Analogue Duo review – a PC Engine retro console for purists

This niche, lovingly crafted piece of hardware brings back vibrant and exciting details and memories of a much-missed console

A few years ago I bought a Japanese copy of Snatcher, a cyberpunk video game designed by Hideo Kojima before he went on to create the legendary Metal Gear Solid series. There were just two problems with this purchase: the game is a text-heavy role-playing adventure with no English translation, and I don't own a PC Engine, a cult 16 bit machine first released in Japan in 1987, which hosted some of the finest arcade conversions of the era in then-astounding visual quality. A small number were imported into the UK, but it was never a huge hit here, so getting one on eBay is a costly and risk-laden adventure. None of this put me off. I bought Snatcher because I loved its anime aesthetic and its role in the nascent career of a games industry legend. Last week, I loaded it up for the first ever time, thanks to the Analogue Duo.

Committed retro gaming fiends will be familiar with Analogue, a small, specialist maker of incredibly precise nostalgic gaming technology. It is known for building versions of the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive that don't run software emulations of old games, which can introduce lag, and will sometimes refuse to load certain titles. Instead, they're constructed around programmable circuit boards known as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which accurately simulate the original hardware so they will load and play actual SNES and Mega Drive carts as God intended.