As handheld consoles continue to grow and push the limits of what you can hold in your hands, the Arduboy FX-C comes with a refreshing pocket-sized package. It manages to squeeze the best features of past models and some welcome improvements into a portable space that’s no bigger or larger than a couple of credit cards. It’s the best Arduboy version yet, especially for gamers looking to jump into the handheld’s ever-expanding library of games and apps out of the box, but its most compelling upgrades aren’t ready for use.
The original Arduboy was Tetris-playing a business card made by Kevin Bates to show off his electronics skills. It went viral in 2014, prompting Bates to turn the idea into a commercial tool a year later that was an open-source gaming tool and a tool to help would-be developers learn to code.
After more than a decade of small iterations, Arduboy FX-C looks like the original. Controls are limited to six buttons, four of which act as a D-pad. They have a small amount of travel when the device is just 5mm thin, but a satisfying amount of clicks when pressed. The piezoelectric speaker is loud but loud enough, and its 1.3-inch, 1-bit OLED screen is bright enough for outdoor play.
While the original 37-year-old Game Boy could display four shades of gray in green, the Arduboy FX-C’s screen is monochromatic and limited to white pixels only. Developers must rely on visual tricks like dithering or flickering to create grayscale images. Equally limiting is the FX-C’s ATmega32u4 processor paired with just 2.5KB of RAM. Compared to other black-and-white handhelds like the Playdate, the Arduboy FX-C feels like nothing but its limitations have forced game developers to get creative and experimental, which is a big part of this platform’s appeal.
My biggest frustration with the original Arduboy was its small storage which made me constantly connect the device to my laptop when I wanted to play a different game. In 2020, Bates introduced Arduboy FX with an additional flash chip on board that can hold 250 games. The FX-C inherits that chip, but is a slightly larger version, blowing up its integrated library of games to over 300, while upgrading the device from microUSB to USB-C.
It would be nice if the FX-C had a color screen, a proper D-pad, dedicated volume buttons, an improved sound chip, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even a microSD card slot, but none of these upgrades really feel necessary. It’s a handheld that feels limited to completely bare-bones gaming needs, but it works.
A small switch on the top edge of the FX-C activates the handheld but can sometimes be a challenge if, like me, your nails are short. After a quick boot up, you will be presented with a simple home screen and menu system. The dozens of games are organized into several categories including Action, Adventure, Arcade, Runner, Puzzle, and Racing which you scroll around by scrolling left and right. Games in each section are scrolled directly by pressing up or down. It’s simple and easy to navigate, however I would like to see one more section that lists all the games alphabetically.
All games made for Arduboy are distributed free, so you won’t find any old 8-bit games you see like that. Super Mario Bros. or Castlevania which Nintendo made available on platforms such as its Switch. But there are plenty of excellent doppelgängers that are similar enough to scratch the nostalgic itch while also being different enough to deter lawyers. Surprisingly, despite the FX-C’s limited processing power, there is much more than side-scrolling and falling block puzzle games included. You’ll find first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers, and running games with excellent frame rates.
There’s a lot of fun to be had, but don’t expect games that will take you weeks to complete. The Arduboy FX-C is best suited for quick download and play times if you have a few minutes to kill.
Unfortunately, the feature that convinced me to buy the FX-Cs has not been perfected. I couldn’t get USB multiplayer to work, although some users on the Arduboy community forums have had success. Bates says the feature is still under development. Many Arduboy gamers cleverly use the extra conductors of modern USB cables to transfer game data back and forth, as Bates explains in a forum post, but it requires an expensive USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt cable to work. After testing several USB 3.0 cables from Amazon, I had no success. It’s a feature I’m familiar with it can be work and I expect the hiccups will be resolved eventually, but if that’s your only reason for holding the FX-Cs, I’d hold off for now.
The Arduboy FX-C is still a solid upgrade. It was originally one of the last devices I had to save the microUSB cables for, but the huge collection of games collected from the Arduboy development community is the real reason to pull one back. I haven’t tried 10 percent of them yet, and while the quality varies, it’s hard to feel disappointed if you don’t really pay for them. A console is only as good as its library of games, and over the past decade, Arduboy has managed to cultivate a dedicated community that develops hundreds. If you go in with an open mind and don’t worry about what’s missing, you’ll absolutely enjoy this handheld.
Photo by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge
