I just play Steam Deck and write about gaming + Linux a lot
Have you tried Aliexpress?
From what I’ve seen, that is the option which saves the most on shipping. Anbernic’s own site adds way too much with shipping, but when they sell on Aliexpress that drops so significantly. I’ve seen a few users saying it is the way to go, so maybe it is worth a look!
(And I totally understand, with those handhelds the power to run GBA games is well in hand, but the form factor of this RGSP is a beautiful nod to the original!)
If you’ve got some nostalgia for playing the Game Boy Advance back when it was the thing, then this might scratch that nostalgia itch you didn’t know you had :)
The R36S is a pretty unique device. It is very low powered, by the retro handheld industry standards. It is very cheap (by anyone’s standards), and it is not built, maintained nor shipped by any one single company. The strengths of it is that it is so widely available, and one of the smartest developers I know (bmdhacks, who recently joined in as the lead dev for ARMSX2) swears by them. In fact I covered his work for the R36S specifically, not so long ago:
https://gardinerbryant.com/the-anatomy-of-an-impossible-port/
But it really is as entry-level-to-the-hobby as you can get. There are infinitely more powerful devices all over the place. This one, the RGSP is just…different. It is specifically designed to be about as good as you can hope for to play GBA games, but also covers most systems up to PSX.
Comparing the two is waaaaay too apples to oranges to make much sense here. While they technically do the same thing, they do it so differently that owning one over the other (or both) makes as much sense whichever way you cut it :)
I’ve had so many SP’s, but I think while I adore the form factor so much, the modern conveniences of things like save states, fast-forwarding, the display and all the other bits make this the logical choice…for me.
Physical it feels exactly the same in my hands, a perfect little boxy box :)
But seems like the tape mod is supposed to work pretty well?
I wouldn’t even call these the most clicky-clicky. They are a bit, but they’re really fine. Two layers will dampen that totally though, and you’ll have zero issues at all. I really can’t recommend this one enough, if you’re after GBA games as good as they can be!
This one solves that! Close the lid and it will suspend right there until you open it :)
And being Linux means that the battery life will be much better with that closed-lid suspension over what Android would manage!!!
Sony used these when they announced, launched and advertised the PSP!
I have a gallery of a ton of these giant PSPs they made in this article I did, if you wanna see more:
https://gardinerbryant.com/my-psp-scrapbook-part-retrospective-part-collage/
If it doesn’t, I highly recommend the OSTENT 1,400 mAh batteries. Higher capacity than the original and they work perfectly. 100% the one to choose!
Oh absolutely. This was exactly me for the longest time. I review retro handhelds, so I’ve had everything from the entry-level to the high power ones (like the Odin 3 Max). I thought you couldn’t get better than upscaled graphics and save states, but when I got a re-obsession semi-recently with the PSP:
https://gardinerbryant.com/tag/psp/
…I’ve realized that native hardware just has magic to it. The handheld is slim, the design is retro futuristic in the best way (in my eyes), the jailbreak and add-ons are invaluable and the experience is just fun. I’ve just reviewed the Retroid Pocket Nova, am reviewing the Anbernic RG SP, and have a couple more on the way, but that isn’t stopping me absolutely loving WipEout on my PSPs :)
So recently, I spent a fair time chatting with the creator of PSPunk, a website I’m sure many here might have visited. But that chatting (which ended up being an interview) pivoted instead to something a bit different from what I usually end up doing with articles.
Rather than just talking about the website itself, we ended up discussing the people who keep older gaming communities alive. We covered how PSPunk started as a simple custom firmware guide, why preserving guides and community knowledge is just as important as preserving games themselves, the modern PSP homebrew scene, and why the handheld still has such an active community more than 20 years after launch. You might recognize me from a few PSP articles I’ve done these last months, I just…think they’re neat:
It was also interesting hearing from someone who doesn’t consider themselves a developer or a major figure in the scene, just “a helpful user who creates guides.” I think that humility says a lot about projects like this, because every community needs people documenting, organizing and preserving information just as much as it needs people writing the software.
That and the ending (V for Vendetta) were the sections I wrote in this article. Because as soon as I saw the news, it was all I could think of :(
“For some people the choice to use a bot or not is a choice of having the job, or not.”
That would be Gardiner’s side of the article. I contributed by wroting two sections on this one:
Just to explain whose take is whose for this little article, at least.
But I do still think search would be nice
I gave them all my feedback, and they have said that firmware updates will bring this and other features in as improvements. This isn’t in users’ hands yet, so (ironically) my waffling review actually did some help for them and users who end up with them!
No, this is the on/off (and lock) switch, by pressing it in, but it is the volume wheel!
Hi there!
I am not Gardiner, but he is one of my best friends! While you’ll know Gardiner from his YouTube (I assume!), he and I run the site together, equally. His focus will be no surprise to you, but mine is almost entirely the gaming scene, and then some forays into new things :)
I had a LG G6 for awhile, which had the lovely focus of quad-DAC and made sound beautiful
Such a shame they no longer make phones :(
Edit: worth saying: thanks for posting this though, I am interested in seeing gadgets and it is an interesting design and has unique features.
Thank you! Don’t worry, zero offense taken! These things are pretty niche these days, so you’re well and truly in the majority with that POV!
I can take my phone and stream music from my server. If I really want to I can download to the phone (simple drag and drop KDE connect style or syncthing if I want to go that route). I use only FLAC by the way.
This is the important part here, the quality of those files is dependent on the DAC your phone has. Phones don’t place much emphasis on high-quality DAC implementation because they’re built more for things like for convenience, battery life, and mass-market audio (think Bluetooth earbuds and streaming compression). They’ll play your FLACs for sure, but the internal DAC and amp stage are usually an afterthought rather than a focus.
This one’s built around the Cirrus Logic CS43198 chip, which has one purpose in life: make sound good!
In the end these won’t be super convenient for most. But there’s plenty of people who want to drop using their phone for everything now, or who want to try out a new way of listening to music.
A few months back I had a grand plan about buying a ton of options, going from entry level to high-end, a refurbished and done up iPod, a Zune, a feature on the PSP’s sound capabilities…but after two or three I got distracted
Reviewing this was a pleasure, and reminded me why something like this little fellow is magic for music. The sound difference between FLAC on this V.S. streaming is enormous!
I’m so glad you liked my artivle/review/impressions! :)
You can check it from the source themselves
Good point, I should have been a little clearer with my wording. The hypervisor technique itself isn’t a Linux invention, and you’re right that the underlying method originated from Windows research.
The Linux angle is more about how the community has been applying it now: using Proton/Wine compatibility layers to run Windows games on Linux in a way that interacts differently with Denuvo’s checks. That distinction is what made it interesting from a totally Linux gaming perspective, especially given how unusual it is for Linux compatibility layers to become part of the discussion around a major DRM breakthrough.
I’ll update the article wording because “Linux-based breakthrough” makes it sound like Linux created the exploit itself, which isn’t what I intended!
Dodi was lovely. At the time he was literally getting married (the day before, of or after…I forget exactly which!), in Egypt which is his home. FitGirl is far funnier than I expected, we used to check in every now and then, but that has long-since ended. She’s also got an iron-clad no press rule nowdays. Empress was brilliant, I’ll fight tooth and nail on that, in the early days she was brilliant. But…that ‘front’ wasn’t put up, she was and is quite ‘unique’ in her views.
There was a few others too, I found it really interesting to reach out to these names, they were all just quite surprised because few ever did!
Have you tried Aliexpress?
From what I’ve seen, that is the option which saves the most on shipping. Anbernic’s own site adds way too much with shipping, but when they sell on Aliexpress that drops so significantly. I’ve seen a few users saying it is the way to go, so maybe it is worth a look!