The Analogue Pocket console is one of favourite gadgets of recent years, a meticulously composed homage to the classic pocketable gaming devices produced by the likes of Nintendo and Sega. The device’s chief USP wasn’t just its design, but the inclusion of a specially designed chip that handled all the emulation functions allowing it to run original games cartridges in hardware, not software.
Now the company has doubled down on the physicality of the device with the newly announced Analogue Pocket: Aluminum Editions (note the American spelling from the Californian company). Released in limited editions of four different finishes – Natural, Noir, Black and Indigo, the Pocket takes a massive step forwards in terms of quality and feel by being precision CNC machined entirely out of aluminium.
Every piece of the new edition is made entirely from high grade solid billet 6061 aluminium. ‘There has never been a handheld video game system like it,’ says Analogue’s Christopher Taber. The casing is then given one of the four anodised finishes, promising to be the kind of object that endures long after plastic-based devices have cracked and faded.
Analogue circumvents the tricky legal waters around retro-gaming and emulation by providing hardware that can play old games cartridges. Its own proprietary operating system, Analogue OS, is billed as the ‘definitive, scholarly operating system for playing and experiencing the entire medium [of video game history]’.
As well as huge compatibility, the new hardware features a sharp contemporary screen (as well as the ability to emulate and recreate the display modes and resolutions of much earlier consoles like Game Boys and Game Gears) and can output to a larger screen via HDMI. The operating system is incredibly flexible in terms of mapping controls to the onboard keys, with support for wireless controllers as well.
Future developments from Analogue include the upcoming Analogue 3D, the first hardware-emulated 64-bit gaming system.
Analogue Pocket Aluminium Editions, $499.99, available 8am PDT (4pm BST), 15 July 2024, at Analogue.co, @Analogue.co
