Game Bub; a new portable FPGA coming

VGEsoterica

Member
For the gambling types that don't mind throwing caution to the wind on crowd funding haha. But hey what is life without a little risk? And compared to Pocket the open source of it all is refeeshing

GB / GBC / GBA in a portable FPGA package



Note: I am in no way involved in this project
 
Looks very neat, I have my GB/GBC/GBA needs covered for the moment. But can't deny that a FPGA device (w/rom support) is enticing.

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Some links for anyone else interested:
Homepage - https://eli.lipsitz.net/posts/introducing-gamebub/
Github - https://github.com/elipsitz/gamebub
Crowdfunding page - https://www.crowdsupply.com/second-bedroom/game-bub
 
Just get an Analogue Pocket. Yeah, Analogue kinda sucks as a company, but that hardware is old school Nintendo levels of quality. Plus, custom cores, and a gorgeous screen.
 
Article:
The Game Bub is a gaming handheld that first surfaced earlier this year as a vertical gaming handheld built around a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip. Designed to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges, the Game Bub closely resembled the form and function of other devices like the ModRetro Chromatic and Analogue Pocket.

Now, the Game Bub is available to back on Crowd Supply in a completely different form than we saw previously. As the videos below make clear, the Game Bub is now a horizontal handheld, which makes it relatively unique in the FPGA space. For reference, the latest Game Bub features the following hardware:

  • FPGA chip: AMD Xilinx XC7A100T (101,400 logic cells)
  • Display: 4-inch IPS, 720 x 480 pixels
  • MCU: ESP32-S3 microcontroller
  • Memory: 607.5 KiB Block RAM/ 32 MiB SDRAM/ 512 KiB SRAM (FPGA)
  • Battery: 3,000 mAh (USB Type-C charging)
Moreover, the Game Bub has stereo 1 W speakers, a headphone jack and a microSD card slot with support for display output, Bluetooth LE and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. Apparently, the XC7A100T chip is powerful enough to handle other systems too, for which Game Bub's creator claims is 'with an eye towards expandability'.

The Game Bub is available for $249 with shipping set for February 2026. Ultimately, that price makes the Game Bub significantly more expensive than conventional Android or Linux gaming handhelds. Simultaneously, a $249 starting price is competitive against the Analogue Pocket and ModRetro Chromatic

 
Russ of Retro Game Corps gives his early impression:



The Game Bub is a fully open-source FPGA handheld designed for GBA, but has enough power to play a lot more. Its open and dev-friendly nature means that it might get better and better over time. Let's take a look at this early prototype and see whether it's worth your consideration.

This was a prototype unit sent to me on loan by the manufacturer. All opinions are my own, they did not see this preview video ahead of time, and no money was exchanged in any way
 
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