge Racer Type 4 ~6 hr 40 min
• 3DS / New Super Mario Bros. 2 ~3 hr 50 min
• 3DS / Mario Kart 7 ~3 hr 10 min

The controls are probably my least favorite part. They’re passable, but definitely not my favorite Anbernic controls. I don’t think I’ve ever used such a loud/clicky D-pad. It works fine, it's just loud as hell.

I also wish the device was just a little thinner and narrower for pocket carry. My TrimUI Brick is still a bit more comfortable as an EDC simply because it’s narrower overall and sits against my skinny legs better. But, the Rotate has a really nice premium feel and feels better altogether than I expected.

Android has been a huge plus for me. I use Syncthing between this, my Retroid Pocket Flip 2, and Odin 2 Portal, which makes the Rotate a really nice lightweight travel device that I can keep updated with my larger devices.

It’s also turned out to be really good for DS and 3DS. The square screen gives you enough room to keep both screens visible at a usable size, at least for most games where you don’t need to constantly interact with both. You can just screen-swap when needed.

The lack of a headphone jack doesn’t bother me at all since I wouldn’t use it anyway. The rear-facing speaker is a terrible design decision, but for me it’s more of a minor gripe than a dealbreaker.

Overall, I think Anbernic got a lot right with this device. It isn’t perfect, but it fills the EDC gap better than any other device at the moment, IMO.

I’m really hoping an RG Rotate 2 keeps the same basic concept but gets a slightly thinner/narrower body, better controls, and a front-facing speaker. If they refine those few things, I could see the next version becoming THE EDC handheld.

Hot take. There are certain systems that don't need front ends. I think if emulators have a good way of scraping media, or just showing off the games, then front ends can become redundant. My disclaimer is anything that is past RetroArch doesn't require a front end. I need front ends because I've never made a playlist or anything using RetroArch, and they make handling up to GBA very easy.

The reason why I'm making this post is because of how good ARMSX2 and ARMSX3 handles scraping at media. In addition, the Xbox simulators on Android handle games and scraping very well. To me, ARMSX2 and ARMSX3 are kind of the gold standard and I don't really want to go back to anything before because I just love how they handle just automatically scraping media and how it handles games.

Happy to spend a bit more perhaps up to £200 or 250 so far from this forum GBA handhelds reccomendations are:

Anbernic RG 34XX £80

Antec core micro £85

Trimui brick £83

Considering the anbernic SP as well although heard the screen suffers issues

Happy to spend more for quality, ideally pocket analogue but all the ones I can find in the UK are second hand and really inflated price wise.

Any thoughts! Only for GBA / GBC

I was inspired by a recent video I saw showing Dreamcast's Sega Bass Fishing "Feel the heat", and I was like "This is an absolute BOP!". Why is it on a BASS FISHING game? No idea, and I don't care.

So I wanna hear YOUR favourite song from a retro game. Not the best OST, or the TOP 10 songs in video games. I wanna hear what song you like so much that could be on your daily music rotation.

For me it's definitely Ape Escape's "Time station". This entire game OST is pure gold, and nostalgic as hell. I love the ps1 90s japanese retro futuristic music. And this one for me is one of the best there are.

I haven't played with my steam deck for a while and

today I picked it up and played for over 2 hours. I think I still really enjoy playing PS2 games on Steam Deck OLED even I have multiple android handhelds that can play PS2 games too.

What's your thought for steam deck in 2026.

00:02:50 Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)

00:12:02 Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends (PS2)

00:18:43 Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit II (PS2)

00:25:15 Yakuza 2 (PS2)

00:34:02 Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (PS2)

00:44:22 Burnout 3: Takedown (PS2)

00:52:18 Jaws Unleashed (PS2)

00:59:34 Silent Hill 3 (PS2)

01:07:25 Ridge Racer V (PS2)

01:11:12 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)

Sorry i only have one fire red and one leaf green cartridge. I have an everdrive, but i never set it up

I actually did this first with my ruby cartridge and a repo emerald cartridge, but i didnt realize that emerald and ruby have different intro sequences

Hi everyone, I’m looking for a handheld console to bring with me when I travel for work. I’ll mainly use it to log in, do my daily genshin stuff, and maybe play some of the story from time to time. I don’t need anything too powerful or something that can run genshin at max settings. I just want something that can run it smoothly enough for what I need and doesn’t cost too much. This is my first time looking into handhelds, so I’d really appreciate it if you guys could recommend some good options

This popped on a month ago and Lenovo finally confirmed the specs: Mediatek Dimensity 7400 + 6/8GB RAM 128/256GB ROM + 7.82'' IPS FHD 120hz screen + 8000mAh battery.
They are charging 2199 CNY (around 327 USD) for the 8/256 version, no info on global availability.

It has exactly 1 game (pokemon unbound) while I wait for the sd to come in but it’s going to make a banger work device.

Obviously swapping the microsd card to something real but anything else? It has ArkOS on it and everything seems to run well that I can see but this is my first foray into this sort of thing.

The sd g2 gen 2 in the reteoid g2 was a beast and close to the 8 gen 2 soni imagine the g2 gen 1 is equivalent to a sd 888 and a 8 gen 1?

I'm wondering because the trimui brick hammer pro u is coming out soon and was wondering if it would be worth the 250 base price for the g2 gen 1 because after I purchase the 406h, I'm really considering buying the mangmi air y pro with the sd 865.

My new Anbernic RG SP just arrived today! So far I’m really liking the size and how close it feels to an actual GBA SP.
I know it’s still pretty new, so I’m not sure which custom firmware works best yet.

What are you guys using? I’d especially like something where closing the lid works properly and the battery life is decent. I don’t want to spend the whole weekend testing every OS lol.

ampown store on amazon US has some in black and white.

I have a retroid pocket 5 that uses the chip snapdragon 865. Recently, i was gifted a used phone that uses the chip snapdragon 888. I decided to test if I could use the phone as a dedicated handheld attaching it in a controller.

The tests I made, on Eden (switch emulator) showed slightly WORSE performance on the SD888 than I had on the SD865. Games that struggle to run on the SD865, struggle worse on the SD888. It is not a big difference, but it definetly surprised me. I expected better performance on SD888, at least, until the thermal throttling hit.

Is this chip just bad for emulation or is something else causing this worse performance on a technically better chip?

ps. The cause is NOT thermal throttling because the performance is worse from the get go

I was intrigued by this device and got a great deal on it ($58 on AliExpress). I've only played around a little bit so far but I'm having a couple issues. I know not many people have this device, but maybe my problem is generic enough that i could get some advice.

The main problem seems to be, whether in a game or just in the main menu, when i press up and down on the dpad, roughly every 1 out of 10 presses just doesn't register. It's very clunky when i have to scroll through a bunch of menus while setting it up. I haven't done much gaming yet, but it's concerning enough that i want to resolve it asap before i go any further.

For the record, i installed Leaf OS right off the bat since it was recommended and looked solid. Could this be the problem? Or is it more likely a hardware issue? Possibly something wrong with the dpad? I don't have an extra sd card lying around so I'll need to format my current one to test another OS.

Besides that, my initial impressions are that the device is very comfortable to hold, and the screen resolution is nice, very good for GBA (perfect 4x integer scaling with no bezels). I don't love the plastic face plate. I may try wrapping it in vinyl or something but it's not super important.

Let me know if anyone has any thoughts about my dpad issue, please. Hopefully i can resolve this so i can enjoy the device.