I'm An Android Heldheld Guy Now

It’s strangely hard to play a game lately. 

Anhedonia is part of that. Things I was carrying for a long time bloomed into a depressive spiral that I’m still trying to see a way out of, let alone work a way out of. It’s hard to enjoy things. It’s hard to look forward to things. 

Distraction is another part of it. It’s the year of our present year and we’re distracted out the ass because everything under the goddamn sun needs to have a notification and remind you that you could refresh it. There could be something new. Even something as innocuous as Discord or as regularly scheduled as the youtube channels I subscribe to. 

Sometime ago I downloaded a Gameboy Color and a Gameboy Advance emulator onto my phone because there are a bajillion new games coming out but also a zillion cool old games I didn't play as a kid and could play now. Like Robot Alchemic Drive, which I was so inspired by that I made a way to control the robot with voice commands. That's a cool PS2 game I got to experience! 

I don't have a controller to carry around, so phone gaming was a little challenging and on the GBA front it was limited to non-action games where I wouldn't need to press a shoulder and face button at the same time. So Castlevanias are out. On-screen controls aren't perfect but they were enough to play Pokemon romhacks and Oracle of Ages+Seasons. But limitations aside there is also an issue that the phone is also a distractable device. Discord lives on there. The internet lives on there. 

I'm not sure whether the RG DS or Thor came to my attention first, but one of those grabbed me because they're both built with the DS/3DS form factor and I have a lot of nostalgia for that era of handhelds. That was where spare income and ability to go to a Gamestop or Best Buy collided and I could get more games. Unfortunately the RG DS reviewed poorly and the Thor is both expensive and another bystander of RAMageddon, but it did bring my attention to the world of Android emulator handhelds, and got me thinking that it would be really ideal to have something that plays up to PS2 and GC games and gave me access to an extremely large library.

And then I saw a decent sale for an Anbernic RG406V and picked it up and a microSD card and then went wild setting up a library. It’s an established device and it’s actually in stock and not subject to the painful world of hardware right now. 

It’s weird to call another device less distractable. It’s another screen after all. But while it could technically run anything that can run on Android, right now it is just emulators. And google drive to transfer screenshots and single files. I pick it up and I’m occupied. Both hands, audio visual. There’s nothing else to check on it and nothing else to do. 

I chose something with a vertical pattern for comfort reasons. I do have a Switch but can’t say I was too wild about handheld mode. Having my hands closer together and the weight balanced upward made me want to try the vertical design. Not for nostalgia for the Gameboy or Gameboy Color form factor. I bought a pair of wing grips off Etsy which made using analog sticks and shoulder buttons far more comfortable. 

Performance will keep this from being a forever device. PS2 performance is not all I want it to be, when I tried out some games I noticed major issues with titles like Ico and MGS3. Gamecube games seem to run better, and some research seems to bear that out. Lower system requirements and more optimization on Dolphin seem to make the difference. Luigi’s Mansion ran like a dream at 2x resolution, RE4 ran fine at 1x, but some cutscenes had video/audio desync. But gameplay was perfect, the only point that there was a problem was fighting Krauser when a gun bot was about to shoot at the same instant a mine bot was about to explode and that made the console hang for a second before running normally again.

Thus far it’s been great to play through Luigi’s Mansion, Megaman Zero 1, Lunar 2 for the PS1, and RE4 on the Gamecube. Even missing a lot of what I wanted to try on the PS2, Gamecube and everything older still provides a helluva a lot of games to play. And there are people’s new projects in GB studio I can play, and finally try the fan translations for Linda Cubed and Treasure of the Rudras.

Maybe there still is a novelty factor in play here. But overall, I’ve been greatly enjoying the RG406V. Things may change, if the Thor is ever in stock and gets a discount I’d still pick one up for proper access to DS and 3DS games. I mean in the meantime I could hack or get a flash cart for my 3DS if I really needed to. 

But actually having a gaming device that just does games has made it easier to game again.