You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/pokemon-pals-and-pain-scarlets-january-of-gaming.646970/

2023 was a busy year for me. I got a new job, I moved across the country, and amidst all that I found myself playing fewer and fewer games. Despite time seeming to be stretched thinner as it rolls on, I wanted to put an active effort into playing a little more through this year, be it older games I’ve beaten six times over or the new releases that always seem to slip me by. As a bit of a way to justify it as productivity, I bring to you folks a new monthly editorial series where I’ll fill you in on all of my latest adventures in the hopes you’ll share yours too. January may have been a busy month with many of us coming down from that Christmas buzz, but I’m glad to say I did manage to get a few games onto the list!

Pokemon Omega Ruby (3DS)

Released way back in 2014, Pokemon Omega Ruby is a game you’ve almost definitely either seen or played. Heralded as either a spectacular face-lift for the Hoenn region or a wasted opportunity of water routes and missing battle facilities, it’s one of the more divisive games in the series. I love it though. Omega Ruby is a comfort food game for me, and a game I can come back to time and time again. This is naturally made easier with randomisation tools being more accessible than ever.

The Universal Pokemon Randomiser is a tool that allows you to mix up your experience in Pokemon games ranging from the original Pokemon Red, all the way to the DS’ Black and White 2. With thanks to a fork from Ajarmar though, the ZX edition adds in each of the 3DS games along with a few extra settings. It’s as easy as loading in your dumped game, ticking a few boxes, and you’re good to go! Randomisers are something I swear by in revitalising your favourite games, but having shuffled this game and others in the series countless times already, I thought I’d mix things up a bit. Instead of randomising wild encounters, trainers, or anything in particular, I figured I’d leave it up to chance and spin some wheels to decide on which elements of the game would be different. This was a great idea.

The end result was me not having wild encounters randomised at all, with only trainers having new Pokemon. Wild Pokemon had random held items, which was interesting, but the clincher was the fact that every move now had a random accuracy and base power. Suddenly Swellow became a hot sweeper with a 125 BP 100% accurate Wing Attack, not to mention a 105 BP Power Up Punch and 135 BP Earthquake on my started of choice, Blaziken. Every battle became an intense bout of stress as enemies turned up with moves I hadn’t seen before, potentially spelling my doom with a randomly powerful attack out of nowhere. Add to this the pain of deciding a nuzlocke would be fun (permadeath for each Pokemon and a few catching limitations if you’re unfamiliar with the term) and Magma Admin Courtney having a terrifying Latios and Palkia in her second and third encounter, and I can really say I had a great time.

If you like me have been playing Pokemon games for the past 20 or so years and perhaps find you’re just going through the motions with modern titles, a randomiser might just be the blast of fresh air you need. Adding in arbitrary rules will get you using things you’ve previously shrugged off, and get you really celebrating those hard-fought victories.

Pokemon Elite Redux (GBA)

I know, more Pokemon? Well this one is even less like your traditional series entry. Elite Redux wasn’t a game I was planning to come back to any time soon though, having originally played it to completion back in September. For those who missed out on the initial buzz the project got, this is a Pokemon Emerald hack based on another project, Inclement Emerald. It pulls in the modern battle engine, along with Mega Evolution and Z Moves, but his hack is like nothing else I’ve seen before it. Elite Redux puts forward an entirely unique take on a competitive-focused game; there’s a lot to break down so bear with me. First, every battle is competitive. Every trainer you face will have Pokemon with solid movesets, proper EV spreads, and a synergistic held item. Every single fight is going to be a hard-fought one, but the game isn’t unfair. To balance the difficulty of trainers, you’re given more freedom than ever before to build the team of your dreams. You’ll catch Pokemon like normal sure, giving you a growing pool of potential party members as you progress. Where the experience differs from normal is that you’re able to completely edit your Pokemon once caught, all from within the game’s menus. You can set their ability, nature, EVs, and teach any more they would normally be able to learn by level up, egg moves, TMs, or tutors. On top of this you’re given pretty much every useful item out of the gate, and have access to rare candies to instantly boost your team up to a given level cap. You have a game with no grinding and a seemingly-endless stream of possibilities.

But it doesn’t stop there. Outside of the game’s huge streamlining and quality of life improvements you also have to come to terms with the fact that every Pokemon has four abilities instead of your usual one: one primary ability and three innate abilities. Your innate abilities are always the same, with there usually being a few options for the primary akin to how abilities usually work. It’s a lot to keep track of, I won’t deny it, but before long you become absolutely engrossed by the sheer depth of it all. I’ve never seen a Pokemon hack like this one, and if you fancy yourself a challenge and a good time, I can only recommend it.

Now I’ve given you the rundown though, you might be wondering what I’m doing back here. After all, I beat the game in September, and on the hardest difficulty at that. The version I played back then was v1.5, and there’s actually been a good bit added since. Version 1.6, dubbed the Mega Update, brought with it more than 45 brand new Pokemon. As the name suggests, these focus mostly on new Mega Evolutions to satiate fans still hungering for the star players like Mega Flygon and Mega Milotic. Add to this new challenging trainers to encounter on your journey, a flurry of both new moves and abilities, and a list of balancing changes long enough to make my eyes go crossed, and my lord do you have me excited.

The vanilla experience is incredibly fun, and it’s what I would recommend if you’re new to the game. A lot of Pokemon are designed in a way where their abilities synergise quite naturally, allowing you to form fairly cohesive strategies out of the box. With this being my second playthrough though, I opted to try out the game’s built-in randomisation features, giving every Pokemon I catch four entirely random abilities. I could have also shuffled the species themselves, the moves they learn and their typings, but I wanted to maintain at least the same sense of progression as the base game. In short, it’s been a blast. I’ve been using Pokemon I’ve never used before for their insane ability combinations. I have a Shiftry who is entirely immune to damage for two turns, a Vileplume that gets a defense boost when it comes in and also sets up the Sun, a Gallade with Huge Power. And even with all of this fights still come down to one or two Pokemon. It’s brilliant! I spent around 30 hours on my first playthrough, and with this run still ongoing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that amount of time repeat itself. The only real sadness is that Battle Frontier isn’t yet in the game, but if they do decide to tackle that almost-certainly monumental task, this will be the definitive Pokemon Emerald hack in my eyes.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour (NDS)

Beyond all the Pokemon I have found myself falling back to an entirely different globally-successful brand on my bi-weekly commutes: Yu-Gi-Oh! Now I’ve never been a particularly devout fan of the series. I’ve seen some of the shows, I’ve owned some of the games, but I’ve never really delved any deeper than that. The only reason I really came back to this game was because I was after a DS game that could be played with only the touch screen to throw onto my Surface Duo while I wait for a controller to come. Nightmare Troubadour ended up being a good fit.

I did have some experience with the game in my younger days, but I’ve never really put in the time to properly play it. When I did originally pick it up, it was with cheats to build the deck of my dreams out of the gate, and when I really wanted a Yu-Gi-Oh game to play, I tended to gravitate towards the more narrative-driven 5Ds titles. The first DS release, Nightmare Troubadour is… Rough around the edges. It has one of the most brutal introduction sequences I’ve experienced in a while with thanks to you needing to grind random duels, and one in particular revolving around a (definitely rigged) dice roll or six. If you can get past that initial hurdle there are a lot of fun duels to be found. The randomness of fighting others is reduced as you progress, allowing you to avoid battles you would find particularly frustrating, and before long you’ll probably be having a good time. I wanted a game for a train commute, and this did a good job in filling that hole. Would the later GX release have done a better job? Probably. But I’m sure I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll enjoy my deck of chains and dancing crabs. Yu-Gi-Oh is great.

Palworld (PC)

Given its absolute surge in popularity it should come as no surprise that one or two of us from the Editorial Team have put more than a few hours into Palworld since it launched earlier this month. I really am having a great time with it; I picked the game up at launch and managed to clock 24 hours between coming back from work on Friday and going to bed on Sunday. It’s the kind of game you can’t help but compare to other things to explain why it’s so fun.

Obviously you have the creature collection of Pokemon. We’ve all heard that comparison, but on top of that you have really fun base building that you might expect to see in Rust. You have the exploration and freedom of Breath of the Wild, the production and automation of a game like Satisfactory, and it’s all wrapped up in a package that is genuinely compelling and engaging. I’m excited to be playing more of the game, but I do want to contain my excitement to just this short paragraph for now. Assuming I find the time I’d love to get my thoughts together into something a bit more meaningful, be it a larger dedicated editorial or a full review of the early access release.

Games For the Backlog

I unfortunately don’t have the time to play everything I want to thanks in a small part to working a full time job, and a larger part to me spending most of my free time replaying games that are almost ten years old now. With that in mind, I do want to spend a bit of time to mention the games that released this month that I fully plan to come back to at some point.

The big release that’s on my radar is the remade collection of Another Code and Another Code R (Trace Memory for the Americans out there!). These are hugely popular adventure games that I’ve only heard good things about, and while I’ve attempted to play the original DS release of the first game on a few occasions, other things have just gotten in the way. The Switch release looks fantastic. Fully voiced, updated visuals, and a whole assortment of puzzles I’ve never had the pleasure of solving. These are games I feel I need to clear my schedule for, and I just don’t have that freedom right now. If you do have such a luxury though and decided to pick it up, I’d love to hear some spoiler-free thoughts.

The other two releases to be thrown onto the wish list are less due to a lack of time, and more down to the fact they’re sequels to games I’ve not managed to get to yet: Apollo Justice’s Trilogy, and the latest Yakuza game in Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. These are two fantastic series that deserve anybody’s attention, but unlike Another Code they require the time to be put aside not only to play them, but the games before them. I do have plans to start the Yakuza series next month and slowly chip away at them, but time will tell whether those plans ever make it to fruition.

See You Next Month!

And that’s that for my January of gaming! I’d love to hear what everybody else has been picking up, and suggestions as to what I should be playing next month surely wouldn’t go amiss. Stay tuned for February and I hope 2024 has kicked off well for each of you!

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/revisiting-reviews-the-tech-im-still-using.645637/

Having written reviews for GBAtemp since mid-2017, I’ve managed to accumulate a sizeable stash of games and random tech. Though I try to be thorough when writing the initial reviews, one factor I can never fully account for is how something will stand the test of time. There’s plenty of cool stuff that just gets put to the sidelines a week or two after finishing up the initial coverage, so I wanted to take some time to talk about those that still find their way onto my desk or into my bag.

To make this post a bit more readable, I’ll break it down into a few sections, so feel free to jump ahead if there’s something you’re particularly interested in.

The Keyboard Rotation

Opening with a topic I’m sure people love to see on the front page, keyboards are a personal favourite of mine. What might surprise you is that I actually use most of the keyboards I’ve reviewed, swapping them out as I fancy a change or a fresh typing feel to reinvigorate my typing spirit. Some have been passed onto family in an attempt to spark a passion they don’t yet know they have, with Vissles’ LP85 and NuPhy’s Halo96 both sitting with my sister at the moment. I’ve not quite turned her to the hobby, but she does at least enjoy using them.

My current keyboard rotation primarily revolves around two custom boards of my own (one making use of a keycap set NuPhy sent along with the Field75 keyboard!), alongside my various ASUS keyboards, the aforementioned Field75 from NuPhy, and the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard v2. The UHK is the one that stands out to me just for how easy it is to throw together a quick macro on the fly, and its sheer versatility. It’s the keyboard I tend to pull out for work, especially for tasks that require a lot of repetition like refactoring chunks of code. Since my initial review, Ultimate Gadget Labs have been busy and released a raiser for the keyboard to allow for a more personally-tailored typing experience. Though I don’t yet have this, it’s something I’m quite excited to pick up down the line.

NuPhy’s Air75 v2 is something I do want to give a bit of a mention to as well. While it’s not necessarily a part of my regular rotation, it is a really nice board to have available as an ultra-portable go-to when I’m tight on bag space. It’s another one that does well in a working environment, especially as somebody who works from a laptop. Just being able to slap it over the built-in keyboard is fantastic in terms of desk space optimisation.

There is a good change my keyboard collection will face some consolidation in the coming months, having ordered the gargantuan Hyper7 R4, an unreal 173% keyboard (at the time of writing, the group buy is still open for those with more money than sense). For now though, the variety and constantly-changing nature of my desk is something really fun for me. It’s become a hobby to collect interesting keyboards and even build my own, and given it stemmed from reviewing them for the site, it’s something I’m really grateful for.

Tech Oddities

If you’ve seen my editorials in the past, you may know I have a particular interest in talking about weird and fun tech, and there really is nothing I love more than multi-screened devices. The Zephyrus and Surface Duo are two such devices I’ve written about in the past, offering a multi-screened laptop and phone experience respectively. Though I have since shifted my focus to a desktop setup, which I’ll wrap back around to talk about later, the Zephyrus Duo 16 is a device I just can’t let go of. An ultrawide display sitting under a more standard 16:10 screen is significantly more handy than you might expect. When I’m not needing it for anything in particular it generally holds my emails and messages. Outside of this though, you can have it act as the lower screen for Cemu or Citra, a tracker for a game randomiser (Wind Waker works really well for this), a timeline for video editing, or just your build messages and other IDE tidbits to keep your main display less cluttered for programming. It’s easy to write something like this off as a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick I’ve found tremendously useful in the almost two years I’ve had it. You do pay a hefty sum for the gimmick at £2700 (at the time I bought it anyway), so it’s at least nice to see that it’s not conked out and doing as well now as when I picked it up.

While it may share in the two-screened glory, the Surface Duo is an entirely different beast, ultimately becoming my go-to for reading manga above all else. Its two 4:3 5.6-inch OLED displays are a stellar fit for Tachiyomi, with the software even taking the screen gap into account when drawing two pages at once. If I do get tired of looking at smaller text, I also have the option of rotating the system and showing a single page over both screens. This works better than you might think, with the device being almost identical in size to Apple’s iPad Mini 6 when laid flat.

Of course there is more than just reading on offer, and I really am looking forward to pushing this as an emulation handheld soon, once Cube Sugar’s Surface Duo controller ships (hopefully) early into this year. With a Snapdragon 855 under the hood, it’s more than capable of handling up to GameCube games, with DS emulation being the obvious point of excitement. I won’t write too much more on this since I plan to cover it more thoroughly once I have it in hand, but suffice to say my expectations are high to make the most of this niche phone. I do recommend keeping an eye on eBay if you are interested in the Surface Duo. I bought mine directly from Microsoft just before the Duo 2 was launched for around £700, but nowadays it goes for around half that, and as low as £200 on occasion. It is lacking some fairly basic features you’d want in a modern phone (NFC, 5G, and a half-decent camera to name a few), but you’re unlikely to find a more interesting device to play with at that price.

With 2024 just kicking off I’m excited to see what else is to come in the multi-screened space, with AYANEO’s Flip DS being something I’m eager to get my hands on. There is more to a unique device than just having multiple screens though, and ASUS’ ROG Flow Z13 is something that just keeps finding its way back onto my desk. A Surface form factor with some fairly hefty specs to back it up, I picked one up around this time last year and really loved how easy it was to place around. Being able to detach the keyboard at will makes for an incredibly portable and versatile all in one display. I did have bigger plans for it as something I could take with me on long commutes to play games without having to carry a hefty laptop, but the reality of it ended up being a little more tame. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as bad as dubbing it a YouTube machine, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t its main use. It definitely still has a place as something you can hook up to another monitor for a really great multi-screen game experience, again looking at Cemu and Citra. Having said that, I really do have better ways of going about such emulation.

Interesting tech isn’t always on the powerful side of the spectrum though, and that really holds true when looking at something like the reMarkable 2. Originally reviewing it in February of 2021 and revisiting it last year with the Type Folio release, it’s been a mainstay both on my desk and in my bag from day one. I love writing and I love e-ink tech. It’s a match made in heaven for me. The software has had a bit of a rocky road, as I mentioned in my Type Folio review, but as it is now you really do get a great focused writing experience. Is it priced too highly? I think it probably is, but I also think a large chunk of that comes down to the fact there’s no way to try the device before putting money down. After my time reviewing it, I would’ve put down the £500 or so they were asking for the tablet, case, and pen. I really stand by it, but I also recognise that I couldn’t have done that had I not had that hands on experience. I love it, and it’s for sure passed the test of time. It’s just a tough sell to any majority, and I fully accept that I am no part of such majorities.

A Messy Desk

I touched on this a bit earlier into the post, but since moving across the UK for a job mid-2023, I’ve been a much heavier desktop user. Though my desk (worth mentioning that this desk is still the same Arozzi desk I’ve had since 2019 in the spirit of the post) is consistently a cluttered mess, there are some real mainstays that manage to find themselves present more often than not.

Right at the top of this list is Huion’s Kamvas Pro 13, and it is an absolute belter of a setup. Making use of a heavy-based VESA monitor stand that has you mount a monitor to a pole alongside a laptop tray that’s supposed to be attached to an arm of its own, I have a rudimentary dual screen gaming setup. It’s a situation I really couldn’t do with anything else, outside of maybe the Flow Z13 I mentioned earlier. There is a reason I prefer using the Kamvas Pro though, and it mostly comes down the matte display and pen-on-screen feel. Using a stylus on a glossy screen is fine, but in my mind it feels wrong. It’s always in the back of my mind that I’m scratching the screen, and it all slides around a bit too much. The matte feel is perfection. Even if the extent of my current use is tapping moves and sliding party members to swap them around in Pokemon Omega Ruby, it feels fantastic. I said in my original review that displays like these have merit even for non-artists, and that really has held true. My only real sadness is that there isn’t a DS emulator out at the moment that allows you to split your screens to two separate windows like you can with Citra and Cemu. The day that drops, this setup will be complete. I will tack on the end of this paragraph by saying if you do happen to have a graphics tablet, be careful with your pen. I dropped mine at an awkward angle and the nib broke off, leaving me in a difficult position to remove it. I have a few plans as to how to tackle this down the line (hot glue being the best idea in my head) but with a spare pen it’s less of a concern at the moment. While I really do love the tablet and the feel of the pen, I do wish there were a simple way of opening them up when things like this happen.

I want to give a brief shoutout to my portable gaming monitors here too. Though I do have a hefty monitor out most of the time, I do sometimes put it away when needing more desk space. And it’s also these times when my two ROG Strix monitors come into play. I reviewed the 15 inch model as a loan unit from ASUS, but ended up buying one down the line after how much I enjoyed using it. It did end up developing a fault, resulting in me having to send it back, but I can say ASUS customer service was nothing but helpful, and got me another one sent out pretty much as soon as they received the defective unit. The new one’s been fine, and I even ended up picking up the larger 17 inch variant on eBay after spotting it for just £250. I’m a sucker for a deal, and a portable 17 inch display with great colours and 240hz refresh rate was something I couldn’t pass up. You can definitely find cheaper portable monitors out there, but I’m happy with what I have. Portable monitors are something I would encourage people to look into; they’re versatile and can go a long way in boosting your on the go productivity. I even spotted a 3:2 aspect ratio portable monitor on Amazon US a while back, which is definitely a rarity worthy of further investigation into for those seeking the peak of versatility or just a perfect GBA experience.

The Baggables

Last up on this roundup of old reviews are the smaller items that happen to find their way into my bag wherever I go. Given its function is to provide power in a pinch, it should come as no surprise that I’m still using Shargeek’s Storm 2 power bank. To this day I don’t think I’ve seen another company come close to making as stylish a power bank, but it remains pretty poor value for somebody who just wants something reliable. Don’t get me wrong, this is a reliable power bank… Except for when it isn’t. It still doesn’t work with the ROG Ally, and I’ve noticed quirks when charging certain laptops. With my 2019 Razer Blade Stealth, it’s perfectly happy to pump out 65W or more when the laptop is on, but if it’s off, it won’t do more than 10W. It’s great to have the screen to be able to identify these quirks, but I think I would prefer for them to just not exist in the first place.

The other thing I tend to throw in my bag is my Switch, and while the Switch itself isn’t really anything of interest, my controller of choice might well be. Retroflag’s creatively-titled “Handheld Controller for Switch” is bar none the best accessory I own for the console. Since December of 2022 a Joy Con hasn’t slid its way into my OLED Switch’s rails and I couldn’t be happier for that fact. Though aesthetics are obviously a subjective point, it was love at first sight for me. Translucent purple is my jam, and my only real complaint remains the odd choice for a matte finish face buttons. The sticks feel as good as the first day I used them with the controller making use of hall sensors, and with features like turbo and gyro built-in, along with it being recognised as an official Pro Controller in the Switch’s software, it is something I will continue to recommend. Though it does have some more recent competition in the Nitro Deck, Retroflag’s attempt at a controller grip is the one I’ll be using for the foreseeable future.

While on the topic of Retroflag, I will also give an honourable mention to their NES-themed SSD enclosures. I reviewed these in 2021 and they really did what they said on the tin. They still work great and look great, with the only blemish being that one of the cartridges has a screw loose. It still holds the SSD in fine though, so no complaints from me. I’d love to see this design revisited with a USB C port for the outer enclosure, but it’s not as though I’m short on USB 3.0 Micro B cables. I still have plenty of ageing external drives that also use it, so it’s not much hassle to be swapping them around.

My final mention goes out to the bag I’ve been throwing all this stuff into, a “gaming backpack” that unfortunately doesn’t seem to be in production anymore: Targus’ Strike backpack. This is something I’ve been using since I got it in 2021, and it’s just got the job done. It’s big, it’s got ample compartments for keyboards, mice, hard drives, and all that jazz. I even use the external water bottle mesh to store my umbrella, it’s perfect for me. It’s done me well for just under three years now with no signs of wear. I can naturally only speak to my own experiences, but they’ve been nothing but positive.

A Bit in Closing

To be quite honest, I really enjoy a lot of what I cover on the site, and that enjoyment is a lot of the reason why I write about things. I hope that to some extent I can spread my enthusiasm in a way that doesn’t just sound like I’m trying to upsell you on the latest and weirdest tech. Having said that, I’d be interested to hear any thoughts in regards to reviews and general tech coverage on the site. Is this kind of post-review roundup something people would be interested in seeing more of? Would you want to see a more detailed followup at a set time after the initial review of the more major players? I’m by no means a professional, but I enjoy what I do here. If I can make it better, I do certainly want to.

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-best-pokemon-game-isnt-made-by-game-freak.633976/

In recent years the Pokemon series has seen some highs and lows. Since the transition to the Switch, fans have criticised each title for a flurry of reasons from graphics to performance, to a lack of a complete Pokedex. Having enjoyed my time with the latest games Scarlet and Violet, I wanted a break from modern titles. At the same time, I wanted something fresh that I hadn’t already sunk hundreds of hours into. I wanted a ROM hack, and in my search for an interesting one, I stumbled across something I didn’t expect to get excited for: an RPG Maker-built fan game. And what a ride I was in for.

What I’m talking about today is Pokemon Infinite Fusion. On the surface, we have a complete retelling of the original Kanto adventure, complete with graphics resembling the DS games. Because it’s built using RPG Maker and what I assume to be a modified version of the Pokemon Essentials Starter Kit, it’ll run natively on PC with full controller support. It looks fine and runs well even on low-spec systems, and is a great game to throw onto a Windows handheld if you happen to be picking up the ROG Ally this month, but there’s obviously more to it than just being a good fan-made adventure. The clue’s in the title, and it doesn’t take long for it to show you.

The core mechanic of Pokemon Infinite Fusion is, unsurprisingly, Pokemon fusion. This is something that has been explored in the official lineup, albeit briefly, with the likes of Kyurem and to a lesser extent Rotom. Infinite Fusion takes it a step further though. There’s not just one or two cool Pokemon that will go together. Oh no, here, everything fuses with everything. Now that might not sound like all that big a deal to read. How big an impact can that really have? Doing the maths puts really it into perspective though. We have 420 Pokemon in the game, which includes every Pokemon from Kanto and Johto, as well as 169 additional Pokemon plucked from other generations. You might be tempted to start shouting about how that isn’t the full Pokedex, but just hold on for a second. Every one of those Pokemon can fuse with every other one of those Pokemon in one of two ways: where Pokemon A is the head, or where Pokemon A is the body. What does this mean? It means that despite the Pokedex only containing 420 out of the 1000+ official species, that we have more than 175,000 Pokemon to collect if we want to catch them all. Seriously.

I’m not going to pretend every one of those is a great design. There’s clearly a degree of automation you can see in a lot of the Pokemon where a head has quite clearly been glued onto a palette-swapped body, but it’s here you find some of the atrocities that make up the best parts of your adventure. As I did my first playthrough, I’d be sending image after image to friends in hysterics at what the Pokemon Gods had allowed to exist. What stands out more than the abominations though is the fact that more than 20,000 of the sprites were in fact handcrafted by the community. Rotom and Porygon fusions became my favourites to encounter, with custom Rotom sprites always incorporating the orange colour and electricity between joints, while Porygon fusions would often be some form of digitisation or glitchiness. Infinite Fusion does a great job in balancing the designs that you wish were real with those you wish you could put out of their misery. It keeps you constantly hooked as you move from encounter to encounter, and fuels you to keep switching up your team far more than any traditional title has ever managed to.

It’s great to see that Kanto wasn’t just taken tile for tile as well. Throughout the region you’ll notice changes both big and small, as well as a new story that gives Team Rocket much more of a meaningful presence by integrating fusion into their ambitions. After beating the main game, you can even venture to the Johto region in a slightly shorter post-game adventure set three years before the events of Gold and Silver. The attention to detail here is incredibly charming, with a bunch of recognisable characters at times in different roles due to the time difference. You do unfortunately miss out on the Western side of Johto past Ecruteak City, but you’ll be happy to know there are still a total of 16 badges on offer. The two missing gym leaders are just on holiday, and can be challenged in an again-revamped Sevii Islands.

The amount of content you have paired with the genuine quality and polish is astounding, and it completely blew past my negative preconceptions towards RPG Maker-made fan games. On top of this 20 to 30 hour adventure, you get a generous ten save slots and an in-built randomiser mode that itself has enough options to keep you coming back to something fresh for weeks or even months. And on top of that you have a further “modern” mode to explore, that revamps Kanto with Pokemon that weren’t originally available there, while still maintaining a sense of cohesion that you wouldn’t get from a randomised experience. I haven’t covered everything about the game in this post, and that’s because I really do think it’s one worth checking out. It’s entirely free, and outside of the time it takes to extract those 170,000 sprites (top tip: make sure to extract the zip file to where you want to keep the game, moving it after is a hefty time commitment), can be run out of the box on almost any PC.

If you’re feeling burned out from Game Freak’s offerings, this might just be the breath of fresh air you need to jump back into the franchise. You can check out its official page over on PokeCommunity below:

➤ Pokemon Infinite Fusion (PokeCommunity)

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-nine-year-kart-race-a-mario-kart-8-retrospective.628467/

Releasing just last week, the fourth wave of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s £22.49 Booster Course Pass became available to download, increasing the game’s already-series high course count from 72 to 80. With this putting us past the halfway point of the announced courses, I thought this might be a nice opportunity to have a look at how far Mario Kart 8 has come since its 2014 Wii U release, and see what kind of value the DLC offers to both those subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online’s higher tier and those not.

To give a quick history lesson to those who perhaps started with the Deluxe edition on Switch, Mario Kart 8 originally launched on the Wii U in May of 2014 and went on to be the console’s best-selling title by a significant margin, beating out its closest competitor Super Mario 3D World by almost three million units. In its launch state, much of what you see on the Switch was present. Coming from Mario Kart 7’s gliders and underwater driving, Mario Kart 8 added anti-gravity sections to the mix. What was nice here is that it didn’t really do away with any of Mario Kart 7’s main features, instead adding to them with a layer of polish you’ve likely come to expect from the series. The game launched with eight cups, which has been the standard since Mario Kart DS, splitting the courses between 16 new and 16 returning. These returning courses did see a really nice face lift, with many of them getting anti-gravity sections added on top of the graphical improvements you’d otherwise expect.

For those not playing online, your draw to replayability was collecting coins, which would then go onto unlock car parts for you to pick between when going back to courses. Mario Kart 8 went on to make series history when it released several sets of DLC between August of 2014 and April of 2015. Starting out with a free Mercedes Benz collaboration (no really, this was the first piece of DLC in Mario Kart history), we then got two more Nintendo-themed collaboration packs in the form of a paid DLC featuring The Legend of Zelda and Animal Crossing. Each of these packs cost £7 apiece, or £11 if bought together, and came with two new cups and three new characters to enjoy. On top of these, we also saw a free update releasing alongside the second DLC pack. This introduced another series-first in the 200cc setting, which ended up being quite divisive in the community due to people not having used the B button before in their 20 years of playing the games. While divisive, this new level of speed offered players an entirely new way of playing the now-48 strong track list, and gave them a reason to replay older cups alongside those that were freshly added.

Mario Kart 8 wasn’t perfect, but to me was certainly a new high for the series, doing more than enough to earn its spot as the Wii U’s best seller. How does that translate to the Switch though? You shouldn’t be surprised to know that it’s also the best selling game here, and that it’s outsold its Wii U counterpart six times over. What did it add to make it worth buying just three years after its original release? Was it just a port to free it from the acursed shackles of the Wii U? It was kind of that, but there were a few changes to mix things up, and they really were appreciated.

So what did we get? Naturally you got the base Mario Kart 8 experience, as well as all the DLC released to-date. That includes your Zelda and Animal Crossing packs, but more importantly, the Mercedes Benz collaboration. You also got 200cc right out of the gate and a few new characters, including my personal favourite Inkling Girl. It’s a bit of a shame we never saw a full Splatoon track to come in with them, but we did get some of the game’s multiplayer action, along with an associated map, with a new battle mode. While I do say new, it was a fairly standard affair for the series that was absent in the Wii U game.

Mechanically-speaking, there was one big change, and it’s genuinely quite hard to go back to older Mario Kart games having experienced it: purple drift boosts. It’s a simple concept for those familiar with drifting in Mario Kart. The longer you hold your drift, the better boost you get. Previously your drift would turn blue for a small boost, then red for a bigger boost… But now we have purple, and boy is that a good boost for those who can hold their drift long enough. It’s something that really stands out on 200cc with courses like Mario Circuit and its long turns. Deluxe also brought back the ability to hold two items, which was really great to see after suffering the unique frustrations of Wii U Mario Kart 8’s first place coin syndrome.

Outside of these though, and the usual boost to framerate and resolution we’re used to seeing between Wii U and Switch, it was basically the same Mario Kart 8 you knew and loved repackaged for the same price as it originally cost. Did it really add enough value to warrant rebuying at full price? It’s hard to say, but I’m fairly sure most of the people reading this will have bought it regardless. If nothing else, the game on the Wii U with its gamepad gave you a taste of a truly high fidelity Mario Kart in your hands. Was any fan of the series really going to pass up being able to take it on the go?

But that was that. For years after its release there really wasn’t much to say. Five years in fact. And then out of nowhere, just as fans were anticipating an announcement for Mario Kart 9, Nintendo came out and did it. DLC. And this DLC really was no slouch. Promising 48 additional courses from the series’ history, this DLC would effectively serve to double the available content in the game at a cost of half its retail price. In my mind that’s a good deal, and it really took a while for the prospect of an official 96 track Mario Kart game to sink in. You’re paying around the cost of a cheap app store game for each course (78p if you’re curious).

These weren’t all being released at once, and I do think that was a good choice. Instead of effectively throwing a game-sized update at us, Nintendo opted to release two new cups at a time over a period of six waves. For a casual player like myself, it keeps me gradually coming back to the game. It works well for a game with so much pick up and play-ability, and I think the model fits far better than something like Monster Hunter Rise’s title updates. I don’t think Rise has necessarily handled its updates poorly, but it’s definitely the type of game where you want to marathon it for a while in oppose to something you can play once and then ignore for a few weeks. Alongside these waves of DLC, Nintendo have also taken the opportunity to drop updates for the game to add features like item selection for multiplayer games, which is especially nice to see when you consider these updates are available to people regardless of whether they bought the DLC.

In terms of the actual course selection, these were advertised as a full cast of returning tracks, naturally upscaled a bit for the newer generation. I really don’t have an issue with this myself. Being able to re-experience some of my favourite tracks in the best Mario Kart engine to date? Damn right I want that. It’s also been really interesting to see Mario Kart Tour tracks be added with each wave since they’ve never seen the light of a console before. I’ve seen complaints about them lacking in detail when compared to some of the base game’s tracks, but to me they’re genuinely a breath of fresh air. There’s really just more to them when compared to your traditional tracks, and each one feels like a unique experience that I’ve come to look forward to with each new wave.

What makes the majority of Tour courses different is how they change from lap to lap. You’ll see signs changing to point you in new directions and take entirely different routes, taking you through various real-world locations in a really cohesive way that probably wouldn’t have been possible with the traditional course layout. We do still see a few older courses have seen similar treatment, with Kalimari Desert now taking you onto the tracks and through the train’s tunnel on later laps. With this being a fan favourite, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in my wonderment going a direction Lakitu would scold me for in the older games. You’re not going to see this kind of evolution in every track, but that’s probably for the best. You have a good balance here.

Contrary to what they originally announced, these 48 tracks aren’t actually all returning from older game. With wave four having just gone live, we’ve been graced with not just a new track, but a new character to Mario Kart 8 too in Birdo. Technically we have had one “new” track in previous waves, but these were all Mario Kart Tour tracks that just weren’t tagged as such for some reason. I do think these felt more like traditional tracks, with these often being the standouts of their respective wave, but it’s still odd. With wave four, Yoshi’s Island changes that. It’s entirely fresh and boy does it make me want more.

After Birdo’s addition too, our character selection screen is sitting with five question marks on it. It’d be nice if we saw some fresh faces to the series and the last two waves ended up being closer to the original DLC of the Wii U version, but I’m not holding out too much hope for this. Even if they are just returning faces like Birdo, it’ll be nice to welcome them back.

So now we’ve seen how far Mario Kart 8 has come since its release nine years ago and shared in a bit of nostalgia, a few questions remain. First, is the DLC good value alone? It’s a no-brainer in my mind. It’s content akin to a new game for half the price of a new game. Obviously it’s not an entirely fair comparison, with a new game both bringing new mechanics and perhaps more importantly, a decent assortment of brand new tracks. £22.49 feels right to me for what you’re getting, but it does lead me to worry a little for the eventual Mario Kart 9 that has to follow this. Are we going to be expecting 96 tracks going forwards? Are we going to have extended support out of the gate with a launch day season pass? We just don’t know yet.

The value of buying the DLC aside, it also needs to be looked at as a part of the higher-tier Nintendo Switch Online subscription. If nothing else Nintendo picked the games to have their DLC included here well, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing New Horizons being number one and two on the best sellers list, and both being games targeted at NSO subscribers. Should these DLC packs be the swing factor in whether you double the cost of your subscription though? That one’s really not for me to say. If you’re a devout player of just Mario Kart and feel like you won’t get any value out of the rest of the expansion pack, you’re probably better off just buying the DLC outright and not having to debate a higher subscription cost each year. The expansion pack route probably makes more sense for those invested in the larger first party Nintendo experience, assuming Nintendo keep up this trend of adding first party DLC. With Tears of the Kingdom launching soon, it surprises me to see them not adding Breath of the Wild’s DLC to get people back in the mood. Maybe I’m just expecting too much for my money here though, especially given Nintendo’s track record with NSO.

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/last-years-tech-is-still-good-a-cheaper-look-at-the-rog-flow-z13.627255/

Last year I was wanting a new portable powerhouse and I had my eyes set on two in particular, both from ASUS’ latest gaming releases of the time. These were the Zephyrus Duo 16, and the Flow Z13. Both were, and frankly still are, really cool devices that stand out from the crowd. On one hand we have a gaming laptop equipped with two screens and some powerhouse-level specs, and on the other we have a slightly more toned down tablet that outperforms anything of its form factor. While they were both interesting, I settled on the Duo at the time with its power and dual screen layout swinging me. A thought lingered though: I wish the Z13 were cheaper. If it were cheaper, I could probably find a way to justify buying it… If it were cheaper…

So now it’s cheaper. When the Z13 launched back in January of last year you had two variations at two price points. At the top end, which we actually covered on the site, you have a model featuring a 4K 16:10 display, coming in at £3000. On the lower end, you’re looking at a 1200p 16:10 display, itself coming in at £1900. Outside of the screen differences, you have the same 12th generation i9-12900H and 3050 Ti under the hood, supported by 2x 8 GB sticks of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1 TB M2 SSD. You have the same tablet form factor, the same Surface-like but slightly flashier detachable keyboard, the same IO and battery. To just get this out of the way, I think the 4K model was terrible value when it launched, and while it is discounted now as I’m about to go into, there’s just not enough there to justify the higher price point. You don’t need a 4K display on a 13 inch screen. All you’ll be doing is draining your battery quicker for a quality difference you aren’t going to notice.

Another year, another CES, and another announcement from ASUS for the 2023 model of the Z13, we’re now seeing the price cuts that come just before the dawn of a new generation. The 4K model drops to £2000 which is nice, but what should really be catching your eye is that the 1200p model is now £1200. And it’s at this price we start to see a tablet that might actually have a chance of competing. With many thanks to my usual lack of self-control and a weak justification behind the decision, I decided to pick one up. I haven’t regretted it.

The Flow Z13 is ultimately a heavier Surface with worse battery life, but what you gain for that heft and faster battery drain is a discrete GPU in the 3050 Ti, and a solid i9 CPU. It’s a powerhouse for its form factor, even if it might be lacking if compared to an actual gaming laptop for the same price. The reason I wanted to pick this up is for the versatility of the tablet form factor. I can take it with me without needing to carry a huge bag, or I can just have it on my desk with the keyboard detached to have a video watching display while I’m working on my primary setup. The 3050 Ti inside might not sound like much, but it’s enough to eke out 60fps on games like Hitman 3 and Elden Ring, admittedly on low settings.

At £1200 it stands at a genuinely competitive price point when compared to the latest Surface Pro. For roughly the same money, you’d be looking at a 12th generation i5 with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. There’s obviously more to it than a straight up spec for spec comparison, but at this price it basically becomes another tier of Surface instead of some standalone device that’s priced into obscurity.

Make no mistake, this device isn’t perfect. When I mentioned the worse battery life earlier, I really did mean it. You’re looking at four to five hours of use when fully charged, and that isn’t gaming use. The Surface Pro 9’s battery is similar in capacity, but will last you up to three times that. The weight can also make it more difficult to use as a tablet if you’re sitting on the sofa or in bed. These are reasonable considerations for what you personally need your tablet to do. For me, I’m used to heavy devices and I’m rarely away from a plug for more than a few hours.

While I’ve been making plentiful comparisons to the Surface Pro, the Z13 does have a trick up its sleeve: XG Mobile compatibility, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing exactly what that is. Featuring its own proprietary port that is made up of a Thunderbolt 4 component, and a unique part that looks a bit like a thin DisplayPort, the XG Mobile connection is designed as an external graphics interface to surpass what is possible with your more traditional Thunderbolt eGPUs. It’s an all in one package really. You have external graphics, four USB Type-A ports, a DisplayPort, a HDMI port, and finally a 2.5G Gigabit Ethernet port to round it out. This is all in a lightweight package you could easily fit into a bag. What makes the XG Mobile connection interesting is how ASUS claim it completely eliminates any performance bottlenecks you might have come to expect from external graphics, as well as adding dedicated bandwidth for the aforementioned IO. You can think of it like switching from the built-in laptop 3050 Ti to another internal GPU. But this is where the problems might begin.

To get the XG Mobile into such a lightweight form factor, ASUS have opted for a mobile GPU. In reality, it means that while you are trading up in terms of power, you are still being limited to what a gaming laptop with a laptop 3080 inside would already be able to do. That’s not the worst thing in my mind, with it being a somewhat valid trade off when you compare it to full-sized eGPUs like Razer’s Core X Chroma. One I can fit in a bag pocket, one I’d need to bring a small suitcase for. If I’m being honest, I’m really fond of the XG Mobile I have here, and I like that it’s basically a souped-up docking station that transforms an incredibly portable tablet into an incredibly portable and versatile powerhouse. I really like how easy it is to use, and I find how it works really interesting too. When you plug it in, you’ll get a pop-up asking if you want to activate it. Once done, it’ll disable your internal laptop 3050 Ti and in its place, you’ll see the laptop 3080 appear. It’s really fluid, and with this all being in-house ASUS tech, I came across no random driver incompatibilities. I didn’t even need to install new drivers with both the XG Mobile and my internal graphics both being Nvidia. Without enabling the eGPU the USB ports do still appear to work, so I’d wager the Thunderbolt part of this connection is what’s being used for your IO, with the fancy connector being where the graphics magic happens.

It really is an interesting device that gives you a noticeable boost when playing games. With thanks to ASUS for lending me a unit for a little while, I went from being able to play Elden Ring on low settings at 60 FPS (which is still impressive in my mind for a tablet) to being able to play on max settings with no issues. It’s so seamless and I do think a large part of that is because it’s proprietary software working together. But that’s just it; it’s all proprietary. And that’s why I don’t think I could ever recommend getting one. You have a genuinely great device, but it’s one you can neither upgrade nor use with anything else. You can’t even buy it standalone, and the only way to get it with the Z13 is to buy it with the 4K model, which in itself doesn’t present great value as I mentioned earlier. In my mind, the best middle ground would’ve been to have the XG Mobile port on both the tablet and the external graphics, and support standard Thunderbolt connections with all the bottlenecks that come with it. At least that way you’re left with some flexibility and support should ASUS decide to drop this port like Alienware did before them with their own proprietary graphics solution. It’s good, but it’s not worth heading out to eBay and spending what is basically the price of the tablet again for. I want ASUS to take this device further, but to do so it needs to be more available and more flexible.

Having bought the Flow Z13 last month, I’ve had a blast with it. I can’t say how happy I am to see the device at a more reasonable price, but with the new 2023 model just around the corner, should you be waiting for that instead? It’s a challenging question because it does seem ASUS are wanting to push this tablet form factor to its absolute limits, giving the GPU a fairly substantial upgrade to the laptop flavour of Nvidia’s 4060. I don’t have a laptop with this on hand, but the stats online are looking really promising. With this extra power under the hood, as well as a generational bump to the i9 processor, I can imagine the battery being even worse. This is all just speculation at this point though.

Even with the additional power coming soon, I think I still prefer the 2022 model at £1200; it does everything I need it to and has been a great travel companion for working away. If the Flow Z13 isn’t for you, I would at least take from this story that, as the title might suggest, last year’s tech is still good. There are some great deals out there to be found if you’re not always chasing the latest and greatest, and I’d really encourage you to look. I’m somewhere in the middle myself, falling to the temptations of a good deal and shiny new thing alike, as I’ve somewhat shown in grabbing the Zephyrus Duo 16 at launch and the Flow Z13 a year later.

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/can-an-android-phone-be-the-perfect-emulation-handheld.621661/

In my time writing for the site, I’ve seen a huge number of handheld devices with a stark focus on emulation. You have companies like Anbernic and Retroid standing at the forefront with devices tailor made for retro gaming, with others like RetroFlag giving you stylish shells to breathe new life into a Raspberry Pi you might have lying around. I love having a device that just has its single purpose and does it well, and I rated Anbernic’s RG351MP well for it when I got the chance to cover it last year, but these devices have their limits. Typically capping out at SNES or N64, they’re largely designed for your oldies, leaving those wanting more a bit stuck. Do you throw £200 towards AYN’s Odin? Do you go beyond that and spend £350 on a Steam Deck? Or do you just look in your pocket and use what’s there?

To give you a little background, I’m actually reviewing a phone right now, this being Xiaomi’s new 12T Pro. I was having a fairly good time using it, but after around a week of use, a question popped into my head: what am I going to do with this when I’ve finished my review? The obvious answer would be to use it; it’s new and it’s pretty powerful after all. Having just bought an iPhone earlier this year though, this is something I’d consider incredibly wasteful, so what’s left? Having dabbled in Android emulation but never really going all in and committing a device to it, I figured I’d take the plunge and see just how close I could get to a full gaming handheld experience using what I had.

Getting started is really quite easy. Android is familiar and most of the best emulators are available straight from the Play Store. As a starting point, I downloaded My OldBoy (GBC), MyBoy (GBA), DraStic (NDS), PPSSPP (PSP), M64Plus FZ (N64), and AetherSX2 (PS2). I also went out of my way to download Citra MMJ (3DS) and Dolphin MMJR (GameCube/Wii) from their respective GitHub repos, having positive experiences with those in the past over the versions available on the Play Store. It’s worth noting here that RetroArch is available on Android and a pretty good option if you prefer to have everything in one place. It’s generally not what I look for, but an option all the same. The majority of emulators work fine out of the box, with just AetherSX2 requiring a PS2 bios be dropped in.

Switch emulation is also fairly feasible on Android using EggNS, though the shady DRM and software leaves a lot to be desired. I did manage to install the latest build of Skyline, an open source Switch emulator for Android. While it’s not there yet, I’m excited to see what it’ll develop into. ​

Having a SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1 under the hood, the performance from emulation was absolutely stellar. It should go without saying that your oldies run great, but what I really wasn’t expecting was to see 3DS games running at 4x native resolution and at 2x speed. The 2x speed part might seem an odd thing to mention, but having started playing Ocarina of Time 3D randomisers at 2x speed a few months ago, I’ve found it really hard to adjust to how slow the game feels without it. Having that option on a handheld with some really impressive graphics blew me away. But it didn’t stop there, with not only Wii games coming out similarly great, but also PS2. Handheld Shadow of the Colossus, and at 2x internal resolution. I find myself continually baffled by just how far portable technology has come and what it’s now capable of. It’s not all great, and I do want to make that clear. While games do play well in terms of performance, you can generally expect to see significant black bars on either side of the screen when playing anything remotely retro.

This naturally comes down to how phones have been evolving in recent years, with long being the new thin. Coming in at a stellar 20:9 aspect ratio, 4:3 (or 12:9 for an easier comparison) games take up just more than half of the screen. Game Boy and Game Boy Color games are even worse than this thanks to their odd 10:9 aspect ratio that leaves just as much of the screen idle as it does active. This is one area where your experience will vary quite significantly from phone to phone, with me previously having a lot of fun with the Surface Duo’s two 4:3 screens. With 16:9 games the black bars aren’t too much of a problem though, and the additional screen real estate does come in handy for dual-screened systems, so it isn’t all bad.

The games themselves play great, and that’s great, but to stop at just setting up emulators and calling it a day would be to overlook a lot of the frustrations that come with using a phone. What has previously held me back from doing something like this has been the Android UI, and its general lack of support for landscape layouts. To get an experience comparable to a gaming handheld, I’d need something better, and something optimised for controller inputs, since that’s what I’d likely end up using. The answer to this dream just so happened to be an app I’d never heard of: Console Launcher.

Now there are a lot of options when it comes to picking a launcher, with a good chunk of them offering a highly customisable experience to get things working exactly as you’d like. When dabbling in this dark art of Android gaming in the past, I’d given Pegasus a go, but ultimately found it a bit too daunting for my youthful expression. Console Launcher did everything I needed it to. It’s ultimately a Nintendo Switch-like experience, with a home screen containing your favourite apps arranged in a horizontal row, and the rest of your apps available elsewhere. Unlike the Switch though, you get customisation options in terms of app icons and background, as well as a pleasant albeit generic-sounding background audio loop. This did everything I needed it to and frankly just looked great.

There was one final hurdle for me to overcome, and it’s one I think I walked around more than actually getting over. The Android lock screen. While I was able to set a default launcher to appear when the device was unlocked, the lock screen itself was completely stuck being portrait with all the usual phoney bits. Sure you only have to swipe it away, or in the case of this phone, look at it the right way, but it takes away from the seamlessness I was striving for. As a bare minimum, I wanted a lock screen that was landscape like the rest of the experience. I still don’t know if this is possible, but what I did find was a way to disable the lock screen entirely. It’s worth mentioning that if you want to be emulating on your daily driver phone, this is hugely not recommended, since you’re waving pretty much all the security available to you, and letting anybody just pick it up and do what they want. For me this isn’t an issue, but it is worth keeping in mind and being mindful of the things you sign into on the device should you get rid of the lock screen like I did.

With the lock screen now gone and my home screen beautified, I was feeling pretty great. What I have here is an incredibly powerful gaming handheld that isn’t necessarily restricted to emulation. Being subscribed to both services, I figured it’d be a great device to load with GamePass and GeForce Now. I also grabbed the controller-friendly Android games I’d accumulated (Disgaea 1 Complete+, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells and Minecraft to name a few), and on a device like this performed just as well as you’d expect them to.

What really surprised me as the standout feature of using a modern phone as a gaming handheld was just how quickly it could be charged up and ready to go. 17 minutes. From 0 to 100, it takes 17 minutes. Your mileage will vary from phone to phone of course, and the 17 minute figure is from what I would probably call an excessive 120W charging capability. For comparison, it’s only an extra ten or so minutes of charge time for a phone that charges at 65W, but a 30 minute charge is still just as mind-blowing to me having grown up with the GBA SP and living by plug sockets.

Getting the most out of an Android device isn’t entirely free. Looking past the few premium apps I listed earlier in the post, the biggest investment outside of the device itself will undoubtedly be the controller you decide to use with it. This is something you have a huge number of options for, with the cheapest likely being a clip to mount your phone to an Xbox controller you might already own, and the most expensive being some of the more feature-packed mobile-oriented controllers. Having reviewed PowerA’s MOGA XP7-X Plus earlier this year, I had on hand what I would consider to be one of the best controllers for the job. I have used a few others in the past, with the Razer Kishi 2 falling a bit short of expectation in terms of it being bulky and not all that comfortable to hold, and GameSir’s X2 being fantastic but not fitting the 12T Pro because of its camera bump. The XP7-X Plus ended up being a good pick here. It’s quite bulky, but its bulk serves a purpose in making it just feel like an actual Xbox controller, with the phone fitting in the middle. I won’t go into too much detail here since I did review it, but one thing worth noting is its battery. One of its major selling points comes in its wireless charging capabilities and the the internal 2000mAh battery to support it. Due to the 12T Pro not supporting wireless charging, I was just left with a Bluetooth controller that never seemed to run out of charge. It’s magical, and when paired with the 12T Pro’s sub-20 minute charging time, there’s next to no down time in longer gaming sessions outside of a (perhaps healthy) break when the phone battery is low.

I really do love using the 12T Pro as an emulation titan, but I’m not about to tell you to go out and spend £700 to do the same, plus however much you’d want to pay for a mobile controller (around £80 for the MOGA XP7-X Plus I used). It’s just not realistic. What I have here is probably one of the strongest and most portable emulation setups out there, but going as far as I did really isn’t necessary if you’re just wanting to get the most out of your daily driver. My time with the 12T Pro thus far has really opened my eyes to how great a companion a mobile controller can be, and if you’re an Android user I really do recommend picking one up. If you happen to have last generation’s phone lying around in a drawer, I’d encourage you to scoop it up and see what it’s capable of.

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/i-dont-know-why-this-exists-several-months-with-an-e-ink-music-player.609048/

Ah E-Ink. Wonderfully reproducing that paper feeling to limit eye strain for reading, a brilliant canvas for electronic notebooks, and… Listening to music? Sure.

About six months ago I was on holiday in Northern Ireland. Sat in a cottage on a traditionally rainy day, I was browsing the web for unique and interesting devices. Having reviewed the reMarkable 2 a while back and having owned a few eReaders, E-Ink was something I was familiar with and enjoyed using. It intrigued me. It intrigued me enough to start looking for fun things that incorporated it. To my surprise there was plenty out there. Want a secondary E-Ink monitor to read documents on while you work? You can buy it. A laptop with an E-Ink display on the outer lid? That exists. But the standout oddity was the one I saw that had just released: the HiSense Touch.

Now this is marketed oddly. On (electronic) paper, it’s a music player. You know, those things famous for having their screen off 90% of the time they’re in use? I suppose it just baffled me. Who would think this was a profitable venture to pursue, and how long would it take to arrive if I ordered it that day? I actually remember turning it on for the first time, despite it being months ago now. It was a deep sense of dread and regret, and it’s rare I look at a purchase like this. I went into this device knowing its absurdity and bought it anyway, and a part of me was terrified by that. This wasn’t some cheap AliExpress punt, this thing came in at £290.

With the Touch using its own strain of Android, the setup process is about what you’d expect. It’s simple enough, but with this being something not available in western markets, you’ll be stuck with non-Google apps and unique bloat. Thankfully you’re able to set things to English from the get-go, but you still have to deal with the bundled apps until you install your own. Functionally, everything works fine out of the box. It’s rough around the edges and the English UI isn’t perfect, but you’ll have no issues using it. You get a unique home screen layout with icons across the bottom for music, apps, settings, and books. Tapping these will load you straight into the respective app while keeping you in the home UI for a really seamless experience. If you want more apps you can use the bundled app store, but I’d generally advise against this unless you’re a native Chinese speaker, as this isn’t translated. Sideloading will be your best bet.

It’s a bit awkward using the bundled keyboard and browser, but it didn’t take me long to find a Firefox and Gboard APK online for something a bit more familiar. With these tools at my disposal, I set out to fix my biggest irritation with the phone: the bundled eReader app. As one of the four apps so nicely integrated into the home screen, and representing a genuine selling point for such a pocketable device, my heart sunk when I saw the eReader app was almost entirely Chinese and difficult to navigate. Were it not for KOReader this thing would’ve been on eBay months ago. KOReader was a game changer. An absolutely beautiful open source app, KOReader gives you an eReader experience on any Android device, but my God does it elevate an E-Ink device to something higher. It’s like it was made for it, and gives you an experience on par with the likes of Kobo and Kindle. You can install dictionaries, use bookmarks, highlight snippets, and even use the volume buttons to turn pages. I keep the Touch in my pocket and love to take it out on the train or during a break at work for some brilliantly portable reading. This is the device’s biggest selling point, and it’s not even something I knew about prior to getting it.

Though I tend to use it as a pocket eReader, I feel like I should probably address the elephant in the room: it’s a music player. It’s just not the best one out there. There are a few basics you want out of a music player, especially one at this price. You want a headphone jack. Okay it has that, that’s the bare essential. Outside of this though, you want plenty of storage to actually keep your tracks. This is a 128 GB device with no expandability, and 26 GB of that is taken up by the system. 100 GB can go a long way, but if you’re wanting to load it up with large lossless audio you’ll be running out of space sooner than you’d want. The bundled app and general listening experience is fine, seeming to put a little more power to my headphones than the NWZ A15 Walkman I was using previously. My 20 ohm Audeze LCD-GX don’t need all that much power to sound good, but it naturally won’t compare to the desktop experience you can get by hooking them up to something more powerful. I will add here that the built-in speakers pack a surprising punch for a device this small. It’s not really a feature you see on many music players nowadays, with the focus being on the headphone listening experience, but it is pleasant to have and see done well.

When it comes to specs you have an adequate 4 GB of RAM on offer, which has proved to be fine in my time using it. To go with this you have a 1.8 GHz octa-core Snapdragon 460 processor and the aforementioned 128 GB of internal storage. The 3000 mAh battery keeps the device powered for a few weeks at a time when used lightly thanks to the limited power an E-Ink screen actually pulls. The device also features a ES9038 DAC and ES9603 amp chip, though I don’t know enough to comment on how great these are when compared to other offerings.  Perhaps the weirdest inclusion is a front facing camera, allowing you to recreate A-ha’s hit music video for Take On Me in the included camera app. The device runs fine, but what was constantly on my mind as I used it was a single word: why?

The HiSense Touch remains a mystery to me, and one I really couldn’t recommend to the majority of people with it costing just shy of £300 when I bought it. It’s a novelty that slaps an E-Ink screen where one really isn’t needed and while I appreciate what it offers, I feel there’s better value to be found elsewhere. The HiSense Touch grew on me and has become something I use regularly, but not so much as a music player. For the vast majority of people, a phone is more than adequate for an on the go listening experience, and for those who want more, you have better offerings from the likes of FiiO and other well known music player creators. If you’re just wanting an eReader, there’s cheaper dedicated options. It’s a collision of worlds that shouldn’t exist, but a small part of me is glad it does.

You can find this editorial in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/are-two-screens-better-than-one-a-week-with-the-surface-duo.593176/

I’ve always been a sucker for gimmicky hardware. I loved the Wiimote, I loved the Wii U’s block of a gamepad, and right at the top of the list, I loved the DS. When the Surface Duo launched in the tail end of 2020 I was captivated, but ultimately put off by its outlandish price point. Now on sale with that price slashed by half or even more, I took a chance, and so far, I can’t say I regret the decision.

Even when it launched last year, the Surface Duo wasn’t exactly cutting edge. Featuring a then-last-gen flagship processor in the Snapdragon 855 paired with a single underwhelming camera, 6GB of RAM, and a paltry 3600mAh battery, you may wince when I tell you it retailed between £1349 and £1449. I certainly did. Paired with this being Microsoft’s first soiree into the Android ecosystem after their failed mobile versions of Windows, you have largely-unproven hardware, underwhelming specs, and bug-ridden firmware. Looking back to the device’s launch I can only describe it as a disaster, so exactly what did it have going for it?

Despite its shortcomings, Microsoft did at the very least come out with a design fitting of the Surface team. While this is their first phone, it isn’t their first rodeo when it comes to quality portable technology. Looking back at the various Surface devices, you can see a clear lineage that lead up to this, and that overall quality and experience does shine through. The hinge holding the phone together is remarkably sturdy and holds any angle I set it to with no effort at all. The clamshell design looks incredibly sleek from the outside, with each side of the phone uniform and remarkably thin; the phone closed is the same thickness as my RedMagic 5S! They even included a simple and non-intrusive case for the obscure form factor, acting as a bumper around the edges of the device. It isn’t perfect. The shell is still plastic, with the USB-C port in particular being a reported weak point over time, but so far it’s done me well.

Looking to the star, or more appropriately, stars of the show, the Duo features two 1350×1800 screens. They look absolutely fantastic, but where they shine is in the how they’re used by the software. When using the phone, you have three options: put an app on the left screen, put an app on the right screen, or sprawl an app across both screens. While a few apps do recognise the Surface Duo’s hardware and have special modes for the dual screen layout, the majority of apps will simply treat it as one large screen. This can work fine for something like Chrome where you’re able to scroll freely, but for other apps you may find issues by the device rendering part of the screen to where the hinge is. It’s particularly notable in games like Pokemon where your character is always in the middle of the screen. For regular use, it’s incredibly rare I have a single app open across both screens, instead opting for having two apps open at the same time. It’s just incredibly handy. I could be playing Fire Emblem Heroes on the left screen while chatting on the right, I could have GBAtemp open on one screen while emailing on the other, or if I rotate the device, the lower can be utilised as a large touch keyboard. With each of my thumbs able to reach the middle of the screen like this, it’s a surprisingly comfortable layout.

Thanks to various updates since launch, the operating system is relatively snappy with a few quirks to get used to, largely to do with the gesture-driven nature of use. Coming from an Android phone that uses the traditional three touch buttons I wanted to give this a shot, and wow did it take some getting used to. The worst part of it by far is trying to open recent apps, which is done by dragging from the bottom of a screen and holding. It just doesn’t work sometimes, and sometimes immediately dismisses the recent apps, leaving you having to do the same gesture again. It’s not so frequent or irritating an issue that it’d put me off using the device, but it’s enough that I’m conscious of it as a problem. The rest of the gestures work as they should.

The other somewhat finnicky part of the OS comes from the automated detection of how the device is folded. You see, if you have one screen folded all the way back, the Duo will only display one screen. If you rotate the device, a message will pop up for you to switch which screen is in use. In theory it’s a nice idea, but I’d have much preferred a setting I can configure manually, perhaps as a notification bar button. When the phone is open and I tweak the hinge, it can sometimes cause one screen to turn off, thinking you’ve reoriented the phone in some obscure way. Much like my issues with the gestures, this isn’t something that happens too often, but it’s something I’m aware of.

If you’ve made it this far into the post, congratulations! We’re moving onto what’s probably the best bit for you fine folks: emulation! I’m skipping over native Android games here since I’m not aware of any that actually make use of the two screens, but if there are in fact some you know of, let me know and I can write up some thoughts as an update. Let’s cut to the chase though. Two 1350×1800 screens? “That’s a 4:3 aspect ratio!” I hear you cry. And your cries would be correct. Do you know what else has two screens of a 4:3 proportion? The Nintendo DS. And it is absolutely great.

DraStic is probably the best DS emulator out there regardless of which platform you’re looking at, so being able to use it on a device like this has been a joy. There is a glaring omission that holds this back from perfection, and it is of course a lack of hardware buttons. And there are a few solutions to this. You could suck it up and use touch controls; they do work fine after all. You could buy a mobile controller that grips the phone. That’d work fine too, but be aware of just how thin the Duo is. There isn’t all that much to hold onto for these grips. My approach was a simple one: just don’t play games that need buttons. With the Duo supporting the Surface Pen, I have before me a perfect system to play such gems as Pokemon Ranger and Cooking Mama. It sounds like a joke, but I’ve honestly been having a blast. Giving Pokemon Mystery Dungeon’s touch controls a go for the first time has been an interesting endeavour too. It’s a great way to play some of my favourite DS games, but what may come as a larger surprise is that DS isn’t the platform I’ve been playing most on the Duo. GameCube is.

With DS being the obvious fit for the Surface Duo, it’s easy to overlook a simple fact: you have two 4:3 screens. With pretty much every console up to the GameCube using 4:3 as its standard aspect ratio, you have a colossal library of games that perfectly fill the screen for some glorious retro gaming. Naturally, not every game is a great fit. Precision platforming, or any kind of precise movement at all, I would probably stay away from. Touch controls are never a great fit for that. What you’re looking for are games where movement is more a means to an end. RPGs in particular fit this bill well, with Pokemon Colosseum being the game I’ve gone to first on the majority of my recent train rides to and from my place of employment. It just works. Using Dolphin MMJR2, you can have the game perfectly fit to the top screen, while placing all the touch controls on the bottom screen for an unobscured experience. I love that I don’t have to faff about finding the best widescreen cheat codes to stretch out what ends up being a tiny box on the ridiculously wide 19.5:9 displays of modern phones. I can just play games.

Coming back to the processor, while the 855 isn’t a modern flagship, it was still a flagship once upon a time, and can still hold its own. Every GameCube game I’ve thrown at it set at x2 internal resolution has been handled without slowdown. The crux to all of this is the battery. 3600mAh just isn’t enough, and barely gets me to the end of the day. If you were just using it as an emulation device it wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but as a daily driver, the waters become muddied. If it’s just scraping a day of use when I buy it, how long will it take for the battery to fall below that somewhat basic threshold? It’s hard to say, and it’s the biggest factor I’d steer people away from the device outside of its larger price point dilemma.

Should you buy a Surface Duo? Despite absolutely loving mine, I’m stuck in the mind of saying no. It’s a hard sell. Even at more than 50% off, I still paid £729 for the 256GB model. That’s a lot of money for what may ultimately devolve into an emulation handheld. I do think there’s some merit in two screens from a productivity standpoint, and I do prefer having two defined screens over Samsung’s folded design, but Microsoft is probably one or two iterations off perfection here. Wait and see, because I feel things are only going to get better.