Taki Udon's $100 FPGA GBA SP Could Undercut the Analogue Pocket
Retro Remake founder Taki Udon just showed his FPGA GBA SP prototype running Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, and buried in the same post is the number that should worry every other handheld maker: $100. If that target holds, you’re looking at a clamshell that plays real Game Boy Advance cartridges on hardware rather than software — for roughly the price of a mid-range Android emulation device.
And this isn’t an invented spec sheet. Udon is the creator behind the SuperStation One FPGA console, with an SNES follow-up in NTSC and PAL flavors already teased, so the FPGA design language here is a known quantity. No screen size, battery capacity, or release window has been disclosed, and Udon is explicit that this remains a passion project rather than a confirmed product. But the trajectory is the story: a cartridge-capable FPGA GBA has, until now, meant Analogue Pocket money.
The $100 Wall: What a Real Cartridge Slot Actually Buys You
The Analogue Pocket sits around $219, and it earns that premium with a superb screen and a proven core ecosystem. The Anbernic RG SP lands under $60 and wins on price, but it emulates — no slot, no carts, timing approximated in software. The KONKR Pocket Advance runs Android at $130. None of them give you an FPGA recreation of GBA silicon with a physical cartridge slot underneath the hundred-dollar line.
For handheld players, the difference is tangible rather than academic. FPGA recreation means no emulator menu, no frame-buffer latency, no per-game compatibility list to check before a long commute. Your GBA library — saves, link cables, the carts you’ve kept in a drawer for two decades — just works. That’s the pitch, and it’s a strong one at $100 when the alternative has been a $219 device or nothing.
MiSTer Cores and N64 Talk: Reading the Prototype Footage Honestly
Last September’s clip ran Diddy Kong Racing on Nintendo 64; this one runs GBA software. GamesRadar floats the idea that the hardware could eventually handle MiSTer cores capable of N64 games — treat that as the writer’s speculation, not Retro Remake’s roadmap. FPGA N64 is one of the heaviest, least mature cores in the scene, and even Analogue’s Pocket doesn’t touch it. The realistic ceiling for a sub-$100 FPGA board is an excellent GBA plus a healthy stack of 8- and 16-bit cores.
More telling is Udon’s line about considering a vanilla FPGBA model alongside the SP. That signals a small family of cartridge-capable boards built on shared FPGA silicon rather than a single novelty clamshell — the kind of platform thinking that turns a passion project into an actual product line. Watch for screen panel, battery capacity, and any word on core support before you get excited about anything beyond GBA.