I’m at constant battle with emulation devices. In the past few years I’ve bought and sold a Miyoo Mini, a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, a Retroid Pocket Classic, and I’m currently under warranty for my Retroid Pocket Flip 2, but I’m likely to sell that too. Why? Because although they’re great, they’re still a full second device to carry along with me, dedicated to games. In some of the cases, the whole screen experience isn’t even better.
So for that reason, I was stuck seeking out a phone controller. Why? Well why not? The phone you carry in your pocket probably has a beautiful OLED screen, great battery life, and loads of processing power. It probably even runs the same emulators as a handheld (Yes the iOS experience isn’t quite as full featured but for where I cap out for games I enjoy it’s plenty of options).
So this came in a few days ago, but I’m already pretty darn captivated. It’s a full button spread, nice feeling buttons, a 30 hour bluetooth battery life, the ability to function on or off the phone as a controller, and most importantly doesn’t take up a whole lot of space.
I’ve been overall happy with the inputs - I haven’t fired up anything overly input sensitive, but nothing feels laggy and the buttons have good travel and feel. It’s recognized right away with Delta, just a few button remaps and it’s good to go. I did have to make some modified Delta skins to work better with the Pocket Taco (DS in progress, but GBA was easy). Conveniently, anything I’d play on this would never use L2/R2, so those are easily mapped to shortcuts. Unfortunately iOS doesn’t seem to play well with remapping the home and menu buttons.
A very convenient little slip case to protect the buttons.
I may still move over to Retroarch, but so far no issues with Delta and NDS/GBA games. I think this is probably the best way to casually play emulated handheld titles that work well with the screen ratio you get. Bonus that it also plays well with an iPad or the likes if you don’t use it in clip mode. Looking forward to dragging this along with me for my next long haul trip - I think it’ll be a great experience.