Most of us adults experienced the odd sensation of our gaming handheld shrinking as we grew up. Rather than boosting the size of handhelds for adult-sized claws, one company is going in the opposite direction. The people who first brought us the postage stamp-sized handheld called Thumby are back with a sequel, the Thumby Color. Despite what the name implies, this programmable keychain handheld is shaped more like a Game Boy Advance than the older Game Boy Color, which may prove a good thing for our aging, cramping hands.
Like the original Thumby, developers TinyCircuits said on the device’s Kickstarter page the new handheld is so small you can slip it onto your keychain for on-the-go gaming. Just know you’ll need keen eyes and fingers not likely to cramp to fully enjoy it. It has all the buttons and controls you expect, including the D-pad, shoulder buttons, and a menu button (the original Thumby’s buttons were just for show). Hell, it even has a rumble motor. Just know you won’t be playing any emulated Game Boy classics unless you want to put in the work of remaking it yourself through a free browser editor.
There’s a lot packed into the mere 2- by 1.1-inch frame. Any smaller, and we’re reaching “Game Boy for ants” territory. The Thumby Color is powered by a 150Mhz Dual Cortex-M33 Raspberry Pi RP2350 processor, which is enough juice for simple 2D or faux-3D games on its 128×128 IPS LCD display. Its memory specs are decidedly old school, with only 520 KB of SRAM and 16 MB (yes, not GB) of flash storage. Note, that only 13 MB of that internal storage is available for loading your games.
TinyCircuits promises you’ll get two hours of game time from its 110 mAh rechargeable battery. There’s a USB-C port that also doubles as a connection for another Thumby Color if you want to play with a friend like you’re back in middle school, hunched under the shade of the playground just so you can see the screen. Though, at least in this case, the Thumby Color has a backlit display.
You won’t be playing any classic Game Boy Advance titles, but all the current slate of games for it are open source. The company said any games made for the original Thumby should work on the new version. The devs claimed they currently have six games exclusive to the Thumby Color, and they should have more preloaded on the device before it ships later this year. Users who want to code or add games to their library need to go through a program called Thonny.
It also has some truly classic color choices, though some will cost more than others. The opaque classic purple versions go for $49, and the clear plastic versions will set you back $55. The Kickstarter-exclusive black goes for $75.
I’m still waiting for somebody to make an FPGA emulation console like the Analogue Pocket that’s shaped like the Game Boy Advance, rather than the rectangular Game Boy Color. I don’t know if the Thumby Color truly fills that void, but damn me if it doesn’t look like the cutest, wittlest handheld.
TinyCircuits said it expects to start production this fall and ship in spring early next year. As always, we never suggest you put down money on a still-unreleased product, but TinyCircuits does have several successful crowdfunding campaigns under its belt plus other products that went straight to market, so you can take that into consideration.
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