A new handheld retro series offers vintage arcade action with pick-up-and-play appeal
For those who appreciate the classics,there are more ways to play games from past decades today than there ever were at the time. Recent years have delivered a dizzying number of new retrofocused machines, among them capable offerings such as the Analogue Pocket and the MiSTer project, each of which uses an FPGA-based approach that brings impressive accuracy, in return for a considerable investment of funds or effort. Alternatively, you might set up a ROMpacked Raspberry Pi rig, or simply buy a low-rent thirdparty ‘system on a chip’ emulation console – options that might get your more games for your buck, but at the cost of frequent controller mapping issues and inconsistent emulation quality. And this is without mentioning diminutive retro machines such as the Neo Geo Mini, or the individual ports for sale on digital storefronts across console, mobile and PC. Could there possibly be a need for yet another approach?
The team at UK retro hardware outfit Blaze Entertainment clearly think so, as they prepare the Hyper Mega Tech Super Pocket handheld for a mid-November launch. Born in part from the success of Blaze’s Evercade range, which uses a cartridge format to bring old titles to a modernised platform, Super Pocket is a very different proposition from other contenders in the space.
At launch there are to be two Super Pockets: one preloaded with a dozen Capcom games, the other with 18 Taito titles. Each game is the arcade original, and that will be the focus of the range. “Accessing original arcade games can be complicated these days. Following the popularity of the Evercade, we wanted to make things simple,” Blaze CEO Andrew Byatt tells us. “We saw this wider audience that we could expose to arcade gaming with a pick-up-and-play approach. Existing arcade players know that, essentially, with arcade originals there’s this higher quality, but most people don’t always know that. We wanted to share that experience, but through something meaningfully simple and also portable.” Simplicity certainly seems to be Super Pocket’s product design mantra. The units are streamlined, with no frills. That’s not to say, however, that they feel cheap. For the price of a new console game, you get a robust unit that can cope with life in a pocket. The buttons are responsive and the screen puts out a crisp, vibrant spread of pixels relative to the price point. Just don’t expect to be overwhelmed by extra features such as HDMI output or the ability to attach an arcade stick. There’s a scattering of modernisations, such as the addition of pause and save functions. The most profound update might be the addition of an ‘easy’ setting with each Super Pocket.
“The easy version of each game
