FPGBC - The Budget FPGA Handheld

Portable or handheld devices which play retro video games are very common these days. Companies like Anbernic and Powkiddy make multiple consoles which can emulate some very advanced video game consoles. The Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch can also emulate or run retro video games. These things are a dime a dozen these days and come in all shapes and sizes, but they all rely on software emulation. Until recently there has been one FPGA handheld console, the Analogue Pocket. In the past several months, a new challenger has entered the arena, the FPGBC from FunnyPlaying. In this article I will give my impressions of the device and review it on its own merits compared to the console it is trying to simulate, the Game Boy Color.

Nintendo's Console Accessory Cheapness

Nintendo's consoles have, for the most part, been somewhat high priced over the years. The company likes to keep it that way, you will not see a Nintendo console in a bargain bin or heavily discounted, even toward the end of its lifespan. The maintenance of price contributes to its "prestige branding." Nintendo usually makes a modest profit on the consoles it sells, unlike Sony and Microsoft it does not solely rely on software sales to make up the cost of hardware production. But those profits come at a price for the consumer, especially in Japan. Let's see how Nintendo cut costs when releasing consoles in its native country.

King's Quest IV - The First True PC Compatible Game

KQ4 Box, courtesy of MobyGames

When we think of PC Compatible games, thoughts of freedom may pop into one's mind. Intel, nVidia, AMD, gamers generally have a choice of which hardware to use in their systems. PC games have been, generally speaking, not tied to any particular manufacturer's hardware. Competition within the PC hardware market allowed consumers the luxury of choice. In the 1990s and onwards your motherboard could have been made by one manufacturer, your graphics card by another and so on and you could get a really good gaming experience. But this was not always the case, PC compatible games of the 1980s were often seen as lacking compared to other computers and generic PCs were content to clone rather than innovate. This all began to change in 1988 when King's Quest IV was released. In this blog article I will briefly summarize the evolution of PC gaming hardware and then discuss how KQ4 opened up PC gaming into what would eventually become the default non-console paradigm of how to play video games.