In 2023 I admitted I had “a problem” with purchasing too many retro handhelds. In response, I decided to spend a year going “cold turkey” and not spending any money on devices. This is an account of how my year went and what I learned.

The Sickness

One of my first memories of the RH community is listening to an early episode of the RH podcast, back before it was even called the RH podcast, where Stubbs talked about “the sickness”. The idea is that some people have “The Sickness”. This means that they feel like they have a gap in their happiness that could only be fixed with a certain purchase, only no purchase is enough, there’s always one more required. The sickness is prevalent in the Retro Handheld scene.

Whenever I looked at my collection of handhelds, I realized there were many I hadn’t switched on for more than a year, many more that I used sporadically and which I didn’t need to own. Much like I imagine Stubbs did when he made his recent video purging his collection, it became clear that more handhelds weren’t bringing me more happiness.

Why Did I Decide to Stop?

I bought a house with my partner in 2023. It’s a great place to live but it needs some work done on it. Times are harder than they used to be, for a lot of people in the world. I’m privileged enough to be in a better place than many, but I became increasingly aware that every dollar I spent on handhelds was a dollar that could be spent on the house or a dollar that could be spent on something like a summer vacation with my partner.

I’ve never been the sort of person who finds it easy to cut down on something. I gave up drinking in 2021 and part of that experience was realizing that I find it easier to remove alcoholic drinks totally from my life than to try to struggle with the concept of “cutting down”. My partner has described me as a “rules lad”, meaning that setting myself clearly definable boundaries helps me.

When it came to drinking, I made it clear to myself that what was stopping was the physical act of having a pint or a shot, I wasn’t teetotal. Alcohol used in cooking is still totally acceptable, as is drinking any form of low-alcohol drink with an ABV of less than 1%. While I’ve not been perfect in my abstinence (I’ve ended up drinking 3 times since 2021, mainly in the first year where I found myself ashamed to admit I didn’t drink in a couple of social situations), the rules really helped me achieve my goals.

A Bad Start = New Rules

ES-DE on Odin 2

The original idea was for the year to run from 1st November 2023 to 31st October 2024. I messed up almost immediately. In the run-up to Christmas 2023, I saw an incredible deal on the Odin 2 base which activated the sickness. My finger slipped as I wondered if this would be the one device that would sustain me, and I ordered it.

The regret caught up to me immediately and after it arrived, I was able to return it for a full refund, so maybe it was a case of “no harm, no foul” but I felt like I’d broken a promise to myself. I decided to reset the clock, this time the year without handhelds would last for the whole of 2024.

Three Rules to Abide By

My “White Whale” running my favorite OS

I settled on the following 3 rules, and it was with the help of these that I got through the next 12 months:

• Accepting Trades and Free Handhelds is ok. Paying postage and import tax does not break the rules, as long as the handheld itself does not require payment.
• If a handheld which was effectively a “daily driver” broke, it would be acceptable to replace it with a near identical handheld.
• My “white whale” handheld was a Metal Shell RGB10 — if one of these came up for sale for a good price, then buying it would be my one allowed exception.

And while I stuck to the rules rigidly, Anything that the rules didn’t cover was fair game. This meant that when some non-handheld Retro Gaming related tach came up for sale on the RH Discord — items like a mini PC of Xbox — I jumped on them.

What I Learned in the Year

All the handhelds I traded for on the RH Discord

Part of the daily rush of being in the Retro Handheld scene is the fear of missing out on the new shiny. Even cheap devices like the Miyoo A30 and the Anbernic RG35XX SP grabbed me more than I thought they would.

In a year where the only way to obtain new handhelds was via trade, trading handhelds became the game.

As paid patrons of the RH Discord will attest, the response of “any chance you’d be interested in a trade” becomes synonymous with me. The idea was that, if I was polite and made it clear why I was offering a trade and there was no issue saying no, then it was ok to broach the subject. Most people said no but a few said yes. When they said yes it then became a challenge to find something I had but didn’t use, that might be of equal value and of interest.

Things that I would never have thought to offer like the official NES joycons for the Nintendo Switch or a 3-year-old micro PC turned out to be highly desirable to the right people and allowed me to trade for a couple of handhelds which were released in 2024. While most of my trades took place on the RH Discord, I also sent trade offers to sellers on Facebook Marketplace, just in case. I also kept my eye on high-street shops which offered trade-ins and stocked Retro Handhelds.

I also was given 2 Anbernic handhelds as gifts during the year. Both were from fellow members of the RH Discord. Their generosity was very much welcomed.

The 4 Things I Reminded Myself Of

There are only so many situations where it’s possible to use a Retro Handheld.  I believe there are basically 3 categories of handhelds: Pocket devices (can be carried around at all times), rucksack devices (for use when traveling), and “sofa devices” (which never leave the house).

The ROG Ally X might have a fantastic battery, but if it’s a sofa device, and so will never leave the home – will I really be that far away from a USB-C cable at any point I’d use it? The Odin 2 might have an incredible battery which would be perfect for long plane rides – but am I due to go on any long plane rides? If I have no use case for a device, I might find it easier to resist.

OLED isn’t required to enjoy a game. While OLED screens are marvellous, using an LCD screen doesn’t stop you from enjoying games as you play them. While I don’t own any devices with top-end 1080p OLED screens, I do have a Steam Deck OLED and a Switch OLED.

While both of these have great screens, I preferred the images on LCD screens of the Logitech G Cloud or the ROG Ally. Reminding myself of this helps keep me satisfied with the devices I already own.

There is a limit to the resolution a human can appreciate. In 2010, during the launch of the iPhone 4, Steve Jobs introduced the concept of the Retina Screen. The concept is that for handheld devices like tablets & phones (or retro handhelds) the human eye is unable to appreciate any resolution above 300 pixels per inch.

So, according to Jobs, for any device with a 4-inch or smaller screen, there’s no point using a resolution above 720p, so while 1080 is good for larger screens, it’s not important on the smaller handhelds, and this can help me resist the charms of devices like the Retroid Pocket Mini.

There aren’t many games I would play on a portable handheld, which wouldn’t play just as well on a Retroid Pocket 3+. While the RH scene is constantly moving, there is only so much progress that can be made. The RP3+ came out in 2022, meaning it is old in RH terms, so it’s good to use to show exactly how little things change sometimes.

The RP3+ has a screen that meets Steve Jobs’ requirements for maximum discernible resolution, can play anything up to Saturn, Dreamcast, and PSP (all fully upscaled), and has a decent battery life and sleep mode.

My RP3+ playing Koudelka – my RH Game of the Year

When left on its own it’s a reasonably pocketable handheld, and if it’s combined with the official grip, it’s exceptionally comfortable. Unless there is a need to play 6th-generation systems or above or play on a larger screen, the RP3+ can do everything I should logically want.

While it may not spark Marie Condo-type joy, if I can accept that GameCube, PS2 & Switch emulation will only take place on devices like a Steam Deck, I might be able to convince myself that my needs are already being met.

Where Do I Go Now?

One of my favorite quotes comes from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

The Cheshire Cat from Alice: Madness Returns, which is almost relevant

I sit, at the time of writing, 5 days away from the end of 2024, which marks the end of my “year without spending money on handhelds”. It feels like this is a good time to reflect.

While I have no intention of continuing this forced abstinence, at the same time I don’t want to go back to my old ways of over-the-top spending, and while I do like trading, I have pretty much emptied my house of tradable handhelds during the year.

I have really enjoyed customizing the handhelds I own through the likes of stickers of Sakura Retro Mod buttons — I’m a believer that the more you customize something, the more it becomes “yours”. While this started off as a way to keep myself interested in the devices I have, I think I’ll be continuing for a while yet.

I know my first purchase on January 1st will be a MagicX XU Mini M. I’m still searching for a handheld that is small enough to fit into jeans pockets for everyday carry, which has both Bluetooth audio and L2/R2 buttons, and this is my latest candidate. The TriumUI Brick is another potential candidate. Both devices are cheap enough not to cause a big dent in my wallet, so I’m not worried about making those purchases.

The big change I’m hoping to enact is to force myself to wait 3 months after reviews come out before I make a handheld purchase. The idea is that this will give me some distance from the hype and will help me select only the exceptional devices, and then only buy them after the initial rush when maybe there are some coupons on AliExpress.

Over the course of 2024, the only device that has felt exceptional is the Retroid Pocket 5, although I seem to have a perverse fascination with the RG406V, and if it is only two higher-end devices a year that make me reach into my pocket, then I’ll have done well. More than anything I’m looking forward to engaging with my friends’ “for sale” listings on the RH Discord without having to ask about trades.

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