Analogue Pocket’s 1.1 update already paying dividends: jailbreak, Neo Geo core
No, we did not have "Neo Geo as the first community development for Analogue Pocket" on our FPGA bingo board. (credit: Sam Machkovech)
A major update to the portable, retro-minded Analogue Pocket gaming system landed on Friday, and its new "OpenFPGA" features are the highlight. Thanks to last week's "1.1" patch, anyone in the open source development community can build hardware-emulation "cores" to make Pocket mimic nearly any gaming and computer system up until the early '90s, if not newer than that.
Our chat with Analogue's CEO left us wondering exactly how OpenFPGA would work, but we didn't have to wait long to find out. By the end of Friday, the system was essentially "jailbroken" as far as its support of "Game Boy"-branded games was concerned. And things got even spicier on Monday morning with the surprise emergence of a core that supports a system far more powerful than either the Game Boy or Game Boy Advance.
Ladies and gentlemen... Pocket is floating in space
The physical cartridge slot on Analogue Pocket supports any game with Nintendo's Game Boy branding, up to the Game Boy Advance, and that's the obvious selling point for the system compared to something like an emulation box. If you're the kind of gamer who prefers physical media but wants modern hardware perks, Analogue Pocket is arguably the system for you.