We talk a great deal in this hobby about nostalgia and recapturing memories. As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, I feel like marketing has had its bullseye pointed at my generation for a minute now, and if it isn’t aimed at me, it’s selling the idea and dare I say, aesthetic, to those who weren’t around in the era.

The Anbernic RG 34XX: My own personal time portal

When the RG34XX was announced, I thought it was a cool recreation of the console a lot of folks spent their formative years with. I never owned a GBA or GBA SP back then, so any chance of nostalgic reconnections probably wasn’t in the cards. It isn’t that I didn’t have an interest in gaming or these systems at the time, quite the opposite, in fact, it’s just that things were different.

The Culture of the Time

It’s certainly not to say that games weren’t absolutely huge in the early 2000s, but they weren’t necessarily recognized or celebrated outside the hobby in the mainstream way they are now. As a 20-year-old guy in 2003, it simply wasn’t very well thought of to be walking around with a GBA.

Right or wrong, there was still a general stigma that these were devices for children. Toys to be enjoyed as a youth that would eventually be grown out of. A passing fancy. To this day, I think my parents are still wondering when it’s going to happen to me.

The question of gamers my age was PS2 or Xbox. Sports games and shooters were deemed appropriate forms of entertainment, but that didn’t mean the entire hobby had broad acceptance. Some things were still considered to be exclusively for nerds or children.

I can still remember getting torn a new one by a friend when he came into my first college apartment, and I was playing the Winnie the Pooh section of Kingdom Hearts. He was appalled. It all probably seems odd to read in 2024 when things like anime and nerd culture are part of the mainstream, but such were the times.

In the eyes of many in the early 2000s, Nintendo had made something of a statement with the GameCube. Where Microsoft and Sony were committed to offering a more “grown up” gaming experience, the combination of the GameCube’s admittedly kiddie design and one look at the cartoonish graphical style of the upcoming Wind Waker had cemented a concrete position in my peers: Nintendo was no longer cool.

The Big N had become fodder for kids to learn about gaming, just as we had. The prevailing thought in the industry, and amongst my peers, was that it was time for gaming to grow up, as we were under the too-cool-for-school impression, that we had. Gone were the days of NES on Grandma’s living room floor. We had to leave those childish things behind for the next generation of gaming.

Enter the Anbernic RG34XX

RG34XX and Box

As I mentioned above, I had missed the boat initially on the GBA. Had I been just a few years younger, things probably may have been different. I can remember being a senior in high school when the GBA was released and being slightly jealous of my little cousin receiving one under the tree that year.

I remember seeing the console in action for the first time that morning and determining that while it would be nice to have, this was essentially a portable SNES, and the next-gen should enjoy it as I did. After all, I had more adult gaming matters to tend to. This was all, of course, nonsense, but such are the thoughts anyone has when standing at the precipice of adulthood.

As the RG34XX was announced and shortly thereafter released in December, I thought to myself how great it was that people who had spent their own formative years with the original GBA would be getting an emulation experience just for them. It wasn’t something that would have been my personal first choice, but that’s the beauty of getting every possible form factor in the current state of emulation.

There will always be one that works best for you, and while this iteration of the H700 might not have been specifically “for me”, I was still certainly excited to get my hands on the console and capture a piece of my youth I had initially missed out on.

Unboxing the handheld when it arrived, I loved the indigo color design of the console when it arrived, down to the stealth X&Y buttons that never appeared on the original. Throughout my time of classic game collecting, GBA was never something I really got into. I had accumulated a few SPs, but games were piecemeal if I went after them at all, and I’d never owned an original model.

If collecting was about reconnecting with memories of my past, it made sense that this is one area that was unfortunately pushed off to the side of my focus. Besides, I already had the wonderful and refined experience of the RG35XXSP available for all my GBA needs.

After the normal 10 minutes of fiddling around with the stock card experience, I ditched the included SD, loaded up my own card and games, and sat down on the couch to see what the latest Anbernic offering was all about. It was then that I launched into GBA game ROM and the damnedest thing happened…

Achievement: Core Memory Unlocked

Kirby and his adventures

It didn’t happen right away. I even thought that the device design might be a little too small in my hands at first and that maybe this was because I was right all those years ago. Maybe this device wasn’t meant for me, just as the original wasn’t meant to be all those years ago. And that was fine. Not everything has to be aimed at me. For once, it was refreshing that I wasn’t necessarily the bullseye on this marketing arrow.

Then it happened. Like a dam burst of nostalgia, it broke through. I launched Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land and was immediately transported back to a specific moment in time. I can’t say for sure whether it was the game itself, the hardware, or more likely a combination of the two, but I was blasted by my own past.

While attending college in 2003, I worked part-time at the local Circuit City in my town. If you were around, you can probably picture the scene. The bright red textured floors guide you around the store’s departments. DLP TVs just break onto the scene and render your old CRT or projection big screen look ancient by comparison. Queens of the Stone Age’s earworm classic No One Knows and an ill-advised foray into mainstream pop by Jewel fill your ears from that month’s DVD music video demo disc. (12 tracks each. I took them home every month.)

An example of a Circuit City Store from the 1999 Annual Report c/o Reddit

I bounced around between various departments during my tenure. From media (CDs and DVDs. Remember those?!) to PC sales to, of course, the gaming section. Console demo stations lined the back wall. Each offers its own glimpse into the future. Displayed on a CRT and beneath the security of a plastic dome, there was horsepower!

Xbox and PS2 were a true generational leap from the systems that came before them, and while those of my age may have raised an eyebrow at the “kiddie” GameCube, it was impossible to ignore the immense shift in technological prowess that was happening before our eyes.

Example of a Gamecube kiosk c/o Pinterest

Those systems dominate my memory of that time period. Whether it was deciding with a customer which new graphical behemoth would best fill their wants, or the late nights of Def Jam and MLB Slugfest after hours. The GBA kiosk in the store was over by the GBA games, totally separate from the rest of the action, with consoles connected to a central unit only about 3 feet off the ground to ensure players of any age could give it a go. It was there, at that low-slung kiosk, that I now realized I had in fact spent nearly countless hours with a GBA.

You see, it was at that kiosk that there was a demo for Kirby. I recall that it contained several regular levels of the main game, but mainly focused on the included mini-games of the package. Sitting on my couch in 2024 I launched into the Quick Draw sub-game from the Nightmare in Land menu, and I was instantly transported.

Hidden away in the sub-games, Kirby held my secret memories

I hadn’t thought about this throwaway mini-game inclusion of the package in over 20 years, and yet at that moment, I was immediately transported. I had spent countless hours during “downtime” in the store playing this game. I could picture the uniform polo I was wearing as I stood and looked down at the handheld screen. I could smell the well-traveled thing carpeting and the chemically clean smell of those red floors. Anbernic had reconnected a bridge of memory in my brain to experiences in gaming I forgot I had ever had.

For those who might not be familiar, Quick Draw is just a reaction game involving a single button press. The object is to draw your sword against your dueling enemy before they do so, but only after the given signal. It can be played against CPU players, or via the GBA link cable for multiplayer (netplay anyone?). It’s wholly simplistic and repetitive, but addictive.

You better be quick on the draw!

If I had a minute in the store to walk over and play a few rounds on a slow Tuesday night, then that’s what I did. No doubt, I probably should have been organizing cordless phone stock or something, but I was a 20-year-old slacker and did what I was going to do. Now that I’m older, I regularly procrastinate with what could be considered much more important work in order to sneak in some gaming. It’s nice to know that things haven’t really changed.

Reflections

En Guarde!

Reconnecting with memories is something that is talked about a lot within the emulation hobby. It can be powerful to place yourself right back where you were when you first experienced these games that helped shape your tastes for years to come. What I didn’t expect was for a device to pull a forgotten memory from the depths of my brain now, in 2024.

I’m beaming with enthusiasm for a device I was admittedly ho-hum about during its initial reveal. It has become my go-to grab for anything GBA, and while some of that is surely the novelty of being the newest kid on the block, the connection it created in me remains powerful. This device unlocked a bond with a system that I never even realized I had.

Having played with emulation in various forms since the late 90s and now as an adult who writes about the hobby and can afford to indulge myself, I thought I was more or less done. The experiences and memories that I had cherished were mine to enjoy again in any number of formats I chose.

What shocked me was that there was still gas left in the tank. I inadvertently triggered a set of memories long since forgotten that made me go back in time. I even chatted up with a long-time friend and mutual co-worker over G-chat in a game of “Remember this?”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I got a few enthusiastic “OHHHH YEA’s!” along the way.

So if you’re ever feeling burned out by the rapid pace of the hobby and the constant deluge of releases, I’d encourage you to slow down and take time with the devices to make sure you’re actually connecting with them, rather than just tinkering your way to the next release. I unlocked something that made me smile, and I’d encourage every player out there to find a way to do the same.

Anbernic RG34XX at AliExpress

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