The Pokémon mini is the smallest cartridge-based console Nintendo ever produced. Released in Japan in November 2001, then in North America in December and in Europe in March 2002, it fits in a shirt pocket, weighs around sixty grams and runs for dozens of hours on a single AAA battery. Developed by Jupiter, it was sold as a companion gadget for the Pokémon licence rather than as a console in its own right.
Its technical interest lies less in raw power — an 8-bit microcontroller and a 96x64 monochrome screen — than in its feature set: a real-time clock that some games use to evolve their content from day to day, a shock sensor, a rumble motor and an infrared port for two-player games. All of those were rare at the time on a machine at that price.
The official catalogue is limited to about ten titles, all Pokémon-branded (Pokémon Party mini, Pokémon Pinball mini, Pokémon Puzzle Collection, Pokémon Tetris, Pokémon Zany Cards…), and the machine left the shelves in under two years. It did, however, enjoy a remarkable second life: the hardware has been fully documented by the community, an open development kit exists, and a still-active homebrew scene keeps producing new games — including the ones shipped with Recalbox.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro PokeMini | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The Pokémon mini is available on every board supported by Recalbox.
PokeMini is the only emulator for this system and therefore the default one. Its compatibility is excellent: with a tiny library and fully documented hardware, emulation is considered complete. It supports neither netplay nor softpatching, but it declares support for CRT display. RetroAchievements are supported on this system.
Recalbox ships with three Pokémon mini homebrew games — Cortex, Galactix and Psychic Seeds — already present in the roms folder on first boot. You can therefore try the system without downloading anything. See the Included games page.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
bios.min |
Original Pokémon mini BIOS (optional) | 1e4fb124a3a886865acb574f388c803d | PokeMini |
Place your BIOS file like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/pokemini/
└── bios.min
This BIOS is optional: the emulator ships with a free replacement BIOS and starts games without it. The original BIOS only restores the machine's authentic boot sequence, and the BIOS checker will not report its absence as an error.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/pokemini/
Supported extensions: .min .zip .7z
The expected format is .min, the image of a Pokémon mini cartridge. .zip and .7z archives are accepted, with a single game per archive.