In what I like to imagine as an Ocean’s Eleven-style delivery, my Anbernic RG35XXSP (hereafter SP) arrived to its new home two weeks or so ago with its then-current sales price intact, e.g. no surprise tariffs. Unfortunately for anyone currently reading this, Anbernic is suspending shipments to the US. They supposedly have a warehouse in the US they can ship from, but for how long remains to be seen.

Anyway, here is the SP next to the Mini+:

There are plenty of Youtube videos out there with detailed analyses between the two, so I won’t get into that here. What I will say is that if I had to do it all over again… I would have gotten an emulator with a thumbstick. In probably a horizontal orientation. So… maybe just a Retroid Pocket 5.

To be clear, the main “problem” I have is probably N64 envy. When I was looking at the curated list of 100s of games from my youth, the first thing that came to mind to try was Super Mario Kart (SNES). While that was nice, it was also, well, extremely basic. Which, of course it was. So then I moved up to Super Mario Kart Advance (GBA) and that felt a bit better with more interesting tracks and items. And then I took a detour into Super Mario 64 and that… didn’t feel that great. It actually played just fine on the SP, but obviously you have to use the D-pad as an analog stick.

As a somewhat related aside, I’m not sure if this is a handheld issue or an emulator issue or something I’ve just forgotten about in the intervening decades, but holding down B to run and pressing A to jump while moving is… hard? Like, I’m talking in the original Super Mario Bros. If you let go of B in mid-air, you lose any momentum you have when you land, if not while airborne. Did we all just smoosh our thumb-meat inbetween those two buttons and rock it 45 degrees when you needed to jump? I’m tempted to change the controller scheme to add one of the shoulder buttons as a Run button.

Aside from Nintendo, one of the other games I have surprisingly been playing is Xenogears. At first, this felt a bit awkward on the SP considering Xenogears is a 3D game with a spinnable camera and even a jump button… until I realized that the PS1 didn’t have analog sticks either. Oh my. In any case, I’m not certain that I will continue playing Xenogears much on the handheld devices, specifically because when I have the opportunity to do so, I usually can’t have the sound cranked up. Probably half the nostalgia of these games – and especially Squaresoft ones – comes from the soundtrack, so it’s a big loss. All of which brings up my reminder about your use case for emulation. Bring some headphones, at least.

In any event, what I can say is that between the SP and the Mini+, I do prefer the SP. There is an argument that the SP might have a hinge problem in the future, but there is something deeply satisfying about being able to close the clamshell at a moment’s notice and forget about the device in your pocket without having to baby it. I bought the Mini+ with a carrying case, but at that point the “pocket portability” aspect is diminished. The SP is probably not good for my 6-year old who would undoubtedly just open and shut the lid a 1000 times absentmindedly, but it’s certainly safer from a screen point of view once he’s older.