The Retro Dodo team is constantly on the look out for the best retro handhelds around, alongside some of the weirdest, as you may see in our YouTube series ‘What The Fake?‘.
This time, we’ve seen a funky looking unit from 8BCraft, the makers behind the popular Retro Stone which we have played with in the past.
There’s not a lot of information on the RetroBlock2, but it was shared into the Retro Gamers Facebook Group and obviously received a lot of attention.
The only image we have is the featured image, but we can take a lot of information from that alone. We’re trying to get in touch with 8BCraft for more details, so make sure to come back to this article in a week or so, it may be updated.
We’re not 100% sure if an authentic Gamecube controller has been used for this, possibly, as this is the prototype, but we can’t imagine that will be the case for a mass produced RetroBlock2.
The button on the left hand side look like the real deal, with the classic left Gamecube analogue stick and the large D-PAD with the arrows. 8BCraft has also sneakily added in speakers to either side of the screen, giving it that retro aesthetic!
The Start/Select buttons are also centered to either side of the screen. The screen itself looks to be 3″ or 3.5″ wide making it the perfect size for pocket retro gaming… even though this won’t fit in your pocket.
You can also see what looks to be a headphone jack at the bottom, probably next to a USB-C charging port and a reset button, perhaps even volume buttons.
On the right side you can see that they’ve change up the ABXY buttons, probably for good reason. No longer do you have the infamous red and green buttons surrounded by two little grey ones.
Instead we have the traditional layout, which is probably due to the fact that this handheld can play a lot of emulators and with Gamecube controllers, that may be a bit confusion, and hard to play with.
They did keep the little yellow analogue stick which we love! The only image we have unfortunately has no view of any shoulder buttons, for this to stand a chance in this niche it will need to have four shoulder buttons.
Yes, it would be great if they looked and felt like the original Gamecube, but we can’t see that happening, if they pull it off, then 8BCraft have done a cracking job!
We have no information regarding the specs, so what we see is what we get, but if it’s using the same specs as their older product the RetroStone2, then it’s not going to be powerful enough to emulate anything about Playstation 1.
Some say this is a little odd, with the ability not to play Gamecube games on a Gamecube controller, but that would require much more power than even the PiBoyDMG is currently pushing, which is near impossible seeing as they are using a Pi4.
The RetroBlock2 will be a stunning handheld for the collection, but it’s certainly not one you buy to get the best specced handheld on the market. This is mixing unconventional with retro gaming, and that’s why we love it.
It’s a piece of the modding retro gaming community, making crazy stuff to make us reminisce of the past and 8BCraft are one of the crazier ones to make this a reality, so we say fair play! Bring on the RetroBlock2!
8BCraft also stated: “Video of the prototype building coming soon and probably on Kickstarter shortly after that!” Which makes us believe if this gets enough attention they’ll bring it to Kickstarter. When they do, we’ll let you know.
If you want more information regarding 8BCraft be sure to like them on their Facebook Page, they’re constantly updating stuff there. Keep on crafting, 8BCraft!
