My New Retro Handheld!

Paul Palmer

I decided to take the plunge recently get a new pocket retro gaming device. For the past several years, I’ve been using a Pocket Go S30. I’ve had it for probably six years or so, and while it wasn’t the best, it was just good enough to be what I wanted out of one of these things. It was cheap, around $65, it was small and portable, and it had an okay screen. It could run all the 2D retro, which is all I really wanted it to do.

My Pocket Go S30. I do like the SNES controller form.

But I finally decided to upgrade my rig, and get a Miyoo Mini Plus. It’s still cheap, around $60-65, and I even got it on a sale of 15% off on top of that. It’s very small and portable. And it plays everything 2D very well. But the screen is where the big difference is, that screen is much much nicer, with a higher resolution, and way better brightness. The Pocket Go S30 was difficult to play outside in the sun. Not this guy. The brightness levels are great, and playing it anywhere is a breeze. It also has WiFi, which my old one didn’t, which comes in handy when you just want to send over a game or two, instead of taking out the SD micro card.

The Miyoo Mini Plus! The screen is lovely in person.

I installed Onion OS, a custom made OS for the unit, as soon as I got it, which gives it a nice interface and a few really hand bells and whistles, such as the “gameswitch” feature, where pressing the menu button will save state your game and bring you to a menu where you can scroll through all your recent games and jump right into their game saves, making switching between recent games a breeze.

Overall I’m really happy with the purchase. I love having a little portable with me that I can take out at any time and quickly jump into and out of a game for a few minutes. Big props to Tech Geek for his YouTube channel, where he uses a lot of these types of gadgets, and is always talking this model up, which convinced me to take the plunge. His channel is also recommended just for great retro game titles to try out, he has great recommendations for ones I’ve usually not heard of, or at least tried.

There’s a ton of retro game consoles out there these days, and while you can get units that are more flashy than this, that can do PS2, GameCube or even later, I figure my Steam Deck can handle the bigger retro stuff. For 2D this little device works great, and I’ve already been taking it out and playing it more often than my Pocket Go S30.