Happy Mid-Autumn, everyone 🎑! This time I got my hands on a rather unusual handheld. The community calls it the “underwear machine,” because the thing is shaped like a pair of briefs. What makes it special is that it takes actual GBA game cartridges, and the design is clearly a bit of a nod to the GBA. It’s quite cheap — under 280 yuan. I don’t know what the processor is; probably a Rockchip. The OS is a heavily customized Linux. The biggest visual highlight is the front panel: a single piece of glass, and it looks genuinely nice. Sadly, that’s where the good parts end.

I’ve lost count of how many “retro handhelds” I’ve bought, but this one grabbed me hard, purely because of how it looks. Anbernic markets it as a “fighting handheld” built for FTG, but the button layout is obviously lifted from the SEGA Saturn pad. Which means it’s not just good for fighting games — it’s better suited to SEGA MD and Saturn titles. That’s the idea, anyway. Reality is another matter. When this thing launched, they pulled a sneaky one and split it into two versions: the single-OS ARC-S and the dual-OS ARC-D. Generally the whole “Linux and Android dual system” thing on these handhelds is pointless, but of course this one used it as a sales gimmick. The retro colorway everyone wants is exclusive to the dual-OS model, while the single-OS one only comes in “translucent black” and “translucent white” — the colors that love to crack. And the dual-OS version costs more, so players like me end up paying extra for a dual-boot setup we’ll never use, just to get the color we want. And in practice, this machine has way more problems than I expected.

In recent years the term “open-source handheld” has basically drifted away from what it originally meant. Originally “open-source handheld” referred specifically to retro handhelds running open-source systems. Some were commercial products flashed with third-party firmware, like the early Subor RG97; others were open by design from the start, like the later Odroid Game series. But what comes to mind now when someone says “open-source handheld”? Generic molds, RK3566 SoCs, and a pile of messy emulators. Lately Android comes standard. Never mind whether the shell infringes on anyone’s design—the SoC’s own attitude toward the open-source community is questionable. That’s why overseas these products were never called “Opensource Handheld” but “Retro Handheld.” A handheld for playing retro games, so retro handheld. Makes sense. Today I’m talking about two retro handhelds you could call “closed-source handhelds”: the RG35XX from Anbernic (Zhou-ge), and the Miyoo Mini Plus from Miyoo, Zhou-ge’s nemesis.