I’ve been tinkering with open-source handhelds for a long time. The last one was probably the Retro Game 97 — I reflashed its firmware several times and even swapped the conductive pads. It worked well enough, but I always felt it wasn’t perfect and still had a lot of problems. So a while back I was browsing the forums and found that a successor to the Retro Game 97, the Retro Game 350, had been released. The price seemed acceptable, so I bought one to check it out.

I bought a Retro Game handheld a while back and it felt pretty good, but something was always missing. Even after updating to the foreign custom firmware, plenty of rough edges remained — short standby time, an ugly look, that sort of thing. The guy behind that firmware has released a new build, possibly the true final version this time. Flashed it and it’s actually decent. Also took the chance to dress the thing up a bit, and I’m liking it more and more.

This post has been updated: Check out the new firmware guide and tinkering notes: /archives/9750/ I loved handhelds as a kid, and the habit stuck. I bought a PSV, I bought a Switch, and I still enjoy just holding a handheld and fiddling with it. Recently I was bored, stumbled onto this whole open-source handheld scene online, saw a bunch of crowdfunding projects, and ultimately—because I’m broke—went with the cheap Subor Retro Game (RS97).