Balatro is available on just about everything you can imagine at this point. The thrilling poker rogue-like can be played on your phone, on your favorite console, and likely, even your smart fridge. But, I like to make things much more difficult for myself. Why would I want to experience Balatro on a bigger screen, or something with a touch screen when I can play it on something the same size and form factor as a Game Boy Advance SP? And it just so happens to be my favorite way to play.
‘Balatro’ Was Meant to Be Played on a 3.5″ Screen, Honestly
The Anbernic RG35XXSP is an emulator designed to emulate the look and feel of my favorite childhood console. Yes, it can also play ROMS, but after completely destroying everything that was on the SD card, I don’t have anything on there beyond Balatro. But, after learning of a special program called Port Master, I was intrigued and wanted to dive in to see how it worked.
Alongside Balatro, several other indie games can be brought over to the system. Celeste, TMNT: Shredders Revenge, Stardew Valley. The list goes on and on, and that’s incredible to think about. But all of the hype surrounding Balatro at the Game Awards had me interested to see how it functioned on the tiny handheld, so I got to work. The first thing I had to do was install a new operating system. The one that came on the device? It wasn’t fit for the job.
I downloaded the latest version of muOS, codenamed “Big Banana”. After setting it up with themes and all of that jazz to make it look exactly how I wanted, I jumped into Port Master. After locating my copy of Balatro on my PC, I could finally bring it over to the little handheld that could. That’s right. I had to purchase a copy of Balatro to get this to work. I couldn’t just download it onto the handheld. But once that was done? It was easy breezy. I’m just glad I’m over 18 years old, otherwise I may not have been able to buy it.
I Can See Myself Sinking Even More Hours Into ‘Balatro’ Now
Balatro is a game with a lot of text, and I must say. Trying to get through the tutorial was a little rough. It does automatically scale to the correct screen size, and that’s impressive. But trying to read text on a 3.5″ screen isn’t exactly as exciting as I would like it to be. Plus, since there was no mouse or touch screen, I had to play through the tutorial even though I knew what I was doing.
Beyond that, though? Bliss. Pure bliss, especially with the gorgeous color reproduction on the RG35XXSP. It’s just wild to me that something like this little emulator can play Balatro wherever I want to. I’m not a huge fan of touch controls, so playing on a phone didn’t seem like the way to go for me. Sure, it may be more inconvenient to play it on this little handheld, especially when things like the Steam Deck exist. But there’s something just so novel about playing a game on a system where it shouldn’t exist.
It doesn’t help that the D-Pad and buttons on the RG35XXSP are just fantastic to use. They feel better than the original Game Boy Advance SP in my humble opinion. And its screen, while small, is just beautiful to look at. It makes a game like Balatro shine. Maybe it’s inconvenient, sure. But I can’t put this version of the game down.
The post My Favorite Way to Play ‘Balatro’ Just so Happens to Be the Most Inconvenient Way Possible appeared first on VICE.
The post My Favorite Way to Play ‘Balatro’ Just so Happens to Be the Most Inconvenient Way Possible appeared first on VICE.
