Recently, we have been using our classic portable systems a lot. It can be a lot of fun to go back to your original Game Boy or Game Boy Color to play one of the first Pokemon Gamesor to see how far you can line up Tetris. If you’re playing with a standard display without a backlight, you might have to struggle with the sun and the occasional glare it shoots your way, but that’s all part of the experience.
However, many people would prefer to play games on the big screen, and with the cost of the GameCube Game Boy Player on the rise, it makes sense that manufacturer Hyperkin is trying to give gamers a more affordable option: the RetroN Sq. and compact that will play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games on your big screen. As with most console launches, there have been a few hiccups so far, but we’re going to reveal all the details so you can figure out how badly they’ll affect you.
One of the best parts of the RetroN Sq is its ease of use. For the most part, you just need to plug it into your TV, give it some juice, pop in a game and a controller, and you’re good to go. The Sq is also about the size of three Game Boy Advance systems put together, making it compact enough to travel with – and it won’t take up much space on your TV cabinet either. The Sq comes with an HDMI cable, a USB-C cable for power, a 512MB Micro SD card, and a wired Hyperkin Scout controller. The Scout mimics the SNES controller and is a really solid effort from Hyperkin. The triggers can feel a little spongy, but the D-pad and face buttons feel tight and responsive. But enough about the plastic, you’re probably curious how it actually plays in games, aren’t you?
While FPGA-based systems are all the rage right now, the Sq uses software emulation. Any game cartridge you insert will dump to the Micro SD card which is stored on the back of the system. So when you go to play a game for the first time, the Sq will take a bit of time to dump a game to the SD card, but sequential games will be considerably shorter to load from there. Loading times are wildly varied and sometimes feel like they can last close to a minute, which for Game Boy games is a little surprising. During the dump process, your backup file will be also be copied, which we have mixed feelings about – but we’ll get to that soon. You’ll also need to plug in a game to play after transferring a game to the SD card, so don’t expect it to be a one-off emulation machine.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color games look and run well at 720p in their native aspect ratio. The pixels are nice and crisp and the colors really pop. There’s a little switch on the back that will stretch the image to fill your screen, if you’re the type of person who likes that (to your own, we’re not judging here). During our time with the machine, we encountered no image dips, strange pixels or random sounds. We tested a multitude of different games like Balloon Kid, Final Fantasy Adventure, Mario Golf and Pokemon Blue, and they all worked as we expected. However, the original Game Boy games will have the same color scheme that you would get if you hooked them up to a Game Boy Color. Some games can look a little messy on the big screen, because they weren’t meant to be blasted on your living room 50-inch TV, but if you sit far enough away from your TV (like your mom always told you said for you should be fine.
Now, Game Boy Advance compatibility, on the other hand, is still a work in progress. We’ve been playing with the RetroN Sq for a few weeks now, and at first the frame rate was pretty rough. However, Hyperkin has been hard at work on a patch to smooth it out, and after trying an unreleased version of this patch, we can confirm that it looks (mostly) fixed. We did notice some rather unsavory pops from time to time in the audio department, while some sound effects can also be a bit shrill. So it looks like GBA support still needs a little more cooking time, but Hyperkin announced right out of the box that GBA support is still in beta and will continue to be updated over time.
The Sq is also so focused on being an easy plug-and-play system that it doesn’t feature any sort of user interface. So unfortunately at the moment there is no way to change color palettes, connect to save states or add filters like scanlines or pixel grids, all of which are features that we would like to see added later. Hyperkin said its software is open source, allowing the community to create mods and updates that users can download at their discretion.
Backup files are another interesting topic we need to talk about. When you first insert a game into the Sq, the Sq will copy the save data from that cartridge to its Micro SD card. Then every time you save your game when playing on the Sq, it will only overwrite the data on the SD card, but do not your cartridge. So if you take the cartridge out to go back and play on your Game Boy or other hardware, you’ll be left with whatever save data you had before you put it in the Sq.
We spoke with Hyperkin about this and the reasoning behind this decision to ensure your original save data doesn’t accidentally get corrupted during the write process. Hyperkin said he’s never had a problem with this, but wants to protect your potential childhood savings at all costs. We appreciate the sentiment, but not being able to switch back and forth between a handheld and a game show will be a bit of a deal breaker for some. The Nintendo Switch is proof of how important it is to keep playing a game when you’re on the go. Especially with big RPGs like Pokémon, it would be a shame to progress on the Sq and not carry it over to your cartridge.
When the system first launched things were a bit more difficult as the aspect ratio wasn’t perfect, the visuals were blurry, and the frame rate of GBA games was pretty rough, but Hyperkin has already released a few new firmware updates that you can also download to address some of these issues. Installing updates can be a little tricky as it requires the use of a PC and will overwrite all your current game save files, but once it’s done, it’s done.
Hyperkin has made a valiant effort to create an affordable, easy-to-use console for your line of classic Game Boy games. If you’re ok with the few things it lacks, like save states and color options, then it’s a solid way to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and possibly Game Boy Advance games on the big screen. .
