You've probably seen a new mini FPGA GAME BOY flying around your feeds recently, and that's for good reason; it's a new, pocketable retro handheld that can play your GB/GBC cartridges made by Funny Playing. We were lucky enough to exclusively reveal the device, alongside being one of the first outlets to have a review sample in our hands.
However, communication from FunnyPlaying is limited not only to ourselves but also to the public. They shadowdropped this out of nowhere, with only 20 units being available worldwide at launch. I ever wwanred FunnyPlaying myself that this is abysmal, and when we publish our news post about it, they'll sell out fast, and that they did, in under 10 minutes after we published our post, in fact.
We asked FunnyPlaying why there were only 20 available, when more would be stocked and how many; their response: "Since there are still some issues, we need to make some improvements. Moreover, we are approaching a National Holiday soon, and there are still 30-50 consoles that can only be sold after the holiday". And it matches their added their "wait for 20 days" text they added to their product listing page.
So, the good news is that a restock is not far away, but the catch is that there's a limited ammount available, which seems like it's going to be a trend with this device: limited batches, randomly dropped, which isn't helpful to anyone really. What we want is stock in the thousands, with a set pre-order time, so that we can all prepare, but this means it will be nabbed up by those that follow FunnyPlaying and cool retro gaming news outlets closely.
I asked FunnyPlaying if they'll be making new colours in the future too, and even if they'd like to collaborate with us on a Retro Dodo edition in transparent colours, to which they responded: "We will continue to sell it and there is a possibility of upgrading it. Yes, hope we can cooperate. And we will also add new colours based on market feedback", though I doubt a RD edition will ever come to fruition, seeing as their previous marketing efforts are a little on the slow side, but we'll keep pestering.
Our full review will drop next week; I still have some testing to do; it's not perfect. I have noticed my GAME BOY rumble carts don't fit, and the on/off switch can be unreliable, but so far I am having fun with it. Stick around and join our free weekly newsletter to keep updated about this handheld and its stock drops in the future.
