The Analogue Pocket is back with even more variants. Today the company announced four new limited-edition retro handhelds encased in anodized aluminum. They’re beautiful and expensive, and Analogue is leaning into the FOMO with one-time-only pre-orders for “ highly limited quantities [that] will never be sold again.”
The Analogue Pocket Aluminum Editions are precision CNC’d, meaning they are cut from blocks of metal rather than, in the words of CEO Christopher Taber, being made from “casted bullshit.” There are four colors—natural, noir, black, and indigo—and each one will set you back $500. They go on sale on July 15 at 11:00 a.m. and begin shipping July 17. “These are fucking nuts,” Taber wrote in an email.
If the Analogue Pocket’s past is anything to go off of, the PlayStation 5-sized price tag won’t scare collectors and retro enthusiasts away. The devices use field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips to run Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges exactly how you remember them. The latest in a series of console recreations from Analogue, the handhelds launched in 2021 and, due in part to supply chain issues resulting from the pandemic, remained perpetually sold out and incessantly hard to find, up until recently.
Last fall, the company announced Game Boy Color variants aimed at recapturing the pure joy of holding a device in your hands that pops with all the colors of the Zebra bubble gum rainbow. These aluminum models are instead channeling the brushed aluminum look of certain Game Boy SP editions when the brand was aiming to be a bit more reserved and refined. Personally, I’m hoping Analogue comes back this Christmas with a mash-up of both bright colors and cold metal.
Somehow I suspect that whatever comes next, Analogue’s plans for more editions of the Pocket aren’t done yet. The company is also currently working on a version of the Nintendo 64 called the Analogue 3D.
