The Retron Jr is yet another new piece of retro tech to come out of CES this year. Created by Hyperkin it was originally an April’s fool joke last year, but now, they’ve decided to reveal it as a real, upcoming product. Much like the Super Retro Champ, it uses your original cartridges. Most of us retro collectors out there have a fair few Gameboy games lying around the flat, now it’s time to put them on the big screen.
The Retron Jr is designed to resemble a small cube, on top you have your Gameboy cartridge slot, allowing you to play Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance games. We’re not sure why they didn’t go with the classic DMG colours, instead they went with a black and baby sick variant. Hyperkin have yet to release a price tag for this, or even any specs, but we do know it runs on emulation not FPGA.
It uses a HDMI cable to connect to your TV allowing you to pump out 720p images. Straight out of the box the Retron Jr comes with a controller, allowing you to sit back on your coach, with your legs up playing Pokemon Yellow until the sun comes up. They yet to decide whether or not it’s wired or wireless, but if they choose the wired route, you can be sure they’ll lose a fair few customers.
If HDMI isn’t your thing, it comes with the old school composite cables allowing you to connect it to your giant old CRT TV. It connects to your wall via USB-C, so it’s not battery powered.
One major feature which Hyperink has yet to add to this concept showed at CES is an internal link cable connector, allowing you to trade your Pokemon on the go. They failed to inform the public whether or not it would be able to allow head to head battling in multiplayer games, so we’ll have to wait for more information on that.
