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It’s been a genuinely exciting week in retro handheld land. Dolphin dropped a feature that GBC and GBA fans have been waiting years for, Anbernic quietly confirmed their weirdest device yet, and a Mexican modder built an N64 flash cart with a screen that shows your game art. Let’s dig in.
Dolphin Emulator Can Now Play Game Boy Color and GBA Games — For Real
When this news dropped on April 1st, the retro community collectively held its breath. Was this an April Fools joke? As it turns out: no. Dolphin has merged support for the Game Boy Player — the GameCube accessory that let you slot in Game Boy, GBC, and GBA carts and play them on your TV. Now Dolphin can emulate the whole stack: GameCube hardware, the Game Boy Player peripheral, and the GBC/GBA hardware inside it.
In other words, Dolphin is now running an emulator inside an emulator. Inception jokes aside, this is a genuinely significant preservation milestone. The Game Boy Player had its own quirks — slightly different display characteristics, a custom boot ROM, and some games that actually behaved differently when running through it. All of that is now emulatable.
The implementation is confirmed live on Dolphin’s GitHub (PR #14535), and players on the Dolphin subreddit have tested it working. Head to dolphin-emu.org to grab the latest dev build and try it yourself.
For homebrew developers — including anyone working with GBC or GBA targets — this opens up an interesting new testing and display environment. The Game Boy Player’s scaling and color handling was subtly different from a stock GBA screen, and now you can test against it without needing the physical hardware.
Anbernic’s Rotating Handheld Is Officially Called the RG Rotate
A few weeks back, leaked video footage showed what looked like an Anbernic device with a flip-out screen — a square 1:1 display hidden behind a hinged mechanism, with action buttons revealed when you rotate it open. The community assumed it might be a prototype or a one-off. It’s not.
A high-resolution image of the back shell has now confirmed the device name: RG Rotate. The branding sits right where Anbernic always prints their spec labels, and the 2000mAh battery spec is also now confirmed from the same photo.
The concept is genuinely novel for the budget handheld space. A 1:1 square display makes obvious sense for classic Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and early arcade titles — genres that suffer on widescreen devices. The flip-out form factor echoes old Nokia candy-bar flip phones, which is either charming retro or a usability nightmare depending on your perspective.
Pricing isn’t confirmed yet, but the 2000mAh battery and likely memory costs put it in the $99+ range. We’ll update when pricing and availability drop.
The ScreenDrive 64: An N64 Flash Cart That Shows Your Game Art
This one’s a bit more niche, but if you’re a flash cart fan, it’s worth knowing about. Mexican modder David Brito has built the ScreenDrive 64 — an N64 flash cart with a small screen built into the cartridge shell that displays box art for the game you’re playing. The cart is based on a PicoCart core running on a 128MB FPGA, all housed in a custom 3D-printed shell with a cutout for the display.
Seeing it in action — flicking through your ROM library and watching the label art update in real time — is genuinely satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain. Flash carts are already a bit of a collector hobby; adding visible game art bridges the gap between digital convenience and the tactile feel of a physical collection.
It currently sells for around $67 USD (Mex$1,200) when David has stock, via his Facebook group. The main caveat: the screen is slightly undersized for the label art, so logos at the bottom edges get clipped. David is aware of it and has indicated he’s iterating on the design.
No GBC/GBA version exists yet — this is strictly an N64 project — but the concept translates beautifully to smaller form factors. Fingers crossed someone picks up the idea for Game Boy flash carts.
Wrapping Up
Between Dolphin’s Game Boy Player support landing, Anbernic teasing the most unusual budget handheld in years, and David Brito proving that flash carts still have room for innovation, this has been one of the better news weeks in recent memory. The Dolphin update in particular is worth downloading right now if you have any GBC or GBA games you want to explore through a new lens.
Stay tuned — we’ll have full coverage of the RG Rotate as specs and pricing firm up.
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