Want to play Game Boy games on the go? There are plenty of emulators you can install on your smartphone.
But what if you want to play on a tiny device with physical buttons, a ridiculously small screen, and a body small enough to comfortably clip to your keychain?
That’s what the PocketSprite is for… I guess.
The PocketSprite is a tiny retro game console that measures just 2.2″ x 1.2″ x 06″ and which has a 1″ x 0.9″ color OLED display (with a resolution of 96 x 64 pixels.
The developers are running a crowdfunding campaign for the project through Crowd Supply and hope to begin shipping early bird “Hacker Edition” model by April 15th to backers who pledge $45 or more. A finished, fully assembled PocketSprite is going for $55 and the goal is to ship that version by May 15th.
A PocketSprite mini console has a tiny D-pad, A, B, Start, and Select buttons, a speaker, and support for WiFi, Bluetooth low energy, and a battery that charges via a micro USB cable.
The system has a 240 MHz ESP32 dual-core processor, and 128MB of storage… which doesn’t sound like a lot for a modern gaming device, but it should be enough to hold a number of Game Boy titles at a time.
PocketSprite’s developers says the system supports GNUBoy for Game Boy and Game Boy Colo games and SMS Plus for Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear games. The system comes with a few open source games pre-installed, but you can upload your own games to a PocketSprite wirelessly using a Windows, Linux, Mac, or Android device.
PocketSprite is also an open source project, and the code for everything that runs on the device is available at GitHub.
Or if you don’t want to wait until April or May, I suppose you could try building your own tiny Game Boy clone.
Backed one! I was thinking about making one myself when I’ve seen the original on youtube, but an ESP32, a screen and a battery alone would run around $30, and I figured my time is worth $25 to get the real thing. I’ll probably do a RPiZ based one, I’ve got most of the parts for that, but I just really want the smallest possible too.
But does it run Rockbox?
I’d much rather have a Arduboy with upgraded hardware and some of this device’s capabilities.
Why not make it an actual usable size so that people who want to actually play it and not just have an expensive keychain.
Only $50 for an impractically small device that would get scratched to hell as a keychain and requires files be loaded onto it wirelessly, what a great idea!
Try staring at your thumbnail or a microsd card for 30 minutes. It’s cool as a novelty object and I love sprite_tm, but I think a lot of people are underestimating how unplayable this really is.
Great! Now all I need is a microscope to play it.
I can easily imagine my hands cramping up but I backed one anyway 😉
Knowing Sprite_tm is on board with this and having have read the original hack by him last year makes me trust this one. I’ll give it a go despite knowing that it’ll look poor with that display smaller than the actual Gameboy making RPGs tough.