Time for an article I wrote about Slot, an interesting custom firmware made specifically for the Anbernic RG SP. I chatted with its developer K-Wall about where it came from and why it deliberately does things a little differently.

Rather than trying to turn the RG SP into an everything-machine, Slot sticks to the Game Boy family and leans hard into the SP nostalgia: games appear as physical cartridges on your screen, the carousel encourages you to keep a smaller collection, closing the lid saves your game, and even the old stretched GB/GBC display mode is recreated. K-Wall took that attention to detail right down to the sounds, recording himself physically pushing a cartridge into his childhood GBA so that familiar ‘thunk’ could become part of Slot itself.

We also chat about burnout, his other projects Cannoli and Grout, why Slot started as something he never intended to release publicly, and his very candid approach to using A.I. during development as a tool. If you like the RG SP, unusual CFW projects, or software designed around a very specific bit of hardware rather than endless feature creep, hopefully you’ll enjoy it :)

Time for an article I wrote about Slot, an interesting custom firmware made specifically for the Anbernic RG SP. I chatted with its developer K-Wall about where it came from and why it deliberately does things a little differently.

Rather than trying to turn the RG SP into an everything-machine, Slot sticks to the Game Boy family and leans hard into the SP nostalgia: games appear as physical cartridges on your screen, the carousel encourages you to keep a smaller collection, closing the lid saves your game, and even the old stretched GB/GBC display mode is recreated. K-Wall took that attention to detail right down to the sounds, recording himself physically pushing a cartridge into his childhood GBA so that familiar ‘thunk’ could become part of Slot itself.

We also chat about burnout, his other projects Cannoli and Grout, why Slot started as something he never intended to release publicly, and his very candid approach to using A.I. during development as a tool. If you like the RG SP, unusual CFW projects, or software designed around a very specific bit of hardware rather than endless feature creep, hopefully you’ll enjoy it :)

I’ve spent the last little while properly getting to know the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite, and my review is probably a little more focused on the feel of the thing, the two-screen experience and what it’s actually like to live with than on endless performance charts. I do cover some of the usual emulation stuff, but I was especially interested in what Retroid has managed to do with the form factor at this price, and whether it still has a bit of that dual-screen magic once the novelty wears off and the limitations of the processor kick in.

I also had quite a few people kindly chime in along the way. SapphireRhodonite, the developer of SeedlessDS, talks about building a modern DS emulator around lower-powered dual-screen hardware; the Cocoon and iiSU teams share what this new wave of cheaper dual-screen devices means for their own development; Chris Covers from Retroid talks about coming back to two screens for the first time since Nintendo’s original hardware; and Mr Stephen’s Retro Corner helped with some proper display testing. There are a few other voices in there too, so hopefully it feels a little broader than just me saying whether I liked the thing or not :)

I’ve spent the last little while properly getting to know the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite, and my review is probably a little more focused on the feel of the thing, the two-screen experience and what it’s actually like to live with than on endless performance charts. I do cover some of the usual emulation stuff, but I was especially interested in what Retroid has managed to do with the form factor at this price, and whether it still has a bit of that dual-screen magic once the novelty wears off and the limitations of the processor kick in.

I also had quite a few people kindly chime in along the way. SapphireRhodonite, the developer of SeedlessDS, talks about building a modern DS emulator around lower-powered dual-screen hardware; the Cocoon and iiSU teams share what this new wave of cheaper dual-screen devices means for their own development; Chris Covers from Retroid talks about coming back to two screens for the first time since Nintendo’s original hardware; and Mr Stephen’s Retro Corner helped with some proper display testing. There are a few other voices in there too, so hopefully it feels a little broader than just me saying whether I liked the thing or not :)

I’ve spent the last little while properly getting to know the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite, and my review is probably a little more focused on the feel of the thing, the two-screen experience and what it’s actually like to live with than on endless performance charts. I do cover some of the usual emulation stuff, but I was especially interested in what Retroid has managed to do with the form factor at this price, and whether it still has a bit of that dual-screen magic once the novelty wears off and the limitations of the processor kick in.

I also had quite a few people kindly chime in along the way. SapphireRhodonite, the developer of SeedlessDS, talks about building a modern DS emulator around lower-powered dual-screen hardware; the Cocoon and iiSU teams share what this new wave of cheaper dual-screen devices means for their own development; Chris Covers from Retroid talks about coming back to two screens for the first time since Nintendo’s original hardware; and Mr Stephen’s Retro Corner helped with some proper display testing. There are a few other voices in there too, so hopefully it feels a little broader than just me saying whether I liked the thing or not :)

I’ve been spending a bunch of time with TortOS, the new custom firmware for the TrimUI Brick and Brick Hammer, so I chatted with its developer Geekstrada, who also works with Helaas on Leaf for the Miniloong Pocket 1.

My article goes into why he wanted TortOS to be deliberately small and focused, the Cover Flow-inspired UI, how he keeps emulator cores ready in memory to make launching games so fast, and why he’d rather support fewer systems really well than chase everything the Brick can technically run.

We also talk quite a bit about Muse, its lovely music side, and the old iPods and physical music collections that helped inspire it. I’ve been using my TortOS set-up with just three games per system and filling the rest of the card with music, which ended up feeling like a pretty perfect fit for what TortOS is trying to do.

Anyway, if you’re at all curious on this new firmware, or the dev side of it, then hopefully you like the article :)

I’ve been spending a bunch of time with TortOS, the new custom firmware for the TrimUI Brick and Brick Hammer, so I chatted with its developer Geekstrada, who also works with Helaas on Leaf for the Miniloong Pocket 1.

My article goes into why he wanted TortOS to be deliberately small and focused, the Cover Flow-inspired UI, how he keeps emulator cores ready in memory to make launching games so fast, and why he’d rather support fewer systems really well than chase everything the Brick can technically run.

We also talk quite a bit about Muse, its lovely music side, and the old iPods and physical music collections that helped inspire it. I’ve been using my TortOS set-up with just three games per system and filling the rest of the card with music, which ended up feeling like a pretty perfect fit for what TortOS is trying to do.

Anyway, if you’re at all curious on this new firmware, or the dev side of it, then hopefully you like the article :)

I stumbled across this while looking through old PSP physical releases and ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole. In 2005, Sony released a version of the movie Stealth on UMD that also had a playable, exclusive version of WipEout Pure on the same disc, complete with a Stealth-themed track and a craft based on the film’s fighter jet.

I ended up writing a little piece about what was on the UMD, why Sony was experimenting with movie/game hybrids at the time, and what survives of this very strange release today. It is a super light little read, but when it comes to PSP’s these days, there’s woefully few of those!

Hopefully some in here find it amusing :)

I stumbled across this while looking through old PSP physical releases and ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole. In 2005, Sony released a version of the movie Stealth on UMD that also had a playable, exclusive version of WipEout Pure on the same disc, complete with a Stealth-themed track and a craft based on the film’s fighter jet.

I ended up writing a little piece about what was on the UMD, why Sony was experimenting with movie/game hybrids at the time, and what survives of this very strange release today. It is a super light little read, but when it comes to PSP’s these days, there’s woefully few of those!

Hopefully some in here find it amusing :)

I interviewed Vincent Lee, the creator of GetBetterButtons, for the third entry in my Artist Spotlight series, which focuses on people making physical things for the gaming community.

Vincent designs replacement buttons and controls for retro handhelds, but the process behind them is considerably deeper than I expected. He reverse-engineers handhelds, builds detailed CAD models and simulations, goes through dozens of prototypes, and even develops his own tools to help with the process. We also get into his aluminium “Endgame” buttons, how CNC machining changes what he can design, and why he thinks handheld manufacturers still get buttons and D-pads wrong.

There’s also a pretty interesting background behind the whole thing: before starting GetBetterButtons, Vincent worked in hardware engineering and product development at Bose, which I found fascinating.

If you’ve ever installed a set of replacement buttons in a handheld, were curious about the process, or wondered why some controls feel so much better than others, Hopefully you’ll enjoy this one!

I interviewed Vincent Lee, the creator of GetBetterButtons, for the third entry in my Artist Spotlight series, which focuses on people making physical things for the gaming community.

Vincent designs replacement buttons and controls for retro handhelds, but the process behind them is considerably deeper than I expected. He reverse-engineers handhelds, builds detailed CAD models and simulations, goes through dozens of prototypes, and even develops his own tools to help with the process. We also get into his aluminium “Endgame” buttons, how CNC machining changes what he can design, and why he thinks handheld manufacturers still get buttons and D-pads wrong.

There’s also a pretty interesting background behind the whole thing: before starting GetBetterButtons, Vincent worked in hardware engineering and product development at Bose, which I found fascinating.

If you’ve ever installed a set of replacement buttons in a handheld, were curious about the process, or wondered why some controls feel so much better than others, Hopefully you’ll enjoy this one!