After tinkering a bit with the RG28, I really believe now is the best time for Nintendo to make a sorta companion device for the Switch. Especially since it’s so large now. I’m a cripple as it is, and recently injured my back even more, so while playing handheld was alright before, it became a problem for me after just a few minutes. I have a 3DS and DSi modded, but I’ve played the crap outta those and they’re limited to just DS games. You can play GBA games on there, but it’s not a great experience. The ‘new’ 3DS is also a bit chonky, so when I was at my worst I mainly used my DSi. The RG28 is even smaller than that and it weighs practically nothing. Wonderful for my needs, but also super pocketable. Like it’s smaller than my wallet and it’s such a cheap device (build quality is fine, but at the end of the day 46 bucks is 46 bucks lol) it feels practically disposable… this thing is going with me everywhere.
All that to say, it makes me think Nintendo should make a companion device for the Switch themselves. Now the dream would be a retro handheld that’d span their entire NSO library, but to keep it cheap and make sense I could see them making a Game Boy Classic that has access to the NSO library of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games. Remake the Game Boy Micro design with USB C and modern/cheaper internals, and sell it for like $79. Done. Hell release a straight up “Nintendo Classic” console with SNES face buttons and have it play all of NSO games up to SNES and GBA. Make it look like a Game & Watch or one of those “Game Boy Macro” mods of DS lite bottom halfs.
You can emulate up to 16 bit on a potato and if they can sell the RG28 for $46 when it can play up to Dreamcast and PSP… I’d be SHOCKED if Nintendo couldn’t sell such a device for under a hundred bucks.
With how the tech industry is right now this would actually make sense for Nintendo. Would allow them to sell a more budget portable option again, no need to traditionally support it as it’d just get games alongside NSO updates. Hell, it’d be a solid bait to get people to sign up for NSO. Have it come with a few months free and get people to sign up for the service to continue using it with the promise of tossing them a few rom crumbs every other month. As a physical media collector I hate this new world and the idea of basically this thing being a subscription device, but the evil voice in my head says this is a future of maximizing profits that Nintendo should take…
Anyway, literally just 16gb of internal storage would be plenty for these old games. I think a little gadget like this would sell like crazy and it would be relatively cheap for Nintendo to make. Hell, similar to the NES Classic saving them during the Wii U era, I could see this device carrying them through the rampocalypse. Don’t need much ram for these old games lol.
Ideally it’d have built in wifi, especially for multiplayer capabilities, but even then if they do the Nintendo cheap whore thing I can see them have the capability to sync it with your switch or computer at home with a usb cable to do a license check and download updates. Outta the box it’ll at least work for a few months without syncing and have the latest (from manufacturing) library downloaded to the system.
Main thing would be to make this ultra cheap, like “do I buy a new game or this little handheld to tinker with..” cheap. It has to be cheap enough for people to impulse buy it.
ANYHOO …thought of this comic quite some time ago. Figured I’d easily have it done early October in time for spooky season. Then I injured my back. I’ve literally been bedridden for a month, the first week I couldn’t even lay down flat without pain. Fortunately over time I determined this is likely a muscle/tendon thing, not something more serious, but for folks my age such a thing can put you outta commission for like a month. And for me recovery is basically double that and the pain of a pinched nerve or tendon thing is magnified with my busted up fused back. Now I’d say the pain is down about 25-30% from what it was so I can sleep through the night at least, and even manage to draw a little bit at a time now! I wanted to get this out before Halloween, but I’m trying not to overstrain myself so I can heal up. Only managed to get it like 60% done pecking away at it a few minutes at a time over the last few weeks… Oh well. I’ll finish it eventually. Spooky themed, but not specifically Halloween themed, so I guess it’s not the worst thing to post it later. So look forward to that I guess lol.
Appreciate the little things, because simply being able to sit upright without pain is now a goal of mine instead of just a normal expected thing. Life might be hard sometimes, but don’t take your health for granted. Think about being sick and longingly thinking about when you could breathe normally. When it gets to more serious health issues it’s that feeling times a million.
Happy Halloween! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-K
