Analogue Pocket: Firmware 1.1 - Even More FPGA Power in Your Pocket

Late last year I received my Analogue Pocket and fell in love with it immediately. It's got a sleek form factor, a gorgeous screen and out of the box it can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges.

I shared my initial thoughts on the device back in early January:

There are plenty of other devices out there that can emulate old games as well, either in ROM format or from the actual cartridge. What sets Analogue Pocket apart from the rest is that it utilizes FPGA technology, which allows for far more accurate hardware emulation. FPGA can be programmed to simulate the environment of any computer, game console, or arcade machine. The only restriction is the power of the FPGA chip itself. Currently, the most powerful hardware we've seen emulated on FPGA would be the Sony PlayStation. Anything more powerful is simply cost prohibitive at this point.

If you would like to know more about FPGA retro-gaming, you can read up on it here:

While I loved my Pocket, I didn't have many cartridges for the various systems it supported. For a while, there was a "hack" developed by the community that would allow you to put Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on the handheld in a ".pocket" format that was originally intended for homebrew projects, not official games.

That satiated my need for more content, at least for a little while. Then I moved on and I waited.

Analogue themselves had told us that they would be offering developers in the community a way to create their own cores for the FPGA based handheld, but that functionality wasn't available at launch. Month after month went by and the community became restless, and even frustrated with Analogue.

Finally, in late May of 2022 we were informed that Firmware 1.1 would be coming in July and that it would include the openFPGA solution that would allow developers to create their own cores.

If you know Analogue, you know that July means late July. We waited, and on July 29th, 2022, we were finally graced with a much more capable Analogue Pocket.

Firmware 1.1 might still be in beta but it's everything I could have hoped for.

Within the first few hours of the firmware being released, Spritiualized1997 (identity unknown) released Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cores that would allow you to play ROMs directly from an SD card. A few days later, Spritiualized1997 released cores for Sega Master System, Game Gear, and SG-1000.

Sure, there were third party solutions that would allow you to load up the entire collection of these systems on a single cartridge and place them on your Pocket but having the option to just put them on the device itself is preferred by most.

Just a few days ago we were treated to a huge surprise when UltraFP64 released an Alpha version of a NEO GEO core. It was a port of a core released previously for the Mister FPGA project and originally developed by Furrtek.

There are still a lot of bugs to sort out with the NEO GEO core, but we've already seen one iterative update to the core in the last few days and it looks like it will support every game in the NEO GEO library when its finished.

Seeing a NEO GEO core release that quickly for the Pocket has the community excited. If a core for a system as powerful as SNK's console can be released and fine-tuned so quickly, it's only a matter of time until we see cores for:

• · Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
• · Sega CD/Mega CD (People say this one can't be done but I am keeping my fingers crossed)
• · Nintendo Entertainment System
• · Super Nintendo Entertainment System
• · Atari Lynx*
• · NEO GEO Pocket*
• · TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine*
• · Turbo CD
• *Analogue will officially be supporting the cartridges for these systems in the future.

That's just to name a few. Sure, there are plenty of other handheld options to play these games, but like I said before, none of them can produce the accuracy of FPGA. This is a game-changers.

There is a chance we might be seeing cores for arcade games hitting the Pocket as well. Prolific FPGA core developer, Jotego, whose incredible work has seen some of the best arcade games come to the Mister, has expressed interest in working on the Pocket. The only thing holding him back at this point appears to be time and money. Remember, these developers aren't getting paid by Analogue or anyone else and building these cores is a full-time job.

If you're interested in supporting Jotego, please check out his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/topapate

Oh, and if you feel like playing on your couch, you have the option of purchasing Analogue's optional dock. The Analogue Pocket features Nintendo Switch like functionality. You just pop the handheld onto the official dock and your game instantly becomes available on your TV. Controller support for the dock still needs work but the list of devices is growing with each update.

Firmware 1.1 is still in beta and Analogue has promised that we will be seeing more updates in the next few months, including expanded library features that will keep track of how much time we play each game and the ability to take screenshots.

The Analogue Pocket could very well be the endgame when it comes to hardware emulation for classic gaming consoles on the go. Mister FPGA core development has already seen incredible success. If we see that same level of success on the Analogue Pocket that could make it the greatest handheld gaming system of all time.