In the pic: Anbernic RG35XX-H playing Castlevania: Dracula X
I’ve been thinking about buying one of these for a while but finally bit the bullet now that companies have started raising prices due to the RAM/chip shortage…
And it turned out to be the best purchase I’ve made in a while! It’s a ton of fun gaming on this little thing. I flashed a custom operating system on it and am now playing Castlevania & Secrets of Mana with RetroAchievements support (which adds achievements and progress tracking to retro games).
I’m also playing a lot of random PICO-8 games since it runs on the device and I can easily browse and play free games on it. Low-key wish I had bought it sooner with how neat it is.
Anybody else have a retro handheld here?
Have had the Anbernic RG35XX for a while now. It is the pseudo predecessor to yours, meaning it has no Wi-Fi, which is kinda nice. Nowadays it’s rare to have a device that just does it’s thing, no internet, no subscriptions, no updates, no tracking
Normally I would agree, but Wi-fi on this thing adds a lot to it. It allows you to scrape box art and a short video that gets shown when you hover on each game you have, and it lets you connect to retroachievements as well as easily transfer files from your PC wirelessly with FTP.
It’s definitely not needed but it makes things a bit more convenient for me IMO.
Most of that is a one time process, which you can do with the RG35XX when you connect it to a PC. But I have to agree retro achievements is quite nice
I’ve been interested for many years, but I keep ending up holding off because I want something that does a better job at emulation than my phone.
I’m not sure that “dedicated device with potentially better control scheme” beats out “the one to two generations old semi-flagship android I already have with an xbone controller clipped to it and wired in through an adapter”. When I do find something that has better performance, the price point usually puts me off, which is silly because I pay more for my phone whenever I upgrade… and then the cycle perpetuates.
So I guess it comes down to that I don’t want to pay again for something my phone can already do. Just wish there were more phones with microsd card slots for expandable storage, and a quality controller with the same relative form factor as the dedicated devices. Console controllers are big for a work bag. Thick. Especially with the clip to attach a phone to it well.
Right now I’ve been tidying up an old Game Boy Color (cleaned and reshelled, thinking about rechargable usb-c battery modding it) and saving for an Everdrive for it. If that ends up scratching an itch by being a dedicated device, it might push me over towards buying a dedicated emulation handheld.
I have a couple of the vertical Anbernics and they’re a lot of fun.
I’ve been really enjoying rom hacks on them lately.
I’ve been rocking an RG35XX+. I think it’s the same chipset as what you have?
Love it. Got it hooked up to RetroAchievements and Syncthing. Wish it could handle N64, but ah well. It’s still the über-Gameboy I dreamed of as a wee child.
Yup, your handheld has the exact same internals as mine, I think the only difference is that it’s bigger and vertical. Good choice.
I’ve been tempted to pick up the RG35XXSP for that clam shell form, but can’t justify it when the XX+ has been such a champ.
Oooh yeah, I actually considered the SP at first but it wasn’t in stock where I live. That might’ve been a good thing though, because the H is very comfortable to hold whereas clamshells generally aren’t. But yeah, it’s really hard to justify buying more than one of these.
That looks like a nice form factor. I think the mainstream handhelds have gotten too big, like the Switch
I’ve been thinking of getting a brick hammer, but I can’t justify dropping ~$100 when I have a phone and a controller… even though the controller is juuust to big to fit in a pocket
Maybe the regular Trimui brick? Hammer is like a deluxe model afaik
Yeah the Hammer is ALL metal body while the Brick is only the back panel behind the screen being metal. They get warm, but that seems to be the only downside to the trimui handhelds, I have one on my list i want to pick up.
I have an Anbernic RG556. Does pretty good with PS2 (not perfect, but good enough for funk with most games ive tried), and does fantastic with the older gens of pretty much everything. Ive done some Steam Link stuff, but I dont love it and it can be finnicky with that – but it’s pretty cool to be able to play Borderlands 4 on a device i got for less than $200.
My advice to anybody on the fence is buy the best one you can afford even if you dont think you’ll want to play games that need those specs.
I need to look into it more, but if a Steam Deck can emulate, i might be looking at getting one of those someday and retiring my Anbernic.
Rg556 10/10 for value 7/10 for performance 3/10 for steam linking
I got the original STEAM Deck, and it has been a godsend for emulation.
It handles Switch titles with upscaling, and even PS3 games. It struggles with Skate 3 on PS3 though, which is the main one I’d like to play.
Steam does emulation quite well, but new ones aren’t sold anymore, and x86 handheld prices are going through the roof. A popular ones just rose it’s price by almost 50% and is $2000 now.
I’ve been playing Pokemon soul Silver on my Nintendo DS lite. I picked one up during covid for cheap and it’s been one of my better purchases for the amount of entertainment it’s provided me
I love the 35xx series. I went up to the RG40V or whatever it is with 1 stick. it’s fine, but I wish I had kept my 35XX. It’s really just the perfect size and power of you’re looking for on-the-go retro gaming.
