The World of Insufficient Light

The dev updated GarlicOS so I decided to give it another try. I think I’m more comfortable with the hotkeys, especially since this build make it more obvious that holding the menu button brings up the hotkey menu, and you can just keep holding it and press another key. I still think that making single-tapping menu exit the game is dumb; but the screenshot/save state Recents menu is fine when that isn’t what the menu key jumps to. Also, fast forward works for everything even if save states are mildly more confusing/less convenient.

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Overall: Okay, I’ll concede that there are definite advantages here, once I get over the hotkey thing, because it adds (working) cheats to NES, Genesis and PS1; fixes the SNES save issue; and adds a bunch of cores so I can play more systems. I’m going to keep half an eye on the next update because this is getting better.

Miyoo first produced the Miyoo Mini, a tiny handheld that was an improvement on the various tiny linux-based emulator handhelds that came before (like the PowKiddy Q90). That sold like crazy and they stopped being able to source screens, so they made the Miyoo Mini Plus, with a more standard 3.5-inch screen but the same internals.

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Overall: I think, on the whole, the Miyoo Mini+ is the winner for general recommendations. The form-factor of the RG35XX is somewhat more comfortable to me personally (for my hands and my eyes), but on the whole the system offers a lot more capability.

Anbernic introduced this “mini” handheld to compete directly wit the Miyoo Mini, but I really think it’s there to trounce all the cheap “pick up and play” PowKiddy handhelds.

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Overall: I give them a lot of credit here for putting together an optimal version of what PowKiddy has been stumbling around for years: It’s pocket-sized with a nice screen and good battery life. I think “35XX” was a great name for it, because it represents a different evolutionary path from the 351 and 353 devices—instead of pushing the envelope to try to play later systems and add touchscreens, this evolved to be better at the original niche.

This was originally listed on AliExpress as KinHank Super Console X3 Plus Retro Video Game Consoles Built-in 114000 Classic Games 4K Output Mini Game Box For PSP/PS1/SNES. It’s a mini-console, not a handheld, and comes with everything you need to plug it into your TV.

And as the Wicked Gamer Youtube channel puts it, “You know it’s almost like your birthday with a package from China.”

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Overall: I didn’t actually need to buy this thing. But I got a few hours of entertainment out of fiddling with it and pulling the rom list for Lynx, Pokemini, Wonderswan, the NES/SNES hacks and a few other systems gave me a lot of new things to try on my other devices without much effort.

In vaguely chronological order of acquisition and review, my retro handheld collection as of October 2022:

9X-S Handheld - I got this, the X6 handheld and a cheap 99,999-in-one GBA knock-off around the same time. I gave away the latter two shortly thereafter. When there was nothing else on the market, the 9X-S was great, and I took it to Bali and on various short trips. Once there were better options it became the, “Well, I don’t care if it gets destroyed” handheld. Now I have enough better options that it’s mostly just a curiosity.

Hacked PSP - Again, the best thing that was available at the time but then quickly outclassed as the market and technology advanced. I played around 57 hours of games on it and sold it for the same price I paid.

Anbernic RG350 - My clear favorite of every one I’ve tried, with currently almost 250 hours of game time logged on it. It’s small enough to fit in a cargo pants pocket (even in a case with headphones and a charging cable included), powerful enough to run SNES and PS1 well, flexible enough that I could make cheats work in most cases I wanted them, but still comfortable to hold and see. The OpenDingux OS isn’t the best ever, but I learned my way around it and find it pretty easy to manage. I actually bought a case after I’d had it for over a year; before that I just kept it in an old 3DS case, but I kept using it enough that a proper case seemed appropriate. I’m still trying out SNES fan-translations and replaying GBA games on this.

PowKiddy Q80 - A similar handheld to the RG350 with the same OS, but slightly less powerful, heavier and with a worse button layout. I sold this on eBay and got back some of what I paid for it.

Powkiddy Q90 - My current winner for “throw it in my pocket when I’ll be sitting at a doctor’s office or on a subway,” I’ve logged around 10 hours of game time and I think most of that is in 10-minute bursts. It also runs the same OS as the RG350 and while the SNES emulation is a little choppy, it does great with GBA and Game Gear titles that the screen size and button layout are ideal for. I also found a cell phone belt holster it fits comfortably in, in lieu of a case. This will eventually die and I might even consider replacing it; you can still get them for $30 on AliExpress and they’re absolutely worth it.

Retro FC 500-in-1 - I bought this for $10, ran a big Talking Time thread where I tried and catalogued all 500 games, and then traded it for an Ixo-Box. (I recently saw an add on Facebook for a “Mini-Tendo,” which was a more expensive version of this. Don’t buy one.)

Anbernic RG351P - The upgrade to the RG350; I never liked the stock firmware and it didn’t offer substantial advantages over the 350 for me. I considered trying to install a new firmware but eventually just sold it on eBay.

Retroid Pocket 2+ - This has been a mixed bag, in that it has a great deal more power and flexibility than the RG350 and I had a fantastic time doing the upgrades to it; but at the end of the day the big advantage it offers is that it’s good at plugging into my portable monitor for two-player SNES emulation. The Android OS offers a lot of options and flexibility but you need to put the time and effort into setting up each individual piece and you end up using RetroArch (which I don’t love) for most emulation anyway. It’s been living on the shelf; as has the original Retroid Pocket PCB which I could plug into a TV as an emulator box but have never felt the need for.

Powkiddy A66 / Trim-UI Mini - Tiny, with shockingly good emulation; the selling point is really the extreme portability because it isn’t comfortable to play for long periods. If you kept it charged and in your pocket/backpack/purse, it would be an alternative to your phone while waiting for a train. I’m not on the go enough in my daily life that having it handy has been necessary, and I usually grab the Q90 when I know I’m going to need it.

Anbernic RG552 - My new vacation workhorse and the best way I’ve found to emulate DS games; I’ve logged about 60 hours on this so far. It’s too big for casually carrying but manages to do pretty much everything I want in terms of emulators and in a convenient way.

PowKiddy X350 - Cheap and low-quality. I tried it and then gave it as a prize to a trivia contest I ran at a con.

GamePlayer X40 Pro - Oversized and with some issues; this is outclassed by the X2 for what it specifically does. I’ll probably give this away at some point.

PowKiddy X39 Pro - I tried this, updated some of the contents, and gave it away. It’s a midsized, relatively low-cost handheld that is outdone by the RG350 on most fronts.

Powkiddy X2 - I did a Talking Time thread about all the hilariously-translated preloaded contents and I used this to play the Dragon Warrior 10x hack. I like the 7” screen and it came preloaded with a ton of NES hacks and random games I hadn’t heard of; but it’s not a “serious” gaming handheld that I’m ever going to play a 30 hour rpg on. I’ll probably take it out for short sessions of random hacks and arcade games a few more times.

Hyperkin Supaboy - This is a collectable piece that I put on the shelf for display. I tested it and made it work, but it’s giant and clunky and requires carrying around cartridges; I’m not going to play it.

I also have acquired a Retroid Pocket 3, which I haven’t reviewed yet. It seems to offer similar power to the RG552 with a slightly smaller screen and a better shape, and it has Steam Link and full access to the Play Store to offer. I’m probably more likely to use it to play Android games that I want a controller for (as opposed to touchscreen controls on my tablet) or remote Steam games (so I can lie on the couch or my bed). But we’ll see!

Overall: The RG350, Q90 and RG552 are the ones living at my charging station and seeing regular use in various capacities. Time will tell how things evolve from here.

This is a mid-sized handheld that I had mid-sized hopes for.

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Overall: This is a decent compromise $40 device. It’s not as effortlessly portable as the Q90, but the tradeoff is the larger, nicer screen. It’s definitely no RG350, but it’s also less than half the price. Fortunately, I think it fits the bill for the person I had planned to give it to.

So, I wasn’t going to buy this thing, because it’s a ridiculous monstrosity that I absolutely don’t need, but I was buying some comic books from Ixo anyway and it was very reasonably priced and I wanted to see it in action. The face of it labels it a “Portable Pocket SNES Console.”

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Overall: The only advantage this carries over an emulator device is that you can play your original cartridges, presumably with your 30-year-old savegames on them. But it’s not actually portable enough to make that functionality worthwhile, and my SNES and my RetroDuo still work if I’m going to be sitting in front of my TV anyway. I’m delighted I got my hands on one to try out, though. I think I might put it on display.

Yes, I bought more emulator handhelds. Yes, I’ll admit that I might have a problem.

PowKiddy's X350 is clearly named to evoke the Abernic RG350 (Presumably to confuse consumers, honestly) and is in pretty much all ways a cheaper version of that device.

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Overall, it's very much a "you get what you pay for" ($20) and I'd have loved it three years ago (it's a mild improvement over the X6 and X9-S in terms of feel and performance), but you can pay a little more for something significantly better.

The RG351 is the successor to the RG350 Handheld, which I loved and got a ton of use out of. I never really got that experience out of the RG351P.

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Overall: Like the Powkiddy Q80, this had some flaws that stopped me from really getting into it and it never found a good place in my gaming ecosystem. As of this writing I have it up on eBay to resell.

Not long after I bought the RG350 and started fiddling with it, I decided to see how the competitor systems stacked up and…probably spent too much money.

The PowKiddy Q80 is a clone of the PocketGo v2 and ran me $60 on eBay. It runs the same OpenDingux OS as the RG350, though with a slightly different emulator selection pre-installed (a newer version of Gambatte that allows for borders and cheat codes; GPSP instead of ReGBA by default). It also has the same problem that it doesn’t plug directly into a windows computer, but in this case, the External SD card doesn’t hold the main roms folder, so it takes more maneuvering to add roms or files to the system. It’s a similar-sized device, same 3.5” screen, only one analog stick (laid out PSP-style) but with both shoulder buttons. My biggest disappointment was that there’s a “Home” button, but it doesn’t do anything—not just that it wasn’t mapped to anything, but I don’t think it was actually connected inside the system. Power-wise, this can do pretty much anything the RG350 can (though I didn’t extensively test PSX games), but it’s clearly the budget option. (I think they actually stopped producing it subsequently.)

The PowKiddy Q90, on the other hand, which I paid $40 for on eBay and can still be had for around the same price, is pretty great for what it is. (It’s functionally a clone of the original PocketGo.) If you liked the original Game Boy Advance, it’s basically that model with a few extra buttons; and probably the smallest a handheld can get and still be comfortable for someone with adult-sized hands. It has a 3” screen, smaller than the RG350 or the Q80 and less smooth, but perfectly fine for games originally made for portable systems. It has a single analog stick and only one set of shoulder buttons, but that’s fine, because while it can boot PSX games, it can’t actually run them to anyone’s satisfaction. The screen is really too small for them, anyway. The battery life is a perfectly cromulent 4-5 hours. But the real thing I appreciated was that there are + and – keys in addition to the regular Start and Select, and the – key is actually a properly-mapped Home button! You can also press – from the main screen to suspend the system.

Again, it’s running OpenDingux (with a different front-end skin) and has the same slate of emulators available. GPSP is the GBA emulator by default (and it carries the bad scaling from that); it also features Gambatte, SNES9x4d, Fceux, and PCSX Rearmed. SNES emulation in particular has some of the choppy animation and laggy music problems the 9X-S demonstrated. If you fiddle with the settings (enabling frameskip, enabling transparency, setting to fullscreen), it’s still not perfect, but it’s much better than the 9X-S, and at least doesn’t seem to suffer the random speed changes. Save states are available, most of the SRAM saves seemed to function properly; no cheats unless you’re willing to fiddle around a lot.

Despite being underpowered as an emulation handheld from 2020, this is still for sale likely because it hit a real niche: It’s cheap and works really well as a pick-up-and-play tiny portable. Game Boy, GBA, NES and Game Gear games all work great and look fine at the screen size, and the compact size and lack of extra analog sticks means this actually fits in your pocket. I played half a dozen hours on it in 15-minute bursts just because it’s really convenient for that.

Overall: I’d actually recommend the Q90 to someone who just wanted to play GBA games on a small, cheap device and didn’t want to put much effort into it. The version I got was loaded with roms and required basically no setup. The Q80 was outclassed and is already forgotten.