If you’re a retro Nintendo fan you can of course carry a NES and a Game Boy around with you, but the former isn’t very portable. Never fear though, because here’s [Chad Burrow], who’s created a neat handheld console that emulates both.
It’s called the Acolyte Handheld, and it sports the slightly unusual choice for these parts of a PIC32 as its main processor. Unexpectedly it can use Sega Genesis controllers, but it has the usual buttons on board for portable use. It can drive either its own LCD or an external VGA monitor, and in a particularly nice touch, it switches between the two seamlessly. The NES emulator is his own work, while Game Boy support comes courtesy of Peanut-GB.
We like the design of the case, and particularly that of the buttons. Could it have been made smaller by forgoing some of the through-hole parts in favour of SMD ones? Quite likely, but though it’s chunky it’s certainly not outsized.
Portable Nintendo-inspired hardware is popular around here, as you can see with this previous handheld NES
NES BOY, NEGS, GES, GESB, GEBS, NEGBS …
So many potential acronyms and none are in the article?
Too low hanging fruit? I’m kinda disappointed anyway. ;-)
Using buttons instead of a crosspad for movement inputs is not ideal. There are a number of NES games that really need a crosspad or a joystick in order to play properly. Additionally, some games freak out if they receive opposite inputs at the same time (ie left and right for example). The nes game pad was never designed to allow those inputs so many games never checked what would happen if they were inputted at the same time.
Do you know how Nintendo compensates for games emulated for Nintendo Online, like do they just block out opposing inputs in the emulator? Since joycons have separate directional buttons