300 NES games in your BittBoy pocket
In the retro gaming scene there are a number of emulation units that attempt to bring the good old days in to the modern era through home consoles and portable devices. A lot of the time, these are pretty poor quality which are short lived and often disappear fairly quickly. So when BittBoy got in touch and asked me to review their new portable NES emulation unit I wasn't expecting anything to amazing, boy was I wrong.
300 NES games to pick from for just $39, in a tiny Gameboy style body and it's available in black, yellow, blue, white and red. The 2.5" screen is good quality with strong vivid colours with no bleeding that I saw. There is a single speaker in the bottom corner for mono sound which does get loud enough to annoy people on our morning commute to the office.
At the bottom, there is a Micro USB port for charging the 500mAh battery, and a port to connect the BittBoy to a TV, and on the right hand side, you will find the volume dial.
Strangely, there is a small slot at the top that looks like a Micro SD card slot, however, there is no supporting mechanism inside, so if you do decide to drop in your memory card you'll have to open up your BittBoy to get your card back.
I thought a random pic next my Nintendo Switch might help show just how small the BittBoy and the portabilty compared to the significantly bigger Switch.
On the front is a decent size control pad, four buttons, Select, Start and a reset button identified by the "R" for when you want to switch to one of the other 300 games in the system.
Passing the BittBoy over to friends in the office, I found people hitting the "A" button to select a game where in actual fact you have to hit the Start button, although a minor point, almost everyone said the same thing "Why can't I start the game?" However, once they were in and Mari Bros started up, there were little crowds of people huddling together to get a glimpse and try to steal a go before I had to take it back and stop a riot breaking out.
There are some real classics in there, including the likes of Bomber Man, Super Mario, Bros. 3, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon, Tetris, Pac-Man, Balloon Fight and Gradius to name a few. Since it is an emulation device, they have also added in some questionable games too, like Man in Red and Street Fighter V, but that is also part of the fun.
Battery life, I got about 4 hours play before needing to recharge BittBoy which is not bad but if you are on a long journey then take a battery pack.
Given its tiny size and the selection of games available, I carried the BittBoy around a lot more than I thought I would, giving me and some onlookers a little smile every time I got hit by a Koopa in Super Mario Bros. 3!
Written by
Zeeshan Mallick
Co-Founder of SuperRetroGamer.com
