Rating: *****
So back in the middle of June story popped up on liliputing about a new handheld from Odroid. That looks like a gameboy pocket. The Odroid Go was release for Odroid 10th Anniversary.
The unit can be order from Amazon, but it best to order directly from Hard Kernel. Amazon is running for $54.94 ( $49.95 + 8.99 S&H ), from Hard Kernel if you pay with Paypal, you can get for $48 ( $32 + 16 S&H ). Shipping from Hard Kernel from South Korea is unbelievable fast. Usually take 7 days or less. The unit that was order for this review took 6 days by FebEx.
The unit comes in a nice little box. The instruction can be found here. Assembly doesn’t take long and is very easy. The only tricky part is LCD, need to be careful not to break it. There no soldering, which means a child could assemble.
Once assemble, next part is to prepare the SD card. They recommend an 8 Gig MicroSD card, but a 4 Gig card could be used. The card needs to be Fat32, so if it’s a new card, there is no need to format it. Just unzip sdcard.zip on to the new card. The data directory appears to be used for the game saves. The roms well, nuff said.
When copying roms to the rom folder on the SD Card, make sure roms are not compress ( ie.. rar, zip, or tar. ), they must show their extension.
The Odroid Go plays the following systems
Nintendo Entertain System (.nes)
Gameboy (.gb)
Gameboy Color (.gbc)
Sega Master System (.sms)
Game Gear (.gg)
Once card is prepare, simple place in the back and turn the unit on. The menu is simple, select emulator, then select the rom. Use the down arrows to select, or press right on the dpad to page down, and left to page up. To exit the game play, simply press the menu button.
As it exits, it will do a game save. When rom loads, blue does an ease of the last rom that was loaded, the green is the rom loading.
The lcd is backlite, which is great on the 2.4″ lcd screen. Game play feels like the systems that it is emulating. If a rom isn’t running there is a screen save to protect the screen.
It’s not prefect, there been a few roms that don’t load, and the system had to be reset. Lucky, it easy to do. It seems with some of the NES roms that are Mode 7, like Castlevania III, only load a black screen. The unit has to be reset.
Odroid Go can be to program Arduino, which is great so beside being used for entertain, it can be use to learn to program.
The price is great for a simple handheld, most Gameboy Zeroes go for anywhere $250 to $300. A Raspberry Pi 3, with case, controller, and SD can be about $100 starting.