After we got the Anbernic RG SP last month, I figured we were done with GBA-centric handhelds. But then the KONKR Pocket Advance showed up this week, and frankly, it sort of blew me away - other than its slightly mushy controls, I can’t find any real faults with it.

🎥 Now Playing

KONKR Pocket Advance: An Exceptional GBA

Even though we have a ton of GBA-like handheld options, the new KONKR Pocket Advance somehow pushes things a step further, thanks to its elevated design and comfort. And thankfully, the overall experience is good enough to allow me to overlook its overly soft buttons.

Anbernic RG55G1 Impressions: Switch Like

Anbernic's next handheld looks like a Switch Lite, but with a classic d-pad centric layout. It's their first Snapdragon device, but the G1 Gen 2 processor has its own share of advantages and disadvantages. Here are my initial impressions of this familiar-looking handheld.

The RG55G1 launches tomorrow at 6:00 AM ET with early-bird pricing that's good for 72 hours: 4GB/64GB at $140, or 8GB/128GB at $165. After the first three days, both SKUs jump $10. Note: prices listed before shipping.

Anbernic direct: Affiliate / Non-affiliate
AliExpress: Affiliate / Non-affiliate

I won’t have a chance to release a final review of this handheld before the sales go live, but it’s my goal to finish the review video before the 72-hour pre-order period ends - it’ll likely be my next video release.

📰 Power-Up(dates)

• Microsoft officially announced its Disc-to-Digital program, allowing Xbox One and Xbox Series X owners to claim digital licenses for their physical game discs. The feature launches for Xbox Insiders tomorrow, supporting thousands of titles at launch with more to be added over time. Once claimed, players gain access to digital benefits like Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming, while the physical disc continues to work as it always has. On the backend, the license is automatically removed from your account if the disc is used on another system - in other words, you can still freely loan the disc to friends (or sell the game if you’d like). It’s a rare win-win scenario for gamers, although more cynical takes predict this is a consolation prize before Xbox goes all-digital in the future. If the next Xbox does go digital, I hope they at least offer a USB disc drive so I can still play my Xbox/360 discs, too.

• ASUS marked its 20th anniversary by announcing the ROG XBOX Ally X20, a translucent black handheld with gold accents, powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, and packing a new 7.4-inch OLED Nebula HDR display. The price tag: $1,299 standalone, or an eye-watering $2,499 bundled with ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 AR glasses (with 171-inch virtual screen and BOSE audio), a custom dbrand Killswitch case, Pelican protective case, and 68W charger. Pre-orders are live now with October 15 shipping: Affiliate / Non-affiliate (Best Buy)

• At least two booth thefts marred Gamescom 2026 this week: indie dev Ryan Laley reported his equipment stolen, while iam8bit lost two demo laptops containing early builds of Petal Runner and Escape Academy 2 despite security presence. The silver lining? CD Projekt Red publicly offered to help Laley replace his gear, and marketing consultant Indie Game Joe donated funds outright to cover the losses. The outpouring of industry support, combined with wishlist pushes for Laley's game Mimic, turned a "huge blow financially and mentally" into a reminder that every community is better when people have each other's backs.

• An unreleased version of Nvidia's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering feature leaked online this week through NBA 2K27's early access build. Modders in the RenoDX community extracted the nvngx_dlssnr.dll file and got it working in games including Control, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Early tests show the AI upscaling filter significantly alters character appearance, with results varying across titles. On top of that, performance testing reported approximately 40 to 50 percent frame rate reductions with the feature enabled on RTX 50 series hardware. DLSS 5 is scheduled for official release in Fall 2026, but don’t hold your breath for any miracles.

• Panic is refunding all US customers who paid tariff surcharges when purchasing the Playdate handheld during the tariff period. Like many companies, they applied a 19 percent surcharge to cover import duties mandated by the US Government. After a February 2026 Supreme Court decision struck down the tariffs as unlawful, Panic received its own government refund and subsequently announced the payback program. CEO Cabel Sasser stated the funds were "not our money to keep." Notably, most other hardware manufacturers facing tariff-related class-action lawsuits (including Amazon, Sony, and Nintendo) have not voluntarily issued refunds.

• Fan developer CryZENx has shifted gears from their decade-long Ocarina of Time remake (shelved after Nintendo's official remake announcement) to tackle The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap in Unreal Engine 5. The new version adopts a Wind Waker-inspired cel-shaded aesthetic, as you can see in this preview video. CryZENx started development immediately after their OoT project went dark, and the team is also crafting an Android port to boot.

❤️ Currently Grinding

Retro Game: Metroid Zero Mission

When testing the KONKR Pocket Advance, I blazed through about 100 GBA games, and I told myself that I would write about the game I enjoyed the most during that testing. That game was Metroid Zero Mission, which is kind of surprising because it’s one of the few GBA games I’ve played through, so I’m already familiar with it (I didn’t own a GBA back in the day, so most of my GBA game time has been on the Nintendo DS or via emulation).

I think what draws me to Zero Mission is that it’s just so easy to get going and enjoy immediate progress. I’ve tried many times to play Metroid Fusion, which many consider to be the superior GBA option, but the sheer amount of exposition and backtracking in that first hour prevent me from making it much further before calling it quits. I’ll get to Fusion some day, but for now, I just like the comfort and simplicity of Metroid Zero Mission.

Modern Game: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

At long last, MGS4 is no longer stuck on the PlayStation 3! Metal Gear Solid - Master Collection Volume 2 released this week on PC, Switch 1/2, Xbox, and PS5. It comes with both Metal Gear Solid 4 and MGS Peace Walker (previously a PSP game, and its story takes place between MGS3 and MGS5). I picked up the PC version and immediately started it up (MGS4 is only a 22GB download, nice). The game plays as expected, and on PC it’s fairly optimized - my Steam Machine hummed along at 1440p 60fps high settings without breaking a sweat.

In all honesty, I’m not sure if I’m going to play through the game any time soon, simply because I want to run through the whole series first and chronologically, MGS4 is the final game to play (let’s just not talk about Revengeance). After finishing the first chronological game (Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater) last year, I am thinking I might jump into Peace Walker next, since it’s one of the few Metal Gear games I haven’t played.

Album: Upbeats and Beatdowns by Five Iron Frenzy

Earlier in the week my wife and I watched Steven Spielberg’s excellent 2021 adaptation of West Side Story, and when the song “America” started playing, it unlocked a long-buried memory for me. Back in 1997, I was driving my mom to pick up some groceries, blasting this quirky Christian ska/punk album from Five Iron Frenzy, when their song “Beautiful America” came on. This song includes a refrain from the original West Side Story’s “America”, and it’s a clever homage to the 1957 classic while also criticizing America’s obsession with materialism. Until my mom mentioned it during this fateful shopping trip, I hadn’t even realized the refrain was from that classic musical - it blended together so nicely.

It’s probably been 25+ years since I listened to Five Iron Frenzy’s debut album, so after remembering that moment with my mom, I gave the record a spin the other day. Sadly, it doesn’t hold up quite as well as I remember, partly because its 16 songs (and 47-minute runtime) make the album feel busy and overstuffed. So it’s not necessarily an album I can recommend, but their song “Beautiful America” is still a standout track (and actually sung by their trombone player, not their lead singer).

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Christian bands were quite popular in some American ska/punk/hardcore scenes, especially in the Seattle area where I grew up. That’s because a major Christian label, Tooth & Nail Records, was based out of Seattle, so most of their roster frequently came to town and played shows. I was even briefly the lead singer in an ill-fated Christian punk band - this track features me on bass and vocals, recorded on cassette four-track back in 1996.

While most of those T&N records are probably lost to time, there are still a few that aged very gracefully and are in my regular rotation today. As a fun bonus, here are some Tooth & Nail albums that I think are still great, listed in release order:

• Luxury - Amazing & Thank You (1995)

• Bloodshed - Bloodshed EP (1995)

• Pedro the Lion - Whole EP (1997)

• The Huntingtons - High School Rock (1997)

• Ninety Pound Wuss - Where Meager Die of Self-Interest (1997)

• Roadside Monument - Eight Hours from Being a Man (1997)

• Frodus - Conglomerate International (1998)

• MxPx - Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo (1998)

• Zao - Liberate Te Ex Inferis (1999)

• Further Seems Forever - The Moon is Down (2001)

• mewithoutYou - [A->B] Life (2002)

💰 Bargain Bin

• Silicon Power’s 1TB microSD cards are down to $144 at Amazon, their lowest in quite a while. Affiliate / Non-Affiliate

• Green Man Gaming are running one sale per week for six weeks, and this week they’re honing in on two categories.

  • First, there’s a Looter sale with deals like the Destiny 2 Collection for $20, Neon Blight for $2 and each Escapists game for less than $5. Affiliate / Non-Affiliate

  • Concurrently, there’s a sale on open world games with deals like half off the Oblivion Remastered and deep discounts on the Fallout games. Affiliate / Non-Affiliate

• Humble Bundle is having another big sale, this time for their anniversary (I swear they just had one of those). Check out some of the hot ticket items below (non-affiliate links):

  • Doom: The Dark Ages - 67% off - $23.10

  • Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - 70% off - $17.99

  • Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition - 60% off - $11.99

  • Soma - 80% off - $5.99

  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Royal Edition - 50% off - $31.99

  • Alan Wake 2 - Deluxe Edition - 70% off - $20.99

  • Slay the Spire - 75% off - $6.24

• LITNXT is having their summer sale right now. Use the SUMMER15 code to knock 15% off your order, bringing devices like the TrimUI Smart Pro S, TrimUI Brick and Miyoo Mini Flip down to about $43 each. Check it out here (non-affiliate).

⏪ Previously on Retro Game Corps

Super Console X Pro In-Depth Review

Aping Nintendo’s distinct designs is nothing new. Miyoo’s BittBoy handhelds were pretty shameless in their design, and five years ago the Super Console X Pro took some…inspiration from a living room staple. Fun fact: TechDweeb’s first-ever video was on this console, and his video was over 30 mins long (my review was only 20 mins) - things have changed a lot since then!

🎬 Behind The Scenes

A couple months ago I made a Steam Machine impressions video, and in that video I showed off my old micro-ATX PC that I built in 2019. It’s a solid little computer even today, housed in a cheap old Cooler Master case. After releasing that video, Cooler Master reached out and poked fun at me for using such an old case. They offered to replace it with their similarly-sized updated model, the $55 Qube 340, with no strings attached (a rare thing in the YouTube content creator world).

It arrived a couple weeks ago, and it looks great. Very cool of them to send it over, and to learn that they watch my videos. I haven’t transferred my components over to the new case yet, because now I’m considering upgrading some parts first!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Russ