Although Analogue has been making retro console clones for 11 years now, its portable Pocket garnered the company thousands of new fans now desperate to get their hands on its older hardware which is often hard to come by. But an announcement made by the company over the weekend should have 16-bit gaming enthusiasts screaming at Analogue to just shut up and take their money.
Editor’s note: This is a piece from the US team at our sister site Gizmodo. We’ll let you know if Analogue has anything to announce regarding Australian pricing and availability just as soon as we hear back. — David.
Analogue actually made three separate announcements yesterday in a blog post shared to its website. The first is that 95% of all Pocket pre-orders — those who found themselves patiently waiting in Group B and C — will begin shipping out this month and throughout the rest of the year before 2022 comes to a close, with a “small amount of remaining orders” going out the door in 2023 as soon as stock allows.
Although first announced back in October of 2019, the Analogue Pocket rollout was severely delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the supply chain issue ripple effects that came with it, but eventually started shipping out in late December of 2021, for those who got their pre-orders in early. Everyone else, including those who chose to wait until reviews were published before ordering, have had a much longer delay before getting their hands on one, so this should be welcome news for those running out patience.
One of the most innovative features of the Analogue Pocket is its ability to play games from several different retro handheld devices using their native game cartridges, thanks to a series of adapters. Yesterday, Analogue also announced that the Pocket Cartridge Adaptor set would be made available for pre-order through its website starting on October 21 for $US99 ($137), with delivery expected in the third quarter of 2023. More waiting, but the set comes with three adapters including one that supports TurboGrafx-16, PC Engine, and SuperGrafx carts, one that supports Neo Geo Pocket Colour and Neo Geo Pocket carts, and the last which allows Atari Lynx carts to be used with the Pocket.
The most exciting announcement that Analogue made yesterday is that the company is also going to do a final production run on its Super Nt and Mega Sg consoles, which, like the Pocket, use an FPGA chip to perfectly reproduce the gameplay capabilities of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis consoles, respectively. Pre-orders for the $US199 ($AU316) Super Nt and Mega Sg will start on October 28 with shipping expected late in 2023, but they’ll go fast, so we highly recommend signing up for the stock notification on the Analogue online store so you’ll get a heads up as soon as pre-orders open.
Leave a Reply