Recently I spotted a unique take on one of my favorite kinds of tech, an emulator called the Revo K101. I currently do not own the system but I will be spotlighting it because, frankly, it looks amazing.
The Revo K101 is essentially a “Handheld Emulator” it’s like an emulator, but its not just a piece of software with silly digital buttons/keybinds, instead this is an actual handheld system that you can put files on using a MicroSD card. It uses the standard Gameboy Advanced SP charger and has a Lithium-Ion battery that lasts about 5-7 hours (according to a man doing an unboxing video) it also has an AV out cable that you can use to output the screen to your TV. It comes with a pair of ear buds you can plug into the system for more private gaming. The Revo K101 has a very interesting design, mostly considering the question of “why does it have X and Y buttons if this emulates GBA?” I don’t know but the symmetry is very aesthetically pleasing.
The Revo K101 also has an familiar design as it looks extremely similar to the original GBA but instead has a more smooth and modern style. It has four buttons on the right and a D-PAD on the left – much like the GBA. It has both triggers and an AUX port on the top. It has a backlit screen (if you have the GBA, you know how important that is) and I could not find the resolution of it online but I know it has a decent quality screen that will run GBA games at a very good quality. Altogether the quality of the hardware seems decently solid and interesting.
The emulation works by loading .gba files onto a MicroSD card and then putting it into the system; .gba ROMs can be taken from games using special software to extract the files (I won’t mention the other method, but I’m sure we all know about it). The MicroSD card is a great opportunity to hold INSANE amounts of .gba files considering that .gba files tend to be between 20 and 40 megabytes and the fact that there are microSD cards that go up to 128 gigabytes. this would mean that if you got that sd card and every .gba file you had was about 35 megabytes, you could hold up to 4480 games on this one small device. Now that sounds like a good handheld system! Altogether I would have to say that at $69.99, this system sounds amazingly easy to use, and great for anyone out there looking to relive the old memories of the GBA. You can get it here.