The heyday of the Game Boy peaked with the ultra-portable Game Boy Advance SP. That “special” clamshell handheld design is once again returning with the dirt-cheap Anbernic RG34XXSP. It should be available to some degree in the U.S. despite tariffs, though now I can only imagine what would make the perfect Game Boy emulator. The RG34XXSP may be a contender, but we’re so close to having the perfect device my pockets are opening in anticipation.
These retro handhelds are built for emulation. That means they’re running custom software made to recreate a console’s hardware in software form. Small devices like the RG34XXSP are better for handheld emulation, from Game Boy through Sega Game Gear, though they’re also good enough to run some, but not all Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast titles. What helps in that regard is the device’s twin recessed thumbsticks found below the D-pad and face buttons. The device is shipping starting on May 16. If you buy it from Anbernic’s website and ship it from the U.S. warehouse, you can get it for $60, not including shipping cost. After five days, that becomes $67.
Last month, Anbernic said it would stop shipping directly to U.S. customers from China, though it will still offer sales from its U.S. warehouse. The RG34XXSP will be available in the U.S. in all four color options—with the best two being a classic GameCube purple and a banana yellow—though you can only get it with the base 64GB storage option. That storage normally comes stocked with pre-loaded emulation software and some games, though it will support an additional microSD card, which you should be able to find for relatively cheap.
Anbernic is one of the most prolific retro handheld makers around, so you may be thinking you’ve already seen the RG34XXSP before. That’s because Anbernic already makes the $65 RG35XXSP, a similar clamshell based on the rock-solid RG35XX. The new device is based on the RG34XX, and it comes with 2GB of RAM compared to 1GB on the older model. The RG34XX supports an H700 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, the same as the older model. It’s enough to play practically all Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games along with most Nintendo DS, though you’ll struggle to get the dual display to fit on the miniscule 3.4-inch, 720 x 480 IPS display.
The RG34XXSP is immediately appealing for its price, but it’s not perfect. The 3:2 screen aspect ratio is good for Game Boy, but it will make later games played on a 4:3 screen, like most consoles, seem squashed. As noted by Russ Crandall at Retro Game Corps, that’s less of a problem on the 3.5-inch RG35XXSP display, but that device doesn’t include joysticks. At the very least, the RG34XXSP is slightly slimmer at 2.5cm (just under an inch) compared to the 2.7cm RG35XXSP. That’s closer to the Game Boy Advance SP’s 0.95 inches. For the sake of pocketability, every millimeter matters.
This handheld isn’t perfect for everything, and as we get further and further away from the golden age of handheld gaming that ended with the demise of the Nintendo 3DS eShop, we’re still waiting for that “perfect” handheld. The clamshell design offers the most portable option, and handheld maker Miyoo tried its hand at its own SP-inspired device this year with the Miyoo Flip. Users on Reddit have shared numerous anecdotes about the hinge on the device failing. The company released an updated version that was supposed to address the defects, but as Crandall noted in a recent video, the hinge on those units may also fail after enough times slapping it closed. The issue may be isolated to the dark gray model, but we’ll need to wait many months more to see if more issues crop up.
Until somebody decides to make an Analogue Pocket-style SP model that supports both FPGA emulation for playing cartridges alongside emulators, I’ll just keep waiting on the perfect retro handheld.
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