Lenovo’s Game Boy Is Actual and Reportedly Stuffed With Unwell-Gotten Games

Lenovo makes a Game Boy. Well, truly, it’s difficult. The title of the world’s largest PC producer by market cap is connected to a janky retro handheld referred to as the Lenovo G02. You can purchase one via AliExpress for round $73. But you most likely shouldn’t.

The Lenovo G02 doesn’t land wherever near the beastly energy of the corporate’s current handhelds just like the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which now prices $2,000. The Game Boy-like system is working on a Rockchip RK3326 CPU with 1GB of RAM. It includes a 4.5-inch IPS show that hits a decision of 1,024 x 768 pixels (although the AliExpress tech specs declare it’s 1,024 x 600 pixels). It appears similar to many different units in its class, with a D-pad, 4 face buttons, and a single analog stick. On paper, it might play video games from the early Game Boy period and perhaps even some titles from the GameDice period.

Retrododo purchased one, unboxed it, and located that the Lenovo brand seems on the splash display whenever you boot it up. In reality, Lenovo’s China site lists the hand held as one of many firm’s personal merchandise. What’s much more odd is how the hand held can include an SD card stuffed with video games, together with “thousands” of basic Nintendo titles preloaded onto the system.

A Lenovo spokesperson informed Retrododo that the system was “produced through a brand licensing agreement meant for the China market only.” The system isn’t meant to be a member of the corporate’s bigger PC portfolio. Instead, it’s extra of a fast money seize for a booming market of retro units within China, particularly units which have little respect for copyright.

You can go on dropshipping websites like AliExpress proper now and discover dozens of Game Boy clones. Some of them, by firms like Anbernic, truly really feel superb in hand and supply a wonderful strategy to return to your nostalgia-laced recollections of taking part in your handheld within the automobile by the glow of passing streetlamps.

Many of those off-brand units additionally include the choice to purchase with a micro SD card pre-installed. The builders will pack emulators inside in addition to a mountain of ROMS. That stands for “read-only memory,” and it’s the colloquialization used to explain the ripped sport recordsdata which might be playable by these emulators. Emulation itself isn’t essentially unlawful, however shopping for copyrighted video games definitely is. There’s a cause why when Anbernic sells units on to shoppers outdoors of China in shops like Best Buy, it doesn’t embody any video games inside.

That’s to not say you may simply import the Lenovo G02 within the U.S. outdoors of AliExpress, although we must always be aware that Gizmodo doesn’t advise or condone piracy. The Lenovo G02 is only one of many pocketable emulation units. We recommend you search for different distinctive Game Boys you will get within the U.S., such because the newfangled Anbernic Rotate and its flip-up display. If you need one thing extra conventional, you may go for units just like the Retroid Pocket Classic or the TrimUI Brick.