MY HANDHELD BLOG

The Clamshell Anbernic.

August 17, 2024

Brings back memories

When I saw that Anbernic released this device I certainly had to buy it. I mean this brings back a lot of memories and I’m sure that I’m not the only one who thinks that. I defiantly loved my SP when I was younger, can’t tell you why but it was for me the most fun device, I had taken it with me everywhere.

Then the search on the internet started, I wanted to see if I could get it as cheap as possible and don’t want the tax afterwards. For me it is easier to get it from AliExpress then on other websites that are outside the EU. I do not mind paying taxes keep that in mind, I just don’t support my local post office due reasons. I also checked out Dutch stores who sell Anbernic products but some are too expensive and we want to get things as cheap as possible so we can buy more. That makes AliExpress ideal for me.

I was lucky enough to have some coupon codes and this gave me a small discount. 5 euro is not a bunch but for me enough to hit that "buy it now button". So, in the end I paid like 64 euro. This was a good price for me compared to what other sites asked for it here. I checked if the seller I bought from was reliable for the last time and I took a chance buying an Anbernic from AliExpress. This seller had actually lots of good reviews and even ones with pictures. Sounded safe to me. So got one from the store.

Didn’t took very long to arrive and get the fun started. Found Yogi bear for SNES on the card that was with it. Such a nostalgic game. I can assure you I had quite some fun with the games that came with this device. It fits in my bag and is easy to take with me. I was not disappointed actually. Added some own roms on it to play too. Recently I have been into Pokémon rom hacks. Since I played the original games like a couple of times already, I sometimes want to play something different. At this moment I am still playing Pokémon Saiph on my Anbernic RG35xxSP.

On my first Anbernic RG35xx I have garlic OS, this made me thinking to do the same on the RG35xxSP. Thou I did learn that the same OS doesn’t really work well on this device. Luckily there are already more new software you can run on this device to make it look prettier and easier to search the game you want to play, but the latter I think is only when you don’t add tons of games unless you put them in your favorite file.

I still wanted to try some of the other firmware out, for me that is part of the challenge besides playing on it. I ordered myself a new Micro-SD card, because the cards that come with the device is not strong enough to flash. It mostly will break and that’s a shame. Because I will not have tons of games on this device, I got myself a 64GB micro-Sd card from Scandisk this one was cheapest on my Amazon. Did some reading about the software that was available and decided my first try would be Muos. With this I could also add something that is called Portmaster.

Portmaster is simply said a program where you can add games that specially ported with this program. You do need to have the original games bought for doing this, and it takes some work too since you have to get the valve or other files you need to put in the special designed folders on the SD card from your computer. Little did I know when I tried this the first time. Ended up with not using this actually, and I do not have a steam library so, transferring the files is something I cannot do. There are free to play games that you can also download and play much easier but I wanted to play the Redneck Rampage games.

MuOS is a firmware you actually have to add a lot in manually, at that time it just didn’t feel right for me. It feels like it was a little bit above what I can do, but I’m sure that I will try to work with this again in the future. The second fiemware I decided was Knulli. This firmware makes your device a little slower with starting up, but when you are playing you don’t have this problem anymore. Also, this firmware is quite recent so there will be updates. I’m not going in much deeper to talk about this I would say if you are interested there is lots of stuff to find about online so feel free to look it up.

Flashing my Micro-SD card wasn’t really difficult. There are tons of guides how you can do this if you ever feel like it, but yes starting up with Knulli is slow very slow. I do like that their interface is made quite well and if you want you can even get nice box art with your games. Sometimes I’m more like a crow I like pretty things and in this case I defiantly like the pretty interface. Adding games is a little annoying thou you can’t just put the Micro-SD card in the computer you need to set up some network up from you PC and then add the games through that. If you are curious check their website about this, I will add the link on the useful things section on the right.

So, you can say I have been enjoying playing games on this device a lot mostly I am playing Gameboy advance games or SNES games on this one, but those are the games I brought this for and on this device are mostly games I play more then once. Not like on my original 35xx where are tons of games on and I only play a few…

Till the next blog everyone

Alexia