Image: analog / Kotaku / Se_vector (Shutterstock)
Analogue Co.’s Pocket has always turned heads: first for being the most authentic Game Boy replacement ever announced, then for taking an extraordinary amount of time to finally come out. But hey it was, and it was pretty good. For some, its biggest drawback was that it required old and increasingly expensive physical cartridges to play, since (for the most part) it couldn’t just load convenient ROM files. The Pocket really needed something the kids call a “jailbreak,” at least if it was going to live up to its fantasy of being the ultimate Game Boy device. Today, that jailbreak just fell through the side door.
A little tidbit: When the Pocket finally shipped last December, it had only the simplest operating system and lacked many of the long-promised features, such as save states that back up your game progress (Analogue also didn’t release the originally announced Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket, or TurboGrafx-16 cart adapters.) Early adopters, happy as they were to have their uber Game Boys with beautiful retina-quality displays, realized that it would be quite time before the device in his hands actually finished.
The same went for potential developers wanting to make the new machine do fun new things. The Pocket contains two field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which programmers can reconfigure to closely approximate the hardware of another device. They’re wonderful for simulating classic video game systems, and hobbyist developers could certainly put them to great use, perhaps by developing new FPGA cores—that is, software that tells FPGAs how to configure themselves—to simulate even more consoles. But this feature was also delayed.
Fast forward to today. At 8:01am PT Analogue finally released a new version of Pocket’s analog operating system. Today’s Analogue OS v1.1 beta adds the long-promised “Library” and “Memories” features; the first shows information about the games you insert, the second is basically save states. v1.1 also finally opened up the system to developers, under the moniker “openFPGA”. As an example of what hobbyists can achieve with newly unlocked FPGAs, Analogue released an open FPGA core that simulated Spacewar!, one of the early video games. straightened up
And that was it. A nice and necessary update, but it also wasn’t the jailbreak that many people were hoping for. See you in another six months! (Actually, analog is analog, more likely eight.)
But then
About three hours later, at 11:23 a.m., a Github account called Spiritualized1997, created less than 24 hours earlier, uploaded a repository called openFPGA-GBA; a minute later, he uploaded another called openFPGA-GB-GBC. Each repository contained a single downloadable file. “To play Game Boy Advance on your Pocket, follow these instructions,” said the instructions accompanying the GBA repository, which described five steps to install a GBA v1.0.0 Spiritualized1997 kernel on your Pocket and run files ROME. The second repository offered similar instructions, but for a kernel running Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs.
So, to summarize: Today Analogue Pocket has the ability to run 3rd party FPGA cores. Three hours and 22 minutes later, the Pocket’s two most popular compatible laptops mysteriously received new third-party FPGA cores that could do the thing everyone wanted the Pocket to do since it came out: load games from ROM files stored on a microSD card. Is this… is the jailbreak finally?
Yes, yes it is. Or rather, the jailbreak has finally begun, because today’s two Nintendo v1.0.0 cores are just the first wave of what will clearly be a longer, more sustained release.
So what is going on here? Who is Spiritualized1997, and how the hell did they develop and release GBA and GB/GBC kernels for the Analogue Pocket just three hours after today’s Analogue OS v1.1 beta made it possible to run these things? Why is the account so new?
Most observers’ theory – which, to be clear, Kotaku can’t confirm – is that Spiritualized1997 is Kevin “Kevtris” Horton, a legend in the emulation scene and the FPGA emulation guru behind all Analogue FPGA-based gaming machines. He has worked on the Analogue NT mini (which played 8-bit NES games), the Super NT (SNES games), the Mega Sg (Sega Genesis games) and of course the Pocket.
Kevtris checks the popular Classic Gaming Discord today about 40 minutes after uploading the two unexpected FPGA cores. Screenshot: Kotaku
Horton has a history (now you’re thinking of a Dr. Seuss book) of releasing unofficial “jailbreak” firmware for Analogue Co. consoles. which he has helped develop, starting in 2017 when he uploaded the first jailbreak firmware for the NT mini. “The main store is officially open for business!” he wrote on the AtariAge forum, referring to the potential of making NT minigames work on a variety of systems, when until then he had only played 8-bit Nintendo games loaded from physical cartridges.
In case that left any doubt, he added, “Yeah, that means it runs ROM now!”
And that’s how it’s gone on every analog console since. Horton became a little more low-key after the NT mini-jailbreak, instead releasing their jailbreak firmwares through intermediaries like Smokemonster, the emulation and agitation scene movement. But people in the scene, with a wink and a nod, understand where these popular bits of hardware-enhancing software actually come from. (Previous analog consoles were closed platforms, so who else could have made them?)
That’s why many people felt that the wonderful hardware of the analog pocket would be freed to play games from ROM files. It’s been a long eight months, but today’s Spiritualized1997 FPGA cores are pretty much exactly what Pocket owners wanted, just in a slightly different form than usual: discrete FPGA cores that can be loaded using the new openFPGA feature of Pocket. This makes this “jailbreak” seem a bit more subtle than usual. This is not a firmware replacement, but alternative kernels that you use on the microSD card. The end result is exactly the same, though.
But again, this is just the beginning of a longer jailbreak process that will unfold over the next few months. After all, the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance are just three of the handhelds that people want to play Pocket on, not to mention the people clamoring to support TV-based consoles like the Genesis and SNES . The Spiritualized1997 FPGA cores, both with only v1.0.0, are also missing some features that the official Pocket built-in cores enjoy, most notably screen filters. These and other improvements are coming; the missing filters are apparently just because the openFPGA API is still immature.
Spiritualized1997, who only joined Github yesterday, is a very helpful person. Screenshot: Kotaku
Spiritualized1997, whoever they are, is also very active on Reddit. One user lamented the lack of a Sega Game Gear core, to which Spiritualized1997 replied, “Soon.” This apparently helpful person also released an 80MB archive containing 6,959 title screen images from Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Game Gear games that are, wouldn’t you know it, in exactly the special file format that the new Pocket “Library”. waiting feature So now you know how to make your library beautiful.
“This is great! The Pocket is finally waking up from its deep slumber,” said one Reddit user in response to the news of the two new FPGA cores. “I haven’t turned mine on [in] months!”
“Today has been a rollercoaster.” said another. “Sincerely, thank you!”
So while the sky didn’t part and there wasn’t a neon sign flashing “jailbreak is here!”, make no mistake, on July 29, 2022, the analog pocket finally got the key features that owners wish since December. But this jailbreak is not done once; this is slow and steady, and now that the bomb is ready, more cores compatible with the ROM will come over time. Game Gear first, apparently.
Kotaku reached out to Analogue Co. to make comments.
At the end of today’s Analogue OS v1.1 announcement, the company tweeted: “Analogue does not support or endorse the unauthorized use or distribution of material protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights.” .