this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
22 points (89.3% liked)

RetroGaming

30283 readers
112 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Xylinna@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
gts@lemmy.world
22
Slot Wants Your RG SP to Feel Like 2003 Again (gardinerbryant.com)
submitted 1 day ago by PerfectDark@lemmy.world to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Time for an article I wrote about Slot, an interesting custom firmware made specifically for the Anbernic RG SP. I chatted with its developer K-Wall about where it came from and why it deliberately does things a little differently.

Rather than trying to turn the RG SP into an everything-machine, Slot sticks to the Game Boy family and leans hard into the SP nostalgia: games appear as physical cartridges on your screen, the carousel encourages you to keep a smaller collection, closing the lid saves your game, and even the old stretched GB/GBC display mode is recreated. K-Wall took that attention to detail right down to the sounds, recording himself physically pushing a cartridge into his childhood GBA so that familiar 'thunk' could become part of Slot itself.

We also chat about burnout, his other projects Cannoli and Grout, why Slot started as something he never intended to release publicly, and his very candid approach to using A.I. during development as a tool. If you like the RG SP, unusual CFW projects, or software designed around a very specific bit of hardware rather than endless feature creep, hopefully you’ll enjoy it :)

all 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PrinzKasper@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

the interface itself kind've asks why

Oh god, please tell me this is an intentional parody of people who write "could of" lol

[–] PerfectDark@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hah!

That’s fair. In my defence, an article like this takes me a good while to put together. I’ll start with the idea, jot down notes, get in touch with the developer and interview them at their convenience, then go through their answers and work out how to build that material into a story that still feels like their experience, using the quotes I like most to help bring it to life.

All the way through that process I’m drafting, redrafting and leaving myself little notes in the article. I tend to get ideas down quickly and tidy them up later; that’s just how I work. Most of the time it all gets cleaned up, but occasionally one of those awkward little notes-to-self survives the edit and sneaks into the finished piece.

That’s what happened here.

I will say, though, you could probably have made the point a little more kindly. I’m not pretending to be some flawless professional journalist. This is a hobby for me, and I do it because I genuinely love gaming, especially handheld gaming. I put a lot of time into these pieces because I care about the people and projects I’m writing about, even if the odd rough edge from my process slips through.

[–] PrinzKasper@feddit.org 1 points 4 hours ago

I will say, though, you could probably have made the point a little more kindly

Wasn't trying to be rude or insulting, sorry if it came across that way. I was just flashbanged by it haha. Out there in the vast steppes of the internet you frequently see the "could of" mistake, and I think this is the first time I've seen the inverse

[–] BruisedMoose@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'll give it a shot. I think my SP has a few other systems right now - GG, NGPC, and Lynx - but it's mostly just for GBA.

[–] PerfectDark@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Let me know what you think!

[–] BruisedMoose@piefed.social 1 points 4 hours ago

Just finished setting it up and giving it a little go. I need to get used to the shortcuts.

But really liking it so far. I limited myself to 5 games each for GB and GBC, and 6 for GBA. Using the cart studio was fun and easy and takes it from "Oh, neat" to "Damn, that's nice." I hadn't even heard of BaseOS before this. I couldn't believe how fast it boots.

I do wish there were single SD instructions because 2 cards seems like overkill.

My only REAL issue so far though is my translated copy of Cave Noire just reboots whenever I press Start on the title screen. I'll probably try an untranslated version later.