The Analogue Duo is a hardcore dream at a hardcore price

Analogue is back at it again. The company that pitches itself as the sort of Rolls Royce of retro gaming is back with its latest piece of hardware – and it’s arguably the most niche offering yet.

Where past Analogue machines have been based on the most mainstream and successful of video game consoles – the SNES, the Mega Drive, the Game Boy, and so on - the Analogue Duo is a true hardcore gamer’s device. The pitch is the same, however: it takes old games and makes them look glorious on modern displays through the wonder of FPGA technology. All that’s really different is the machine it’s reviving.

The primary difference this time around is that I’m willing to bet a lot of you have never played, leave alone owned, a TurboGrafx-16, aka the PC Engine. When Analogue’s boss sent through an email asking if I’d like to check out the Duo, it contained an extra question I’d never seen him ask before: did we even have games to test it with? I’m insufferable, so I did, but I bet many did not. That’s telling: this Analogue offering has a narrower audience.

This doesn’t mean the company has taken their role in crafting the machine any less seriously. It’s a gorgeous, high-end device at a high-end price ($250), and is meant for people who take their retro gaming extremely seriously.

The way I’ve explained Analogue’s stuff in the past is to employ the analogy of vinyl records. If you want to play an old (or new) vinyl, you can go to a store for audiophiles and pick up beautiful bookshelf speakers and a turntable running into the many hundreds. Or you can go to your local superstore and probably find a cheap turntable that connects to your bluetooth speakers for $50. Retro video games have gone the same way, and where devices like the Super Pocket are cheap gift fodder, this is for whatever we’re calling the video game version of audiophiles. Retrophiles? Gamerphiles? Definitely not that second one. Shudder.

Even at first glance, this is a premium experience. The box is lovely, again. Sliding it open reveals a dinky machine that has a shape based on that of the TurboDuo, the machine from which Analogue’s offering also takes its name. In both instances, the ‘Duo’ infers dual compatibility - as it can take both the cartridge style ‘Hucard’ releases and CDs. It also refers to the original machine’s architecture, as it had something of a duology about it, sporting an 8-Bit CPU and a 16-bit GPU running in tandem.

For Analogue’s Duo, the architecture returns to FPGA, the basis upon which all of the company’s offerings are built. This term stands for Field-Programmable Gate Array, but basically what it does is allow a chip to be built to act exactly as an original piece of hardware, right down to the tiniest minutiae of its circuits. In practice, this is very different to ‘software emulation’, where an emulator program running within another operating system attempts to approximate the real hardware. To hear Analogue tell it, this results in 100% accuracy in all games - though anyone who has had one of these machines before knows that isn’t entirely true. It is pretty damn close, though.

In fact, I’ve become an FPGA convert over the years. It’s my primary way to experience old machines, if there’s an FPGA alternative available, as it saves the hassle of messing with original hardware.

In testing, the Duo seems like another FPGA winner. I have to confess, I’m nowhere near as much of an authority on Turbografx stuff as I am on stuff like the Mega Drive or Game Boy, as I never owned one of these machines in my childhood - I came to it late, as a historical curiosity. But everything appears to run well across all the supported machines. Again, it feels lagless, bugless, and everything I threw at the machine ‘just worked’ after a couple of casual clicks in its OS.

There’s a few features missing right now, like save states. Analogue does this a lot, though. It’s frustrating, but the company has proved itself repeatedly in terms of coming good on software update promises. In that, I trust the Duo will be what has been promised in short enough order. Right now, without save states, it’s closer in function to the original hardware.

The OS is likely to become the sticking point for some, however. The Duo is the first machine to release running on Analogue’s proprietary operating system without support for OpenFPGA, which lets users play more types of games in more ways, including from SD cards and the like. The Analogue Pocket is the flagship OpenFPGA device, but the Duo and the upcoming Analogue 3D (N64) machine won’t support it. This means, initially, the only thing you can do with this machine is play original cards and discs; and the reliance on the main OS means a jailbreak will likely be slower coming - if at all - than with the machines before Analogue OS existed.

This is a prickly topic to address in a review of the hardware, as obviously, you’re supposed to own all the games you play, even ancient ones. And I wouldn’t endorse anything otherwise. But the Duo offers compatibility with machines that weren’t all that popular, making their best games quite rare. I went onto ebay to pick up a couple of additional games beyond what I already had and ended up spending the cost of the machine again, y’know? It’s an expensive ask.

Analogue would say, of course, that they’ve nothing to do with that. They make lavish new machines to play old games on. This is that. It’s compatible with original controllers, but also sports Bluetooth and WiFi to connect new wireless ones. I love that the built-in 3.5mm headphone jack and volume rocker from the original machine are also replicated here, so you can play with headphones - though a menu option to mute the TV output when doing this is sorely needed. And just generally, it feels like a lovely, sturdy piece of hardware.

Slot-loading CD drives always make me a bit nervous - these mechanisms can break - but it’s hard to be too mad at Analogue for putting one on this given how good it looks and how luxe the machine feels. At every touch it oozes quality.

It’s certainly niche, though. And without the ability to play games off an SD card, legal or otherwise, it’s likely more niche due to the nature of this system. I deeply respect Analogue for not just doing the big, heavy hitters, however - the company is staying close to its roots, which is hardcore collectors, even as repeated production runs of the Analogue Pocket sell out to more casual users.

This is probably the new best way to play NEC Turbografx games in a modern setting, anyway. It’s a lovely curiosity, and a must-have for those with the firmest and fondest memories of the machine.

Because of the very nature of it, you probably already know if you want the Analogue Duo. Chances are, if you’re a real PC Engine head, you’ve already got a pre-order in. But even for those outside that group, it’s a lovely device - if pricey for such a narrow niche. I’m enjoying the history lesson it’s opening up to me - while pining still for the Analogue 3D, out next year. My N64 cart collection is waiting.