Analogue Pocket breathes new life into the iconic Game Boy Camera: Digital Photography Review

The Similar bags finally arrived after many delays. Analogue Pocket is a handheld device that looks like a modern Game Boy. Basically To be a Game Boy. It includes custom computer hardware to play any official Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges. It also works with trolleys from other handheld gaming systems, like the Game Gear and Neo Geo Pocket Color. For those who don’t like gaming, don’t worry, there’s a digital photography corner on the way.

Back in February 1998, Nintendo released the Game Boy Camera in Japan. It arrived in North America and Europe in June of the same year. Accessories that attach to your Game Boy like an ink cartridge and include a rotatable digital camera. By today’s standards, the camera is vintage. Even by 1998 standards, it was still a very low resolution digital camera. The Game Boy camera has a 128 x 128 pixel CMOS image sensor that produces 128 x 112 images with four shades of gray. That’s a whopping 14.34 kgpixels or 0.001434 megapixels.

However, don’t let the diminutive specs fool you, the Game Boy Camera has accomplished what very few digital cameras did before smartphone photography was born. It makes digital photography extremely accessible. The Game Boy camera launched at $90, which was about the same price as a Game Boy at the time, but it brought digital photography into the hands of as many children as it did adults. In fact, it is first camera which some members of the DPR staff call theirs.

It’s unclear how many Game Boy Camera accessories were sold, but its legacy lives on to this day. Not only does the Game Boy camera work with some pretty cool games, it even works with another accessory – Nintendo love accessories – Game Boy Printer. This device allows you to print Game Boy Camera images onto small strips of thermal paper the size of a postage stamp. The back is adhesive, so you can attach your photo to your property. The Game Boy camera even lets you add digital frames and effects to your photos. All of this may seem so trivial now, but it was not then. There are no better words, Game Boy Camera is great.

It’s still for some visual artists. You can use the Game Boy Camera as a fun, weird, low quality webcam. You can use it to create abstract digital art. And now, thanks to Analogue Pocket, it’s significantly easier to work with the Game Boy Camera.

Analogue Pocket comes in black and white and is priced at $219 for new orders

Analogue Pocket includes a microSD card slot. When Analogue OS version 1.1 is released, users will be able to save Game Boy Camera images to a microSD card for easy retrieval. A common problem when working with 20th century digital cameras is incompatibility with modern hardware – outdated ports, weird cables etc. Analogue Pocket will break when using Game Camera Boy and transferring its digital photos to a common, simple microSD card. The Game Boy camera is back. That is if it really goes away.