TL,DR: If PICO-8 is your highest priority, no preferable alternative exists anywhere near the RGB30's price point. The next best options are probably the TRIMUI Smart Pro or the Miyoo Mini v4, but both have serious shortcomings relative to the RGB30, including the fact that neither can run the PICO-8 binary natively, and the workarounds they employ can negatively impact performance¹ ². At any price, Android or FPGA-based devices are non-starters, and I would strongly discourage you from considering anything with a 640x480 (or 320x240) display. The Steam Deck might be the best handheld for playing PICO-8, but it's much more expensive and a fundamentally different device. Similarly, the Anbernic RG552 could be an attractive option if it isn't your primary/only gaming handheld AND price isn't a factor.
==========
A good PICO-8 handheld has one absolutely mandatory quality, it must be able to run PICO-8. That may seem ridiculously obvious, but it's important to note that there is no Android port of PICO-8, and therefore most Retroid, AYN, and AYANEO offerings, as well as many Anbernic devices (as well as any other Android-based retro handhelds) can't run PICO-8 natively. While emulation is technically possible, it's incredibly complicated and only barely works³. (Sidenote: other than the RGB30, the only 1:1 720p retro handheld in development that I'm aware of is the ZPG A1 Unicorn⁴. Regrettably, it will run Android, which is a huge bummer.) This issue is even more pronounced on FPGA-based devices like the Analogue Pocket. The Pocket's 1600x1440 screen is nearly perfect for 1:1 content, but PICO-8 obviously doesn't have any native hardware to be emulated (or whatever terminology you prefer to use, I don't want to get drawn into the FPGA holy wars). Theoretically someone could develop a powerful enough x86 Pocket core to run an OS that you could maybe run the PICO-8 runtime and its Lua interpreter inside... but that's so convoluted it hardly merits discussion.
In short, you need a Linux-based handheld, which is a good start, because there are lots of them, and plenty of custom OSs/frontends under development like EmuELEC, ArkOS, JELOS, MinUI, OnionOS/GarlicOS etc. Only some of these will run the PICO-8 binary natively, but as is the case with so many retro handheld topics, Retro Game Corps has a guide that can be useful for sorting out the specific details for each device and OS⁵.
Next, it would stand to reason that for the best PICO-8 experience you'd want a handheld with a square-ish display. However, I'd argue that aspect ratio doesn't actually matter very much, and what you're really looking for is something with enough vertical pixels to get you clean integer scaling of the PICO-8's native 128x128 output with minimal black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The black bars on the left and right don't matter very much, in my opinion. Shaun Inman's Console to Screen tool⁶ is very useful for visualizing these details. Using that tool, if you set the console to PICO-8, enable integer scaling, and select any of the devices with a 640x480 resolution, you'll see that the top and bottom black bars are mostly responsible for the PICO-8's square output looking like a postage stamp when it isn't utilizing enough of the screen. In contrast, devices like the RGB30 and Steam Deck can reach 5x and 6x integer scaling respectively, while sacrificing very few vertical pixels. Impressively (and somewhat inexplicably), the Anbernic RG552 features a 1920x1152 IPS display, which accommodates 9x integer scaling without a single wasted vertical pixel, but that was an expensive device with some serious warts when it came out over two years ago. Its price-to-performance ratio was bad then, and it's even more difficult to recommend in 2024. Having said that, Russ from Retro Game Corps loves it⁷, and I could imagine the RG552 filling a very specific role for someone who owns several gaming handhelds and has already made their peace with spending way too much money on this hobby.
The TL,DR spoiled the ending, but the two affordable retro handhelds I could find featuring PICO-8-friendly resolutions are the TRIMUI Smart Pro and the Miyoo Mini v4. The v4 is particularly interesting to me because the original Miyoo Mini is the device that sent me (and many others) down this rabbit hole in the first place. Eventually, Miyoo couldn't keep up with demand for the Mini because they could no longer source the original display component (reportedly an OEM Blackberry replacement screen). So they slightly redesigned the Mini, critically (for the purposes of this discussion) swapping out the original 640x480 display with a 750x560 panel. Those 80 additional vertical pixels enable 4x integer scaling for PICO-8, as illustrated by this graphic from a post on Reddit⁸. The leftmost image is a screenshot of maximally integer scaled PICO-8 on a Miyoo Mini+, then on an original Miyoo Mini, followed by the v4, and finally an isolated screenshot of a comparable PICO-8 frame without black bars. That slight improvement in resolution really does make a difference. Disappointingly, the Miyoo Mini's lack of wireless connectivity options means no access to Splore. That leaves us with the TRIMUI Smart Pro, which I have never even seen in person, let alone used. I'm probably the wrong person to offer any recommendation here. But Russ from Retro Game Corps⁹ and TechDweeb¹⁰ both gave it positive reviews, and its 1080x720 display, responsive controls and decent performance check all the relevant boxes for this exercise.
The other important-but-perhaps-not-essential feature is built in Wi-Fi. Sure, PICO-8 games are small, and easy to move around, and there are plenty of places to find them. (Including OP's game on itch.io. You should try it! It's fun!) So downloading game files on the web, doing the MicroSD card dance, and importing them manually on your handheld isn't the end of the world. But why would you do any of that when you could just use Splore? Splore is maybe the coolest thing about PICO-8. It's the hook that makes me open PICO-8 first when I turn on my RGB30 without any specific intention, just looking for something to play for a bit. The lack of wireless connectivity in the Miyoo Mini v4 may be a dealbreaker with this in mind, and the TRIMUI Smart Pro might therefore be the only direct RGB30 competitor, for now anyway.
"Decent" feels like the correct word to describe the RGB30.
To be clear, I'm ultimately glad I bought it, and it's germane to this discussion that the release of the RGB30 is what got me interested in PICO-8 in the first place (I had apparently purchased a license years ago as part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on itch.io and didn't even realize it until late last year). Also, the 720p 1:1 display is one of those developments that in retrospect feels so perfect for this form factor it ought to have been obvious, but it was a weird move at the time and they deserve full credit for taking the risk.
Having said that, I want to love this thing, but I just can't. Mainly because the D-pad sucks. It's not unusable, but it's worse than my Miyoo Mini and Anbernic devices, worse by a mile than my 8BitDo controllers, worse still than my Hori Fighting Commander, worse than even my Steam Decks (which have sort of weird D-pads themselves)... you get the point. It's annoying that the device on which I would prefer to play 8 & 16 bit games at a 1:1/8:7 resolution has—out of everything I own—by far the worst controller for exactly those games.
The ergonomics also leave a bit to be desired. Again, like the D-pad, it's not so uncomfortable as to be unusable, though I much prefer pairing it with a 3D printed grip I bought from ComfortGrips on Etsy¹. That obviously makes it a much less pocketable device, which isn't a big deal for me, but might be for others.
Finally, I hesitate to critique the software experience, because on the whole I'm incredibly impressed with how much improvement I've seen (both in terms of quality and frequency of updates) to JELOS in the nearly five months I've owned the RGB30. But the fact remains that that confusing preference conflicts, occasional crashes, frequent sleep/wake flakiness, ridiculously bad battery drain when asleep or even fully powered off (which thankfully has been cleaned up in recent updates)... they're all just facts of life with the RGB30. It was honestly kind of shocking coming from OnionOS on the Miyoo Mini which is absolutely rock solid in comparison. But that's obviously a less powerful device with a completely different form factor.
Anyway, as lagniappe correctly pointed out, PowKiddy makes budget devices, which means they're generally inexpensive enough to take a flyer on despite their limitations, and the RGB30 is arguably the best thing they've ever made.
One of my few genuine regrets is not attending St. John's College when I was fairly aggressively courted as a high school applicant. (I may nevertheless attend one day, and be the weird old guy reading the Great Books curriculum with my new friends: several teenagers confounded and dismayed by my presence.)
The reading list for their Masters program in Eastern Classics [https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/graduate/masters-easte...] —while not exclusively focused on "philosophy" per se— presents a great deal of material and a framework for approaching the texts that anyone, Johnnie or not, may find valuable.
I always wondered about whether that was meant to have any practical function. (Protective cushioning at the expense of board feel? Shoes stay on better while untied?)
This is actually a really interesting footnote in the history of Nike's evolution and expansion into different markets. They (as well as Adidas and the other big brands) had been trying like hell to entice skaters to wear Nikes with little success. Much of what they released was really techy looking (like: http://skately.com/library/shoes/nike-sb-zoom-tre or: http://skately.com/library/shoes/nike-sb-url ) and you would have been mocked for wearing them.
But there was a history of some of skateboarding's most iconic figures wearing Nikes, particularly Jordan 1s but also Blazers and Dunks, in the 80s and early 90s. And it turned out that if you took a Dunk Low, overstuffed the tongue, and added some Nike cushioning tech
(bonus points for stitching a Chocolate logo on the heel: https://www.kicksonfire.com/nike-sb-skateboarding-releases/n... ), it fit in just fine with the Osirises of the world that were popular at that time, or classics like the eS Koston, and performed at least as well, if not better (while, critically, not appearing to be built for performance at all).
To your point, Nike quickly leveraged that "vintage cool" aspect that only they could offer, plus collaborations with artists like Geoff McFetridge who had credibility among skaters (and maybe more importantly, among photographers and videographers who shot them), to finally convince skaters that they could wear Nikes without turning into a jock or a dork.
Hypebeasts trying desperately to get the hot new whatever and coming up empty handed, thereby increasing anticipation for the next drop, is a feature not a bug.
There have been numerous Supreme x Nike collaborations, starting (I believe) with this Nike SB Dunk in 2002: https://www.flightclub.com/nike-dunk-low-pro-sb-black-black-... which at the time were arguably the most sought after sneakers in the world, and still command over a thousand dollars a pair.
And while Supreme never produced any shoes themselves, for many years neither did A Bathing Ape (and the BAPEsta's and their collabs with Adidas were hardly a core part of their business). Nevertheless BAPE is also a brand that utilized the same hype+scarcity model and has always been associated with sneakerhead culture.
The fact remains that anyone who self-identifies as a sneakerhead has known about and most likely worn Supreme for a decade or two. This is not a new development. The new buyers (and the fact that you tend to see more and more Supreme out in the world and on social media) aren't a result of the subculture finding a new obsession. Rather, what was once a niche has gone way mainstream, and tons of people who were never associated with sneaker culture have become interested in the trend.
To wit, by the time the Supreme Foamposites mentioned in the article were released in 2014, many dedicated sneakerheads would have argued that Supreme was completely played out, usurped by herbs, normals and—shudder—teenagers. (Then in 2015 they all went out and bought the camo Jordan 5 collab anyway.)
Not that any of these "peek into the subculture" style articles ever get all the details just right but this:
Then, in the spring of 2014, the company announced a collaboration with Nike on a basketball sneaker called the Foamposite. Supreme had collaborated with sneaker companies for years, but Foamposites were especially prized by sneakerheads. All of a sudden, Supreme had a whole new audience—one already accustomed to limited releases and camping out to get them.
is a glaring error. Supreme has never not been a favored brand of sneakerheads, and that relationship surely didn't start with Odd Future or some recent Nike collaboration. It goes all the way back to the 90s/early 00s when everybody on Niketalk was pairing box logo tees with their vintage Air Maxes and, contrary to the assertions in the article, all these brands (Supreme, Stussy, Freshjive, etc) were transitioning away from being purely skate/surf focused and starting down the streetwear path they've been on ever since.
Being a weird is far more dangerous than being a normal. We agree.
Being gay is far more dangerous than being straight.
Being Muslim in a majority Christian or Hindu society is far more dangerous than being a adherent of the prevailing religion.
We could list examples all day, but it's a plainly obvious phenomenon. What I want to know is why so many people seem to act as if there's inherent moral superiority in being in the majority. There isn't.
(Also, cute bit of doublespeak characterizing a challenge to orthodoxy as "thought policing".)
Oh come the fuck on, if that's the position you're going to take at least own up to it.
I asked why his continued employment ought to be predicated on never giving the impression that he holds beliefs that people like you find offensive.
You say "It's not." But it obviously was. We can all see that it was, that's what TFA (as well as all the other press about Lucky in the last 12 months) is about: His perceived beliefs, how unacceptable they are to you, and whether or not he ought to be cast out as a consequence.
What you meant to say was "He should have known better than to give the impression that he believes things that I, and people like me, disapprove of."
No one is beyond reproach. But it would be nice if those reproachments were saved for people's actual words and actions rather than a laundry list of prejudices and assumptions extrapolated from a single data point. It would be even nicer if we could agree that disapproval of one or more of someone's political opinions doesn't require that they be made UNTOUCHABLE and banished.
If you said you were a Democrat, and voted for Democrats, but dated a vocal Republican, and donated to non-profits who were doing work you believed would do some good in the world regardless of whether they passed ideological purity tests, I'd call you a breath of fresh air.
You're right, he could have continued with his work had he simply avoided ever giving anyone the impression he held any beliefs which varied from THE ORTHODOXY.
VR is impressive tech, but is Luckey a time traveler now? He went back to 2008, publicly supported and voted for Ron Paul to give himself plausible deniability for his future support of Trump? (EDIT: I'm leaving this error here, but Bob Barr was the Libertarian party candidate in 2008, and Palmer wasn't yet voting age. He would have needed to time travel to 2012 and vote for Gary Johnson, I suppose.)
Are you unwilling to even consider the possibility that Palmer is actually a libertarian, and holds beliefs consistent with mainstream libertarian positions? The 'evidence' in that article includes him liking posts on Twitter indicating he probably dislikes Hillary Clinton (something he would have in common with virtually all libertarians), supports Wikileaks (again, pretty common among libertarians), and that he frequently likes tweets/retweets from his girlfriend (common among virtually all young adults in CURRENT_YEAR who like being in a relationship).
It's pretty flimsy stuff, but presumably all the author could find to prop up the main bit, that Palmer donated to a non-profit with roots on T_D (which, obviously, is a cesspool) that…never seemed to do much of anything as far as I can tell.
I'm not "surprised" people call him a Trump supporter as a consequence, people say all kinds of dumb and unfounded things every day. I'm asking you to provide evidence for the assertion you made, or perhaps to reflect on why you (and seemingly everyone else in our culture) are so quick to label anyone with whom you have any difference in ideology as THE BIG BAD OTHER.
Why do you presume that someone who made the public statement "I am a libertarian who has publicly supported Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in the past, and I plan on voting for Gary in this election as well" is a Trump supporter?
I mostly agree with you, but you're off by about an order of magnitude (±0.5) on Snap's revenue numbers. They did about $60 million in 2015, and were projecting 4x that for this year.
I'm not a believer myself—not that I don't find Snapchat compelling, just not necessarily $18-35 billion compelling—but here's my best shot at a devil's advocate argument.
Snapchat is the proverbial 'new MTV' that marketers have been waiting to see appear on the internet for perhaps 20 years. Huge numbers of young people use it daily. Engagement is great, perhaps unlike any other consumer internet product: you watch it the way you watch tv. Just queue up a bunch of stories and stare at it for a while. Advertisers and the brands they represent like this. A lot.
The newly renamed Snap Inc has even greater ambitions. They aim to be the 'new Apple.' A consumer electronics line that achieves more than customer loyalty, something more like emotional commitment. The sort of 'brand identity' that gets written about in textbooks but rarely actually exists in the world. A company that produces functional gadgets that are meant to be flaunted like jewelry.
Is Evan Spiegel the 'new Steve Jobs'? Personally, I doubt it. But there are plenty of wealthy and connected people who seem very invested in that notion becoming reality.
Having lived in California for 30 years—in arguably every major city in the state (LA, SF, San Diego, San Jose), multiple times in multiple neighborhoods of each—fully autonomous point-to-point car sharing networks honestly sound less pie-in-the-sky to me than a mass transit system that is efficient OR well funded.
But we did just spend twenty billion dollars on a bullet train from Bakersfield to Merced, so there's that, I guess.
It's also worth noting that regardless of which keyboard or combination of apps you're using on Android, it's not possible to send an animated GIF as an MMS attachment without dropping so many frames that the clip becomes essentially unwatchable.
If you're sending a Hangouts message (Google account to Google account) it works just fine. Otherwise, even if you roll all your SMS/MMS activity into the Hangouts app, no dice.
==========
A good PICO-8 handheld has one absolutely mandatory quality, it must be able to run PICO-8. That may seem ridiculously obvious, but it's important to note that there is no Android port of PICO-8, and therefore most Retroid, AYN, and AYANEO offerings, as well as many Anbernic devices (as well as any other Android-based retro handhelds) can't run PICO-8 natively. While emulation is technically possible, it's incredibly complicated and only barely works³. (Sidenote: other than the RGB30, the only 1:1 720p retro handheld in development that I'm aware of is the ZPG A1 Unicorn⁴. Regrettably, it will run Android, which is a huge bummer.) This issue is even more pronounced on FPGA-based devices like the Analogue Pocket. The Pocket's 1600x1440 screen is nearly perfect for 1:1 content, but PICO-8 obviously doesn't have any native hardware to be emulated (or whatever terminology you prefer to use, I don't want to get drawn into the FPGA holy wars). Theoretically someone could develop a powerful enough x86 Pocket core to run an OS that you could maybe run the PICO-8 runtime and its Lua interpreter inside... but that's so convoluted it hardly merits discussion.
In short, you need a Linux-based handheld, which is a good start, because there are lots of them, and plenty of custom OSs/frontends under development like EmuELEC, ArkOS, JELOS, MinUI, OnionOS/GarlicOS etc. Only some of these will run the PICO-8 binary natively, but as is the case with so many retro handheld topics, Retro Game Corps has a guide that can be useful for sorting out the specific details for each device and OS⁵.
Next, it would stand to reason that for the best PICO-8 experience you'd want a handheld with a square-ish display. However, I'd argue that aspect ratio doesn't actually matter very much, and what you're really looking for is something with enough vertical pixels to get you clean integer scaling of the PICO-8's native 128x128 output with minimal black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The black bars on the left and right don't matter very much, in my opinion. Shaun Inman's Console to Screen tool⁶ is very useful for visualizing these details. Using that tool, if you set the console to PICO-8, enable integer scaling, and select any of the devices with a 640x480 resolution, you'll see that the top and bottom black bars are mostly responsible for the PICO-8's square output looking like a postage stamp when it isn't utilizing enough of the screen. In contrast, devices like the RGB30 and Steam Deck can reach 5x and 6x integer scaling respectively, while sacrificing very few vertical pixels. Impressively (and somewhat inexplicably), the Anbernic RG552 features a 1920x1152 IPS display, which accommodates 9x integer scaling without a single wasted vertical pixel, but that was an expensive device with some serious warts when it came out over two years ago. Its price-to-performance ratio was bad then, and it's even more difficult to recommend in 2024. Having said that, Russ from Retro Game Corps loves it⁷, and I could imagine the RG552 filling a very specific role for someone who owns several gaming handhelds and has already made their peace with spending way too much money on this hobby.
The TL,DR spoiled the ending, but the two affordable retro handhelds I could find featuring PICO-8-friendly resolutions are the TRIMUI Smart Pro and the Miyoo Mini v4. The v4 is particularly interesting to me because the original Miyoo Mini is the device that sent me (and many others) down this rabbit hole in the first place. Eventually, Miyoo couldn't keep up with demand for the Mini because they could no longer source the original display component (reportedly an OEM Blackberry replacement screen). So they slightly redesigned the Mini, critically (for the purposes of this discussion) swapping out the original 640x480 display with a 750x560 panel. Those 80 additional vertical pixels enable 4x integer scaling for PICO-8, as illustrated by this graphic from a post on Reddit⁸. The leftmost image is a screenshot of maximally integer scaled PICO-8 on a Miyoo Mini+, then on an original Miyoo Mini, followed by the v4, and finally an isolated screenshot of a comparable PICO-8 frame without black bars. That slight improvement in resolution really does make a difference. Disappointingly, the Miyoo Mini's lack of wireless connectivity options means no access to Splore. That leaves us with the TRIMUI Smart Pro, which I have never even seen in person, let alone used. I'm probably the wrong person to offer any recommendation here. But Russ from Retro Game Corps⁹ and TechDweeb¹⁰ both gave it positive reviews, and its 1080x720 display, responsive controls and decent performance check all the relevant boxes for this exercise.
The other important-but-perhaps-not-essential feature is built in Wi-Fi. Sure, PICO-8 games are small, and easy to move around, and there are plenty of places to find them. (Including OP's game on itch.io. You should try it! It's fun!) So downloading game files on the web, doing the MicroSD card dance, and importing them manually on your handheld isn't the end of the world. But why would you do any of that when you could just use Splore? Splore is maybe the coolest thing about PICO-8. It's the hook that makes me open PICO-8 first when I turn on my RGB30 without any specific intention, just looking for something to play for a bit. The lack of wireless connectivity in the Miyoo Mini v4 may be a dealbreaker with this in mind, and the TRIMUI Smart Pro might therefore be the only direct RGB30 competitor, for now anyway.
1. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wT-8T71edmk
2. https://github.com/liartes/retro8/releases/tag/retro8-trimui...
3. https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=104423
4. https://twitter.com/Z_Pocket_Game
5. https://retrogamecorps.com/2020/11/12/guide-pico-8-on-retro-...
6. https://shauninman.com/utils/screens/#src_screen:17,src_nn:1...
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUjJa1pA9tE
8. https://preview.redd.it/3tg9khrr9cic1.jpg?width=1232&format=...
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUEED4ht3lQ
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36Sv5pFlr4