We’re big fans of Evercade’s handheld consoles, which give you a sharp screen, excellent tactile controls, and an easy, legal way to actually play your favorite retro games. If you prefer your handheld games with the same form factor as the GameBoy consoles of old, though, it won’t be match as it flanks the screen with controls on either side. Chances are, the HyperMegaTech Super Pocket will be more along your line.
Taking on that familiar GameBoy form factor, it combines a full-color screen on top with controls at the bottom, making it a lot easier to hold for those extended handheld gaming sessions. Of course, this is nothing new, as we’ve seen many retro-focused modern handhelds come in the same configuration. What makes it special is that it gives you that GameBoy-style gameplay without having to spend copious amounts of time fiddling with ROMs and other legally-gray software.
The HyperMegaTech Super Pocket has a 2.8-inch full-color IPS panel with a 4:3 aspect ratio and 320 x 240 resolution, so it should be able to faithfully recreate most game visuals from the 80s and 90s era of video games. For controls, you get a cross-style D-pad on the left side, four action buttons on the right, and a quarter of shoulder buttons on the back, so you get to enjoy the full complement of modern game controls. Yes, we’ll still call it shoulder buttons, since it’s meant to replicate what those controls do. Other buttons include a rectangular menu button and two system buttons at the bottom.
No word on what kind of battery is onboard the gaming handheld, so we have no idea how long you can mash buttons on this between charges. Give that it’s pretty nicely-sized, there should be enough room for a good battery and since it’s powering erstwhile simple hardware, we imagine this should get some good mileage before draining. Fingers crossed.
The HyperMegaTech Super Pocket comes in two versions: a Taito Edition and a Capcom Edition. The Taito Edition comes in a black and green color scheme, while the Capcom Edition comes in blue yellow. Aside from the colors, the only other difference is the games they come preloaded with. The Taito version gets 17 titles made by the Japanese arcade outfit, including classics like Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Operation Wolf, Football Champ, and Growl, among others. The Capcom version, on the other hand, gets 12 arcade classics, including Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, 1942, Mega Man, Final Fight, and Wolf of the Battlefield: MERCS.
Aside from the preloaded games, the gaming handheld is also compatible with Evercade’s cartridges, allowing you to purchase any of the outfit’s 45 game collection cartridges and load them onto the device. Want classic Namco games? Get the Namco Museum Collection to get your fill of Pac Man, Dig Dug, Mappy, Galaxian, and more. Want to get into those ancient C64 games? They have a cartridge for that, filled with titles like Pit Stop, FireLord, Caliornia Games, and more. Yeah, Evercade has a pretty extensive collection, so you can play a whole lot of properly licensed games on this.
The HyperMegaTech Super Pocket comes out in November, priced at $59.99.