a dose of nostalgia for less than €35 thanks to this excellent retrogaming portable console

Aaaaah, the blessed era of GameBoy, Pocket, Color, Advance, SP, Mini… The pleasure of having a machine in your pocket and access to many games. This is what you find with the Miyoo Mini Plus, a console allowing you to play retro games in excellent conditions, enough to strike the nostalgic chord of a large number of gamers, and to introduce great classics to new generations.

What is the Miyoo Mini Plus used for?

• Emulate everything: from ordinosaurs to PlayStation 1
• The 3.5″ IPS screen displays 640 x 480 pixels, better than back then
• You can put whatever OS you want in it

On the official Miyoo website, the Mini Plus is priced at 109 euros. But by going to AliExpress today, you can order it for only 34.62 euros. This version does not include games, you must choose the 64 GB option at 37.99 euros to have thousands of games preloaded on a microSD.

A GameBoy clone that smells of nostalgia

The first thing that comes to mind when we see the look of the Miyoo Mini Plus is necessarily Nintendo’s iconic portable console. We find the format with the screen above, the keys below, with some progress however. Already, instead of two buttons, you have four on the front, in addition to Start, Select and the central button which is also important, but we’ll talk about that later. There are also four triggers on the back, which roughly correspond to L1/R1 L2/R2 on the PS1 controller.

The new features are also technical, with already a 3.5″ color IPS screen which displays a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. It may not seem like much, but remember that the consoles of the time displayed much less than that. There, you benefit from unprecedented comfort for playing retro games, from the Amstrad CPC to the PlayStation 1. In addition, you can raise/lower the brightness to adapt to your environment. No more waiting for a street light to pass by, at night, in the car, to be able to play!

The 70s, 80s and 90s in your pocket

Now, let’s turn on the console and find out the basic OS of the system. It’s a variation of Linux that you can customize however you want. A quick Google search with the name of the console + OS allows you to find very practical operating systems designed for the Miyoo Mini Plus. It’s very easy to install by following tutorials on YouTube or the Github wiki.

Under the console, there is a microSD card slot, for storing games. In terms of power, the console can emulate up to the PlayStation 1 and everything before that. And, do you remember the famous little central button? It allows you to return to the menu when you are in-game or to resume your games on titles already launched, like the Quick Resume on the Xbox Series. Add to that options to use cheats (and finally beat the Ninja Turtles underwater level on NES) and you have a nice overview of the whole thing.

A final word on the battery and autonomy: a capacity of 3,000 mAh rechargeable by a USB-C port under the console, next to the microSD port and the headphone jack. Battery life varies depending on the games launched and the brightness, but also the intensity of the vibrations (yes, it vibrates). In short, the best quality/price ratio for retrogaming currently.

If retrogaming is a subject that interests you and you are looking for the best consoles to practice it, you can take a look at our comparative guide to the best machines of the moment.