The Handhelds category gathers pocket consoles, from the monochrome machines of the 1980s to the 3D handhelds of the 2000s. It holds the complete Nintendo line (Game & Watch, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Pokémon Mini), its rivals from Sega, Atari, SNK and Bandai (Game Gear, Lynx, Neo-Geo Pocket, WonderSwan), Sony's PSP, and a few curiosities such as the Mega Duck, the Watara Supervision and the Pocket Challenge v2.
These systems are among the lightest to emulate: most of them run perfectly on any supported machine, including a Raspberry Pi Zero 2. They also have display quirks — very small screens, unusual aspect ratios, greenish monochrome panels — that overlays and shaders can reproduce faithfully if you want them to. The WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color are partly played vertically: their emulators offer screen rotation.
New in Recalbox 10.1: the libretro-holani 0.9.9 core markedly improves Atari Lynx emulation, and the PSP now supports 480p and 480i on CRT displays.
| System | Manufacturer | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Atari Lynx | Atari | 1989 |
| Game & Watch | Nintendo | 1980 |
| Game Boy | Nintendo | 1989 |
| Game Boy Advance | Nintendo | 2001 |
| Game Boy Color | Nintendo | 1998 |
| Mega Duck | Welback | 1993 |
| Neo-Geo Pocket | SNK | 1998 |
| Neo-Geo Pocket Color | SNK | 1999 |
| Nintendo DS | Nintendo | 2004 |
| Palm OS | Palm | 1996 |
| Pocket Challenge v2 | Benesse | 2000 |
| Pokémon Mini | Nintendo | 2001 |
| Sega Game Gear | Sega | 1990 |
| Sony PlayStation Portable | Sony | 2004 |
| Watara Supervision | Watara | 1992 |
| WonderSwan | Bandai | 1999 |
| WonderSwan Color | Bandai | 2000 |
The two exceptions in terms of raw power are the Nintendo DS and the PSP, noticeably more demanding than the other handhelds. Check the availability table on their pages before starting out on a small Raspberry Pi.
Many of these systems support RetroAchievements and softpatching, which is especially handy for fan translations of games that never left Japan.