RetroGaming

19088 readers

452 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

Be kind.
No spam or soliciting for money.
No racism or other bigotry allowed.
Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Xylinna

Tenthrow

gts

Best handheld for GameBoy catalog? (self.retrogaming)

submitted 1 year ago by philgraves to c/retrogaming

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey y'all. First post on Lemmy!

I want to go back and play my favorite GameBoy games, and want to find the best way to do this on a handheld device. I have lots of cartridges, but ROM support would be nice! I've looked at Steamdeck but I'm not sold on it yet... the Analogue Pocket looks lush but expensive. The Miyoo Mini Plus looks promising, and the RG353V almost looks too good to be true. I specifically want to play GameBoy and GameBoy Color games, bonus points if it can do GameBoy Advance.

What say y'all?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ElectricTrombone 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

All Gameboy Advances play GB, GBC, and GBA. The best GBA is the SP model AG-101 which has a factory backlight screen. However, there are tons of modifications available for Gameboys out there. I say get a used GBA and go to https://www.retromodding.com/ and go to town on it. Customize it the way you want

For ROMs only, the absolute best way to play is to get a Nintendo 3DS or 2DS and install home brew software. And as a bonus you can play the entire DS and 3DS library as well.

FYI the Nintendo DS can play GBA games, but it does not support GB or GBC.

I know you said you wanted handheld, but for anyone else reading my absolute favorite way to play is with a Gamecube and a Gameboy Player! It actually plays all GB, GBC, and GBA games! Gameboy Players can be cheap, but the boot disc is expensive. To get around this there is home brew software for the Gameboy Player that is very good, although I haven't tried it myself. To use it you need an Action Replay and a cheap SD card to GC memory card adapter. The software will boot the Action Replay first, then boot whatever is on the SD card. (I bet there are ways to load roms too but I haven't looked). I play with a Raphnet SNES to Gamecube adapter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In the same vein, there's the Super Game Boy for SNES. As well as the Japan-only Super Game Boy 2.

There are even some games that have custom color palettes and/or screen frames when played this way.