BittBoy 2: "New BittBoy" (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
What is a BittBoy, and what makes it "New"?
The New BittBoy, as it's called, is a hardware revision to the handheld NES/FC game player known as the BittBoy. At a glance, you'd be forgiven for mistaking this new model for the original BittBoy itself (reviewed here, for those who are interested) as it features an identical mold for the shell and buttons, is made of the same material, and has identical button labels on the shell.
Where ye BittBoy of olde presented itself solely as a device to play NES/FC games, this New BittBoy claims to not only be able to run the NES games library, but those of the Gameboy and Gameboy Color as well. More than that, where the original BittBoy couldn't be loaded with your own ROM backups (instead being hard-bundled with a library of 300 NES titles, most being cheap ripoffs/romhacks of more popular games), the New BittBoy can be loaded with any ROM file having the extensions .nes, .gb, or .gbc by putting them on the root of an SD card and inserting it into the top of the device. In fact, the device is only operable when an SD card is inserted. Already, the system seems to stand head and shoulders over the original, but will the quality of the package itself and the emulation therein compare so favorably? Who knows~
Well, I know, but-
look, I'll tell you, just rea-
...no, you're bad at segues. >:c
Bitts and bobs.
As mentioned previously, the New Boy of the Bitt uses almost the exact same mold as the original BittBoy, measuring in at the same dimensions of 6.8x9.9x1.3 cm. The only difference in the external shell is that there's no slit for a volume wheel on the console's side, instead requiring the user to hold the Select button and press B or A to raise or lower the volume. Screen brightness is operated in a similar way, only using the TA and TB buttons. As mentioned, the system is also made from the same material as the original version; a chalky, very lightweight, cheap-feeling material. The build quality is fine in terms of durability, however; the system is held together quite tightly and the PCB isn't flimsy in the least, so the only downside here is a slightly cheap feeling and perhaps being slightly easier to mar.
At the top of the unit is a slot for the micro SD card and a power switch. The D-pad, A + B, and Start + Select buttons all correspond to their counterparts on an NES controller or Gameboy, with the TA and TB buttons functioning as rapid-fire functions of the A and B buttons respectively. The R button in the center is used to either bring up the settings menu with a short press, from which one can save/load a state or switch the output to a TV, or quit the game with a long press. As with the previous model, the buttons are in generally comfortable areas despite the unit itself being a bit awkward to grasp due to its small size. It's a decent compromise, and I don't have any issues with the layout. The SD card slot unfortunately suffers a bit, as my card would often get stuck underneath the back lip of the shell while in the slot, making it difficult to remove. The Start/Select buttons are also uncomfortable to depress, as they sink below the edge of the casing when pressing them, necessitating the use of a fingernail to press all the way, and often making them get stuck cockways underneath the lip of the shell.
Unfortunately the D-pad is also just as terrible as that of the original BittBoy. When pressing into the cross, each of the four button pads simultaneously end up clicking past their initial resistance threshold, making it so that, while holding any one direction direction, any slight movement to either side can have multiple directions register unintentionally. I found it most prevalent when playing The Legend of Zelda, where it was a genuine and constant struggle to make sure the D-pad didn't register directions I wasn't trying to press, but it exists for every game, making playing those games feel just that much more cumbersome.
The official store page reports that the IPS screen has a resolution of 320x240 and is 2.4". Just like before, the screen is quite clear and bright, however unlike before, there isn't any red-skew to the colors, nor are there any dramatic overscan issues. Covering this new screen is a nice, hard plastic, which is relatively difficult to scratch. Using my fingernails roughly across the surface, I wasn't able to put any observable scratches on it, which certainly gets my seal of approval. Considering the original model's screen cover was practically made of warm butter and old man breath, scratching from as little as a stern look, having such robust plastic here is a pleasant surprise, and definitely an upgrade. The only downside is that my review unit came with a fiber already stuck behind the screen, which was odd and could certainly have been a 1-off.
The standard version of the console comes with 2 cables; a short USB A to micro B cable for charging, and a lengthier 3.5mm to RCA cable for connecting the unit to a TV. 8gb microSD cards are also available to be purchased alongside the console for an additional $9, or bought separately for $10, which is something you'll need to do unless you've got an extra card lying around because...
How it works.
The BittBoy is a hungry boy, and will refuse to function unless fed a microSD card formatted to fat32. It'll play all manner of files with the extensions nes, gb, or gbc, however they must be placed on the root of the card in one big pile to be recognized, which may irk the people who want to keep their games organized and separated by console, especially since the save states are also dumped to the root as well.
With all that set, the BittBoy boots into a series of 3 game selection menus, each for the different consoles it emulates. While technically functional, the menus themselves have quite the cheap feeling to them, with popular screenshots representing the games of the console over a wood-tiled background with the bright red text "FUN!!!" cocked awkwardly in the corner of the screen. Upon picking a console, it brings the user into a sub-menu wherein all the games are listed, but not very conveniently. The number of characters shown for each game file is very limited, making it so that hovering over each game individually and waiting for the name to scroll by is the only way to read the full title. It's unfortunate, especially since 1/3 of the screen space here is being taken up by nothing but a static graphic.
Once in the game, pressing the R button briefly will open up a sparse settings menu, wherein one can either save or load one of 3 available save states per game, change the display ratio, or set the device to output to a TV via the included AV cable. Saving states is actually the only way to save any progress at all, as there's no built-in save support. Holding the button down for longer will back out to the main system menu. While the port and cable for connecting the system to a television are no longer sensitive to the touch, which would interfere with the image on the original BittBoy, the system seems to quiet itself to a hush when connected this way, making it so that one must turn the volume from ~6% to 100% and back every time you switch modes. The video quality when transmitting to an external display suffers along with the audio, with pixel edges flickering slightly in a TV-static-like pattern.
On the subject of sounds, this tiny mono speaker can BELT out quite the basket of decibels, but the quality is harsh to the ears, sounding very tinny. Often times it renders sound-effects as something more akin to a short burst of static than anything. It's especially unpleasant when playing Gameboy/Color games through it, and it can get quite uncomfortable.
All that aside, though, what I imagine will really make or break the device for many people is the actual quality of the emulation.
How things run.
NES
The NES emulation seems to be the most robust feature the console has, perhaps as expected, since the previous iteration exclusively played NES/FC games. The input lag for handheld mode seems to be (/60fps) between 3 and 5 frames, 2-4 for a CRT, and 6-7 on my HDTV. This is a relatively significant step down in performance from the original model's lag, which averaged about 2.93 frames in handheld. This new input lag makes it feel more as though you're trying to control your character through muck or molasses, and it takes all the more concentration to overcome, ESPECIALLY if playing on an HDTV. At that point, I'd say just don't play. As mentioned before, there is no longer any red-shifting of skin-tone colors, nor does it experience the same vertical and horizontal overscan problems as the previous model, however there is now a significant degree of screen-tearing in every game, especially when playing in handheld mode. The previous model also suffered some screen tearing, but I seem to remember it being less severe. The compatibility here seems up to snuff, with it handling every retail game I gave it, though it does suffer some minor graphical glitches in some games, causing elements to rapidly jitter up and down, or to flash the incorrect color for an instant. Homebrew titles and romhacks can be loaded as well, and they have generally positive compatibility, though some will not work correctly. For example, Mario Adventure (SMB3 hack) seems to work just fine, whereas Super Mario Brothers 3Mix suffers some rather severe slowdown in places. Rockman CX (a MM2 hack), on the other hand, worked flawlessly. It's a very hit-or-miss thing, but on the whole, it seems to handle them more often than not.
As an aside, when loading a save state, there's a chance for the graphics to become temporarily corrupted. I've also had one instance where my controls were completely locked until reloading the same state, and one instance where trying to save a state caused the console to hard lock.
Gameboy/GB Color
Unfortunately NES games are where the compliments seem to stop, as while you can technically play GameBoy games, I would very much not recommend doing so. The quality of the emulated sound is noticably sub-par, with this static-y hiss to accompanying most sounds, giving them a very rough and grunge-y feeling, and a soft, high-pitched whine playing constantly in the background audio. Whatever screen-tearing problems existed in the NES emulator seem to be doubled here, with tearing being a constant problem happening once roughly every 3 frames. More than that, the individual pixels aren't displayed at a consistent size between one another, making it so that any sort of movement across the screen produces this garish shimmering effect as the pixels are continually shrunk and stretched, giving things an underwater-esque vignette. Even stationary images look warped due to this effect.
How Lance is meant to look (left) versus how unintentionally cocky his sprite is made to look through the BittBoy's emulator (right). The rightmost image is also running in the more accurate of its two display ratios, i.e. not "Fullscreen", and it still looks squashed.
This character's eyes are meant to be the same size, but the right one is squashed. Example of inconsistent pixel sizing.
Input lag for GameBoy emulation is 5-6 frames handheld, 6-7 on my HDTV, and bouncing anywhere from 3 to 5 frames on my CRT. Never 4 frames, though, for whatever reason; I only measured either 3 frames of lag or 5 frames alternately. There is also no way to run these GB games using one of the GameBoy Color's different palettes.
Speaking of the GameBoy Color, that emulator shares every one of these problems identically, with the only new piece of information being that there's one compatibility issue I'm aware of with the game Shantae, where the game doesn't render the health display at the bottom of the screen, glitches out text boxes, and runs at half speed. Screen tearing, terrible sound, and shimmering during movement are all as much an issue here as they are in the base GB emulator, and it's just as painful to experience. Input lag for GameBoy Color is roughly the same as with GameBoy emulation. What this means is that these emulators; sound terrible, are nauseating to look at, and are unpleasant to control due to the generally terrible input lag. The only positive I could say about the GameBoy/Color emulation is this: most games/romhacks run. Beyond that, I can't even begin to recommend using this emulator, regardless of alternative.
The BittBoy's contextual worth in the modern era.
In my review of the previous, 1st generation BittBoy, I said this:
"In all honesty, even if we were simply given the ability to load our own ROMs into this device with no other changes, I think I would be singing at least a slightly different tune."
However that was predicated on the fact that, as far as emulation was concerned, the previous BittBoy had among the lowest input lag available in pocket emulators at the time. This was back in December of 2017, and as we all know, on March 31st of 2018, Retroarch introduced a feature known as "Runahead" which aimed to mitigate input lag by emulating multiple potential game instances in parallel and displaying whichever one corresponded with the button the player pressed. Not only has this new BittBoy taken steps backwards in terms of its input lag, but since its introduction, the runahead feature has been implemented in most Retroarch builds, and next-frame input lag for retro games has become a standard. The BittBoy has its small size going for it, sure, but it lacks anywhere near the display clarity of standard freeware emulation (see pokemon comparison screenshot above), controller reconfiguration, cheat support, shaders, integer display scaling, GBC palette support for GB games, runahead, and every other one of Retroarch's quality of life features. What it has instead is screen-tearing, medium-high input lag, a low-quality speaker, a fuzzy image when connecting to a TV (all those blurry screenshots may look like I pointed an old camera at a TV screen, but believe me when I say that they're all direct capture), and in the case of GB/C emulation, grossly misshapen pixels and poor sound emulation.
I gave the previous BittBoy a 3.5/10, saved only by its bright, clear screen and its relatively low input lag. While New BittBoy tries to be an improvement on the original, input lag aside, unfortunately freeware emulation has FAR outpaced this $40-$49 device in function and quality. What results is a situation where this new model has mostly outstripped its predecessor in terms of scope of functionality, it ends up having almost no niche in the current market due to freeware alternatives surpassing it in both form and function. What can be done here has already been done better on the 3DS and Switch, with software than anyone can download for free.
Official website: https://www.bittboy.com/collections/bittboy2/products/new-bittboy
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8C91MN
Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New...ogress-MicroSD-card-External/32966627531.html
Verdict
- Bright, clear screen, with new ability to adjust brightness.
- Pocket-sized for easy portability.
- Mushy, terrible, imprecise D-pad; unimproved from the previous model.
- Higher input lag than the previous model.
- Nauseating visuals and headache-inducing sounds from GB/C emulation.
- Poor quality picture when connected to external display.
- Screen-tearing, especially with GB/C emulation.