Do you want a handheld toy that plays N64, Nintendo, SuperNES, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, Ps1, PS2 and any other retro console you can think of, including Famicon (whatever that is) and even the Virtuaboy? Of course you do!
Do you want to be the envy of all your cousins? The coolest kid in the neighborhood? A nuisance to your wife? All this and more will open up to you with the purchase of a Retroid Pocket 2+!
The Retroid Pocket 2+ is vastly superior to all the other handhelds on the market in terms performance for the price you pay, and on top of that has a lot of features that others simply dont. Like a touchscreen*, wifi connectivity and running on Android. Running Android means you can download all sorts of apps from the google play store, store media files, and even email yourself shit in a pinch.
*IMPORTANTE: This is the '+' in Pocket2+. You may see the Pocket 2 readily available on amazon. ebay and etsy, but if it doesn't have PLUS in the product name, it wont have a touchscreen. Fortunately Retroid is a super woke company that doesnt play the planned obsolescence game and actually ships touchscreen plates for people that want to upgrade their regular Pocket 2s, but its a pain in the butt and beyond the scope of this guide so just get the right one.
Only two, but they could be dealbreakers for some.
First off, Retroid is notoriously slow on shipping. Theyre a small company based in France that manufactures out of china, where it ships directly from. They seem to produce small batches at a time, and ship when enough orders have been placed. Their site quotes a 35 day wait time from the day you order to the day it ships. Some people receive within in two weeks, but if you order during a lull like i did, you could end up waiting as long as 3 months. Allegedly they are currently caught up, but there's no way to know what their status is when you place your order.
In addition, tracking for their carrier 4HX kinda sucks. You have to download a 50MB app that doesnt display any kind of info until the product actually ships (I ordered Feb 4th, didnt have tracking until April 17th, where it stayed in China til the 26th and finally arrived at my door on May 6th. The package was actually bounced around LA for four days which is ludicrous since usually anything from LA arrives at my house within 24 hrs). So this could be a painful process for those that are used to Amazon Next Day Shipping life.
Fortunately, Retroid has a huge fan base and community built around it that are extremely tech-savvy. To make up for Retroids shipping shortcomings r/retroid users have built their own shipping calculator in the form of this google spreadsheet.
TIP: Even if you don't have a reddit username, enter a name anyway so you can pull up your info easily as the spreadsheet is updated frequently based on feedback, and please remember to go in and mark when you receive your package to help improve their calculator!
THE CONFIGURATION.
The Retroid Pocket 2+ is extremely customizable, as a result, configuring all the settings takes a god damn while. Be prepared to spend a full afternoon following tutorials and pressing pause every two seconds while you follow along. The tutorials that have been made, especially the one from Retro Gaming Corps (the golden standard), are a godsend, but assume a certain amount of working knowledge when it comes to emulation. Hence I made *this* guide is made to supplement those for complete N00Bs like myself. Also, it seems most gamers use PCs, while normies use MAC, so I have a few important tips specifically related to MAC OS included that I didnt see posted elsewhere.
The fan community is actually another HUGE plus. As a result you have guides like the one above, message boards, spreadsheets and this guide youre looking at right now. All the retroid community resource links mentioned in this guide will be grouped together here for easy future reference, so go ahead and bookmark it now.
2. Save these videos to watch when you have some time
3. DOWNLOAD SOME FREE GAMES!
First things first, youre going to need specific file types for each console.