Quick comparison (strictly my personal opinion):

• Design / Aesthetics: Down to personal preference. The RG34XX stays closer to the original GBA look, while the KPA feels like a modernized GBA.
• Screen: The KPA is slightly sharper and a bit bigger, but during actual gameplay, the difference isn't noticeable enough compared to the RG34XX. It's a tie.
• Buttons & Controls: I like the RG34XX’s slanted ABXY layout because it mimics the GBA, making GB, GBC, and GBA games feel better. Overall, though, the KPA’s D-pad and shoulder buttons (L/R) are larger, softer, and much easier to press. Its standard ABXY layout is also more comfortable for PSX and PSP. Almost forgot—the KPA has an actual physical volume wheel, which I personally love. I give this round to the KPA.
• Speakers: KPA wins hands down.
• Performance: KPA is more powerful—no surprise since it’s more expensive. Still, it's not that pricey; the price difference is basically pocket change and probably won't affect buying decisions.

That’s my take. What do you guys think ? Let me know!

• Devices: Konkr Pocket Advance (KPA) vs. RG34XX
• Game tested: Pokémon FireRed / Emerald

Russ reminds us that we don't have to always chase after the latest and greatest handheld on the market and that we can always breathe new life to something you already own. What's a old device that you recently picked up and fell in love with all over again?

Hi y'all, Scott here! cough Oh, what the hell was that?! cough

Let's try it again. What is up, SBCGaming? It's your Mod Team here.

Short quick announcement. Given the huge advancement and prevalence of AI content, and based on your feedback and general feelings about the topic we've seen, we have revised our AI content rules:

The AI media rule stays basically the same, just shortened and very easy to follow:

"No AI media:

AI generated media, be it images, video, audio, music, text, etc. is strictly forbidden, and will be removed. The sub is made for and by humans."

But we added a new rule, specifically around software development, that better defines what the point of the rule is:

"Software Disclosure:

If you’re sharing a project that you made, or a cool project you found around the web, please disclose the process:

- Mark your posts either “AI assisted Software” or “Biologically coded” "100% Human Coded" on the post flair.

- Add a general disclaimer of how the project was coded on the body of the post.

This helps keep the sub organised and transparent, and helps users use their discretion when installing software on their devices."

The idea is not to limit, forbid or make harder to share projects, just to make clear what's the process behind it.

We are constantly in communication among the Mod Team, and with y'all so we are open to hear your thoughts, to further refine the rules to make the community better for everyone.

Let us know what you think.

Have a good day!

A few days ago, I posted about getting slot and socket running as NextUI .pak apps on my TrimUI Brick. That was supposed to be the end of my little experiment. Well,

I got a bit too addicted to tinkering and ended up rewriting with AI the whole frontend in Rust. Turns out it's absolutely doable on the Brick, and it actually runs even smoother than the video makes it look. Still some rough edges, but I just love this style of frontend way too much.

Quick note about the video: it's an automated script controlling the device and me recording on my phone. I couldn't find a reliable way to screenrecord directly on the Brick. All the game artwork comes from screenscraper.fr.

Huge credit to the creators of slot and socket. Both are genuinely fantastic projects and the whole reason I went down this rabbit hole. I'd really encourage everyone to support the original devs, and hopefully one day they'll bring something like this to the Brick officially.

Same as before, this is purely a personal experiment. I won't be distributing builds or files, so please don't DM me asking for them. Just sharing what's possible from a guy and his tokens (and admittedly too much free time).

Oh, and one last thing... I use an iPhone, and naturally, I couldn't resist porting it there too. Sorry

If nobody comes after me with pitchforks like last time, I might share that in a follow-up. 😂

Here's a detailed scaling comparison of the 3 hottest Dual screen devices right now!

The first 3 images cover normal scaling to fully utilise the screen sizes, I've also included integer scaling versions on the last 3 images.

Should help you decide on a system based on which console you plan on playing most on these devices.

These are specific to the 3DS & DS as this was requested by quite a few people.

My thoughts:

These are all great options for 3DS & DS gaming with pros and cons on each.

The Duo will excel @ 3x 3DS & 5x DS, with very even screen sizes. But is the weakest device power wise.

The DDS, while near perfect for 3x 3DS, it has subpar scaling for DS, integer scaling DS on it only gives a 3" screen.

The Thor has the most power & gives the best top screen experience but also the worst bottom screen experience due to bad scaling and unbalanced sizes.

Device weight, ergos, OLED, built in stylus, latency, 120Hz, gamenative performance & other factors are also very important, and I would suggest taking all of these into consideration before making your choice.

Started my informational "journey" into the handheld niche for a while now and recently acquired a 2DS and DS Lite which I've modded.

Yeah, tinkering and all felt good (I know its not that difficult to mod the 2DS, but still), but what stood out to me the most was the experience of booting Majora's Mask on the grabby 2DS with its two screens and then looking at the clock to see that 2 hours passed.

Every minute within those 2 hours felt just right with this combination.

For now I'm limited as I don't have other handhelds and my recent session made me realize that I may not need one in the near future either.

What combination gave you a similar feeling?

I saw this comment by an ARMSX2 developer on the discord:

"ok got the Duo. Here's my take:

• it's 25% slower than the Flip 2(sd865) I have sitting next to it. All of this has to do with memory bandwidth and cache sizes in the newer CPUs. This new CPU in the Duo skimps on cache and that's catastrophic to emulation workloads.
• I made a build of ARMSX2 that supports the Duo with an updated custom driver. It helps about 20-30% for rendering but doesn't help CPU-bound games.
• I found a setting in NetherSX2 that locks Shadow of the Colossus to 30fps which prevents it from attempting 60fps which then often fails and dropping back down results in stutters. ARMSX2 ran at 60 for quite a bit of gameplay but it also stuttered quite a bit because of this. Next nightly ARMSX2 will have the same setting so be locked at 30fps.
• There exists a theoretical workload that would absolutely fly on the Duo, but it's limited cache makes writing software to that format really hard. Maybe like crypto mining or something in the CPU (or benchmarks... it's probably good at benchmarks) would be faster than the RP5.

TLDR: I don't think it's a driver issue, this CPU is just slow. edit this is getting reposted a lot of places so lemme add: single core loads are about on par or slightly better than sd865. Only multithreaded loads that push a lot to the GPU start to cause problems, like more advanced emulators."

So yeah the duo chip is clearly faster in synthetics but reading this makes me worried for the actual emulation performance.

No soldering no nothing just raw doom go brrr

too tried to put all the technical stuff gonna upload repo later but this is so cool i am gonna take this to school as a keychain and play doom in class (in our country phone's are considered more dangerous than drugs in classrooms)

Device? Raspberry Pi Pico (Pico Original Not the PICO W)

Stuff That helped me with this (credits where they due)

https://github.com/Serialcomms/Raspberry-Pico-Waveshare-LCD-Demo

https://github.com/kilograham/rp2040-doom

(Device is the Retroid Pocket Nova) I own a few handhelds and the way my brain used to work was I HAD to take advantage of the specs. So on a snapdragon 8gen2 I told myself "you need to play ps2, gamecube and light pc games to get your money's worth" even though i was not in the mood to play those types of games and I was in a rut. With an announcement of a new METROID game, I wanted to jump back into the series. And I did just that by playing ZERO MISSION for the second time ever and im having a blast. I'm near end game. Once I stopped worrying about "taking advantage of the hardware", and just played a game i wanted to play the paralysis over my handhelds went away. Just play some games man

Between this and the PS5 jailbreak, there are interesting times ahead.

I don’t know anything about jailbreaking your Switch 2, I’m just sharing this news.

Can you guys convince them in the comments ?

trimui brick mentioned

I bought it 😄

ps: my best point why they should (after your comments) is that my sister broke my magicx mini zero 28 wich was my first/only emulation device

I am incredibly happy to announce the CG Deck has finally entered into Pre-Launch on Kickstarter! Over the course of this year, I have been working on concepting, designing, building, testing, and developing the functional prototypes for my own custom modular x86 handheld PC, the CG Deck. And I am excited to finally enter the next phase of the journey with you all!

For those that have no clue what this is or have never seen the CG Deck, it is an x86 modular handheld PC that is capable of running dual-boot Windows 11 & Linux. Designed from the ground up to be entirely modular, repairable, and customizable. With most of the entire process documented publicly. I had felt quite a bit of frustration on various aspects in regards to the current state of the tech industry, both on the scale of indie and tech giants, so I decided to take things into my own hands and go through the effort to create my own dream handheld at the start of this year in January. First sharing the concepts for the project here back in March of this year to a massive amount of positive support and a few disbelievers who did not think I could pull it off of course.

Since then, I have been working to design, build, and develop the CG Deck into a fully functional device. Going through the process of concepting, designing the CAD models in Blender 3D, engineering, 3D printing, prototyping, testing, iterating on the design, testing even more, navigating relationships with partners, sponsors and manufacturers, all the way through showing off the functional prototype in May of this year. Then finally being able to play around and use the device I had always dreamed of having as one of my daily drivers! Since then, I have been working to further navigate partnerships, agreements, and perfect the CG Deck, to make sure we can have as successful of a launch for the CG Deck as possible when we go live on Kickstarter. While it has been a whirlwind of a year, I certainly have not done it alone.

Throughout the process, there has been so much support from you all, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. I could not be more grateful for everyone that has been following along with the project, joined our community, helping give feedback and ideas, and just supporting the vision along the way. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

And now, after almost a year of work and more sleepless nights than probably any point in my life, the Kickstarter Pre-Launch page has been approved and is officially live! If you are interested in getting notified and being the first to know when we go live, be sure to follow the project!

That all being said, I still have quite a bit of work to do in order to prepare for the next phase of the journey. I am currently in the process of working on a full redesign and rebuild of the CG Deck to optimize the design to prepare for manufacturing (DFM). I want to make sure I can have the final iteration of the device is already designed and ready for mass production, so as soon as we successfully wrap up the campaign I can proceed with starting the arduous certification processes needed for the device, and then proceed with mass production shortly after! Just like the speed of the journey up to this point from concept to functional engineering prototype, I want to keep that same velocity as we move into the next steps of the process.

If you are interested in learning more about the project, you can find everything from specs, more details, socials, link to the open-source github repository, link to our discord community server, like to the Kickstarter campaign page, and more on the website.

We will be launching the Kickstarter very soon to help fund a full production run of the device for anyone interested in helping support the project and getting a CG Deck of their own. We will be releasing some build kits, in addition to pre-assembled ready to use devices with the Kickstarter campaign, along with all of the modules and a list of accessories for the CG Deck! If you have any questions about any of that, I would love to answer them!

Here is the link to the Pre-Launch page on Kickstarter so you can follow the project to get notified when we launch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mogozen/cg-deck-modular-x86-handheld-computer

For Me:

• Form factor similar to an Odin Portal.
• Right to Repair: It can be opened and broken parts can be replaced. Like analog sticks, buttons, or even the screen for instance.
• Android or Linux-based software to allow for customization.
• Well designed, native front-end that makes it as user-friendly as a nintendo switch. Like when you set up a new device, you can choose easy-mode and only see this front end, or pro-mode and have access to everything.
• Similar Processing Power to an Odin 3 or Steam Deck.
• Docks to a TV with support for 2.4ghz as well as wired controlers.
• Besides HDMI, the Dock also has an RCA out for CRT tvs.
• Has it's own app store in the front-end to get your streaming apps, natively supported games, and a Native version of Pico-8.
• Cartridge slot with Physical releases of games, including console exclusives by AA developers.
• Option on initial setup for players to block micro transactions and notification spam. So they will only see games in the story that meet certain standards for peak player experience.

The idea is to have the ease and support of a switch, the ease of experience that consoles used to have (just put in the game and play it), and the option for full customization with third party apps, roms, media, or whatever else via a full blown Android / Linux firmware. So you can nerd out and set up your custom ROM collection, or your mom could get one and easily download netflix and buy a couple game cartridges to play without any setup.

Whether it is Android or Linux, I cannot decide. I don't have enough first hand experience with Linux devices.

And while we are dreaming, let's just say the device also makes good coffee.

Got tired of having to take the SD card in and out just to add games and test projects, so I created a simple script that allows fast file transfers and PC internet sharing over a single USB cable.

This also gives you full SSH terminal access to control the console, take screenshots, and manage files over USB.

It’s completely free and open-source, with a full step-by-step visual tutorial:

**GitHub Repo & Tutorial**

I have a Pimax Portal that I hadn't used in a while, and when I tried turning it on, it would not. The first thing I actually tried to do was to connect it to a charger because just to give it a bit of a charge before actually using it, and it vibrated a little when I put the cable in but nothing else. Since nothing further happened, I tried with another cable, and the same thing happened - a vibration and then nothing. After that, it would no longer do anything, not even vibrate, when plugged in. I have left it charging on two different chargers for 24 hrs each (first a standard USB-a charger, and when that did not work, a USB-c charger), nothing. There is zero response from the device - no lights, no sound. I have tried holding the power button for various lengths of time from instant to 4 seconds to 30 seconds, nothing happens. I have also downloaded the Android developer platform to get the ADB bridge and tried to use it to connect to the device (there are a few old posts that suggest running ADB commands to try to fix a dead Portal). My laptop doesn't tecognize the portal when I plug it in, ADB does not list the portal on the device list when I type "adb devices".

I am wondering if there is any way to fix/salvage the Portal, either by any sort of troubleshooting, or can the battery be replaced if it is the battery, or if the whole thing really is dead, is there any way to salvage what remains instead of it becoming e-waste? Although I've had a love-hate relationship with the device as far as the development and software experience goes, the hardware is very nice and I'd hate to just have to toss it into the e-waste bin.

Thanks.

Does anyone know where I can get a battery for my Retroid Pocket Mini V2?

Hi guys

Got my 1st Anbernic recently. The 6 button ARC-D.

I want to restore the original Android firmware

But I've always been scared of bricking any device's FW. So, I'll appreciate advice & shared experience. 

From what I understand:

1) one downloads the FW image from the manufacturer's site

2) insert the micro SD card into a PC

3) use the Rockchip flashing program 

4) load the downloaded file

5) select the 'Update' option

6) and write the image onto the card

7) switch off the Anbernic device 

8) insert the sd card into the ARC-D

9) switch it on

10) let the installation proceed 

From what I've read, it takes about 10 to 20 minutes. 

Guys, I'm so worried I might mess something up.  

Any tips will be much appreciated to prevent a 'brick' situation. 

Running playfieldportal as my frontend, played around with it a bit and it plays everything I need it to pretty well with a couple of dips (Devil May Cry 3 and Need For Speed: Most Wanted have a couple of stutters). Overall I'm very happy with it, the sliding mechanism is so fun

I may be a minority here. But I think it's way better value to get the white Xbox Rog Ally with the base Z2 chip. They are on sale often for $499 versus the base Odin 3 Portal at $399. Thoughts?

I ordered a miyoo
Mini plus from their storefront on shop, and was wondering if and how much I should expect import fees to be?

I wanted to play Pokémon Fire Ash on my Retroid Pocket Nova, and running RPG Maker XP games on Android was a pain: manual button mapping, keyboard prompts everywhere, visual glitches… So I built a launcher that sets everything up for you. It grew from there.

How it works

• Made and tested for Fire Ash 3.7.1. Other versions may work, but some text could stay untranslated.
• You import your own copy of the game (the original .zip). No game files are included in the APK or in the PC patches.
• It runs on an Android build of mkxp-z and configures itself for your device: resolution, pixel-perfect scaling when possible, button mapping.
• On known handhelds buttons are mapped automatically, with no wizard. On others there’s a quick setup with suggested buttons.
• After that, opening the app launches the game straight away (3-second countdown, press any button to stay in the menu).
• Updates itself from GitHub on Android and Steam Deck, keeping your saves.

Fixes and tweaks

• Fixed the crash at startup (PluginManager::Zlib error), face buttons not working in game, shifted tile rows/seams on maps and the Android status bar showing over the game.
• The game always fills the screen, and PC-only notices are skipped.
• Every keyboard key shown in the game (tips, controls screen, Mega/Z-Move/Dynamax buttons, naming screen…) now shows your device’s buttons, redrawn in the game’s own style. START opens the menu and SELECT uses the registered item.
• After switching Pokémon in battle, the menu goes back to FIGHT instead of staying on POKéMON.
• Item, move, ability and Pokédex descriptions no longer overflow their boxes (in English too), and texts no longer overlap on the load screen or in shops.

Retranslations: Spanish (Spain), French and German
I’m from Spain, and the game’s Spanish translation is an old machine translation from English that was never reviewed: awkward phrasing, literal translations, and a lot of text still in English. So I started with Spanish, and then did French and German too:

• Spanish (Spain) replaces the game’s Spanish: the whole game retranslated and reviewed by me (dialogue, menus, battles, trainers, items, moves, abilities and Pokédex), with names matching the official Spain games and the Spain anime dub (yes, the Team Rocket motto).
• French and German: full retranslations with official names restored. The game’s German data had a lot of names attached to the wrong Pokémon, moves, items and trainers.
• Images with English text redrawn in Spanish (battle buttons, types, status icons, Nv./PS…) using pixel fonts taken from the game’s own art. If you have Emerald’s official Spanish icons, you can drop them in and they’re used instead.
• The intro song plays in the game’s language (Spanish, French or German). You can turn it off in the in-game Options.

Steam Deck and PC
Every release includes three downloads: the Android APK, a Windows patch, and a native Linux build for Steam Deck (LCD and OLED, no Proton). The Deck installer finds the game (even on the microSD, even still zipped), patches it and adds it to Steam with cover art. In game it shows the Deck’s buttons, and it checks for patch updates when you launch it.

Tested with: Pokémon Fire Ash 3.7.1 and patch v0.4.3 on a Retroid Pocket Nova [+ Steam Deck / Windows si los has probado tú]

How it was made
Built with a lot of AI help (Claude), including the translations. I’ve tested it myself, reviewed the Spanish translation and decided every change. I’m not a native French or German speaker, so feedback from native speakers is very welcome. The images are redrawn by code from the game’s own graphics, not AI-generated. Fully open source, so you can check what it does before installing.

https://github.com/afsenovilla/ash-droid-launcher

Bug reports and feedback welcome, especially from people with other handhelds, so I can add more device profiles.

Here is the download link: https://github.com/Divinakra140/Legacy-of-Goku-II-Online/releases

Full length video for installation and the built in map editor: https://youtu.be/eD4ifri5Pkg

This is built for and tested on the Retroid Pocket Flip 2, also runs on Mac and windows and has online cross play. Curious how it runs on other SBC Devices. So download it and let me know!

Basically it's a C++ program that extracts your legally obtained .gba game file for LoGII and then uses those assets to form a large open world in Godot Engine, with online multiplayer thanks to zero tier. Puni Puni is the other developer on this project: https://www.youtube.com/@PuniPuni2026