First-time poster, long-time reader. I created a site that isn’t monetized to report on interesting tech and gaming, covering news and reviews, and wanted to share this post as I’m a huge fan of retro gaming and would love to see the Game Bub succeed. Rest assured, although this may appear to be self-promotion, I’m not earning anything from the site; it is completely ad-free.
Back to the subject at hand. We already have a few portrait handhelds that can play physical Game Boy carts, but we still don’t have one that plays landscape. There are rumors that Modretro will make a GBA handheld, but so far, there’s no news on that front. In comes the Game Bub, which is still in crowdfunding, but it does appear a manufacturer has been secured. Hopefully the project finds enough funding to get made, cause I would love to add the Game Bub to my collection.
Not only is it open source, it can play physical carts, which is a big deal to collectors like me, as I prefer single carts over flash carts. Of course, it has an SD slot, so you won’t even need a flash cart if you don’t want to use one.
I can’t be alone in wanting to see this funded, right? We absolutely need an FPGA handheld with a 3:2 screen for GBA.
Neat. But crowdsourcing is just theft with extra steps. It’s called a bank loan.
Were it a shithead company like Ubisoft running a crowdfunding campaign, I would heartily agree. But using crowd sourcing for its intended purpose, I’d say it’s less so. Not everyone can just go out and get a loan for $100K to manufacture an open-source handheld. No bank is signing up for that. Really, I’d be a lot more skeptical if they didn’t already have a manu lined up. Sure, crowdsourcing can be risky to back, but I’ve also bought all kinds of stuff off the shelf that was absolute junk at the end of the day. Purchasing things comes with risks, some more than others. You just gotta weigh if the purchase is a risk you’re willing to take.