/Retroid G2

Figure 1: Retroid Pocket G2 in the "GC" colorway

3DS

About a month ago I picked up the new Retroid Pocket G2. It was an impulse buy, but at $220 it felt like a small price to pay to revisit a part of myself I had not accessed in nearly a decade. The last device I engaged with at that level was the New Nintendo 3DS XL. That was almost ten years ago, which is jarring when I think about how natural it used to feel to pick up a device and immediately wonder how far I could push it.

What made the 3DS memorable for me went far beyond its catalogue. I had already spent years Jailbreaking iOS devices and treating my PC as a sandbox, so the idea of modifying hardware was not new. The difference was in the texture of the challenge. The 3DS had layers that were far less obvious, and peeling them back required a different kind of attention. When I first came across the Homebrew and hacking community, it felt like stepping into a deeper branch of the same world I was already orbiting. I found myself watching videos and combing through forum posts that explained how a single vulnerability, triggered in exactly the right place, could let you run your own code on a handheld built to resist that kind of access.

The requirement to find Cubic Ninja gave the whole experience an almost treasure-hunt quality. The game had no relevance outside the exploit discovered by Smealum, and hunting down a copy felt like participating in some wacky experiment. Once you had it, the process was deceptively simple. Open the game, scan a specific QR code, and watch the device do something it was never meant to do. The first time the screen flickered and dropped into the Homebrew Launcher was unbelievable. It was the moment when the 3DS stopped being just a game console and became a system to explore. I remember feeling like I had stepped behind the curtain and glimpsed upon the machinery that made the device work.

That early period was full of discovery. Every new exploit felt like a puzzle piece that revealed a little more of the console's architecture. Tubehax was a perfect example. The idea that you could hijack the device's official YouTube app, redirect its traffic with custom DNS servers, and turn it into a loading mechanism for unsigned code made the whole ecosystem feel porous in the best way. It proved that security was not a static fortress but a series of assumptions, and if you could identify the weak points you could reshape the behavior of the entire system.

Later came browser-based entry points that required no special game at all. You could type a URL into the 3DS's WebKit-based browser, load a carefully crafted page, and watch the entire system slip into your own control. These moments were absurdly energizing. Hacking the device felt like peeling back layers of varnish to see the underlying structure. Every successful exploit taught you something about how the console talked to itself.

I eventually sold my hacked 3DS, but the community only grew more disciplined and more accessible. Tools like Luma3DS and Soundhax distilled years of experimentation into documented, reproducible workflows. At the peak of the movement, you could access Nintendo's own content servers and fetch retail games directly via freeShop. Setting aside the legal chaos it created, the technical achievement was extraordinary. A locked system had been reinterpreted as a fully open platform, capable of running backups, mods, emulators, and Homebrew without friction. Even now, installing CIA files on a modified device is trivial compared to what we dealt with in the early days.

Looking back, the most compelling part of this era was the sense of progressive discovery. It started with scanning a QR code and turned into understanding the fundamentals of the console's boot process. It was a slow accumulation of knowledge, each step unlocking the next. That feeling is what the Retroid Pocket G2 taps into. The excitement of peeling back layers, exploring a system on your own terms, and watching it become more capable through your own effort. In that sense the G2 is less a new gadget and more an invitation to reopen my long-dormant curiosity.

iOS

Before I ever touched 3DS Homebrew, years earlier I had already been swept into another world with its own rituals, tools, and hidden architecture: the iOS Jailbreaking community. Even now I still use an iPhone, but it sits in a completely different place in my life. Jailbreaking was just part of the culture back then. It pushed me to look beyond the polished interface and pay attention to how the device behaved underneath.

I was ten years old with a third-generation iPod Touch, later a fifth-generation one, and the idea that you could take a sealed Apple device and bend it to your will felt unreal. Installing Cydia for the first time felt unreal. The interface was not polished or friendly, but that was exactly what made it compelling. You were navigating an ecosystem parallel to Apple's, full of tweaks, utilities, and experimental software that felt impossibly powerful to a kid. It was the first time I experienced the thrill of altering a system's behavior through my own choices rather than Apple's decisions.

The process itself was a sequence of revelations. You learned what a "tweak" actually was. You saw how SpringBoard could be modified. You realized that behind the glossy surface of iOS was a set of files, processes, and permissions that could be inspected and manipulated. And the irony was that many of the features I installed through Cydia eventually became official iOS features years later. It confirmed that the community was not just breaking rules but prototyping ideas Apple would eventually adopt.

Apple's response to all of this is what eventually pushed me away. Each major iOS update locked things down further. Entry points vanished. Exploits dried up. Jailbreaks became rare, brittle, and increasingly short-lived. At some point the effort required to break open a new device outweighed the reward. It reminded me of Nintendo's posture toward the 3DS scene later, except Apple operated with far more resources and legal weight. When Jailbreaking stopped being practical, I moved to Android for a few years because I wanted the kind of freedom Apple had systematically removed. My trusty LG G4 became a place where I could experiment again.

I went through several Android phones after that, and while I appreciated the openness, none of them replicated the polish and consistency Apple achieved. Eventually I switched back with the iPhone 14 Pro. I have not Jailbroken it, and the truth is I have not felt compelled to. The modern smartphone does not offer much space for interesting tinkering outside its intended use, and I do not want the device to become a distraction loaded with games or endless utilities. Outside of Balatro and the New York Times puzzles, I keep my phone clean. iOS feels complete enough that I do not feel the familiar itch to alter it.

Still, that instinct is not gone entirely. A few weeks ago I noticed a new customization tool for iOS called Nugget. I have not installed it yet, but it caught my attention because it hints at something the platform has been missing for a long time: a way to personalize and reshape your device without committing to the full Jailbreak ecosystem. It feels like a faint echo of that earlier era, a reminder that even the most polished systems have spaces waiting to be explored.

G2

I had been tempted to buy a Nintendo Switch since the day it launched. Part of me wanted to move on from the 3DS era, but another part held out for the moment when the Homebrewing community would finally crack the platform open in a meaningful way. That moment never arrived. Outside the small pool of early vulnerable units, every modern Switch requires a hardware modchip to run unsigned code, and the process is neither elegant nor accessible. I almost bought a pre-modded Switch OLED at one point, but a closer look at the hardware snapped me back to reality. The Tegra X1 powering the system is a relic from two console generations ago, a mobile chipset that feels like it was stretched far beyond its original purpose. The device has never meaningfully dropped in price, not even during major holiday sales, and the ecosystem remains locked down to the point where playing backups or experimenting with the software stack requires paying for the privilege up front. By the time rumors of the Switch 2 appeared, my expectations were already bruised. When it became clear Nintendo would release a 2025 system without an OLED panel, I checked out.

That frustration pushed me toward the broader world of dedicated emulation hardware. I had followed Retroid in a casual way for years, mostly because Retro Game Corps covered their devices thoroughly. The company sat in an interesting space. Retroid's devices tap directly into the nostalgia of older handhelds, but they push that idea forward by giving you unrestricted access and enough power to run systems the originals could never touch. The rise of the Steam Deck only amplified my interest in this category. Seeing Valve openly embrace Linux, Proton, and tinkering culture created momentum for the entire handheld PC market. Yet the Steam Deck itself never made sense for me. At $549 for the base OLED model, the Steam Deck always felt misaligned with what I was looking for. The hardware is capable, and the screen is genuinely solid, but the overall footprint pushes it into small-laptop territory. Portability is one of the things I value most in a handheld, and the Deck simply never struck the balance I wanted. I still hope Valve eventually builds a more compact successor, though it is unclear whether Valve would ever prioritize a smaller form factor.

The Retroid Pocket 5 was the first device that made me pause and seriously consider switching ecosystems. Reviewers praised it for doing something straightforward but rare: delivering a balanced device. For $200 you got an OLED panel, a competent Snapdragon chipset, and a form factor that felt refined rather than experimental. It outclassed the Switch OLED on several fronts while costing half as much. The Pocket 5 struggled with heavier Switch titles, but everything older ran with ease. It was the first time I saw that a company in this space understood what handheld enthusiasts actually wanted.

A few weeks ago Retroid announced the Pocket G2 and the Pocket 6. The G2 would ship immediately. The 6 would arrive next year as a flagship designed to push into higher performance tiers. The G2 interested me precisely because it was not trying to be anything radical. It was essentially a Pocket 5 running a stronger chipset. No design overhaul. No creeping bloat. Just predictable, incremental improvement. That predictability is something I value. I bought the G2 knowing exactly what I was getting, and now that I have it in hand, it is exactly what the reviewers described: polished, reliable, and surprisingly powerful for its price. I may upgrade to the Pocket 6 once it launches, but that decision can wait.

Since receiving the device, I have fallen straight into the same pattern that defined my years with the 3DS and my early phones. I have spent hours installing emulators, fine tuning settings, scraping metadata, adjusting frontends, and curating ROM sets. Dolphin runs Super Mario Sunshine, Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 all at a stable 60FPS with a 2X internal upscale. The experience is so smooth that it feels better than native hardware. I have barely scratched the surface of Switch emulation, but Eden looks promising for titles like Super Mario Wonder, Persona 5 Royal, and Pikmin 4. Steam titles do not run natively, but Gamehub's Windows translation layer for Android is maturing quickly. I have not tried it on my device yet, though others have had encouraging results.

This is the real appeal of the G2. The real appeal is how quickly it pulls you back into a tinkering mindset, where the device becomes something to explore rather than just use. One hour you are playing a GameCube title. The next you are tweaking an emulator's shader settings or reorganizing your frontend's theme. The tinkering becomes part of the play experience rather than a barrier before it. It is the same impulse that drove me to Jailbreak my early iPhones and dive into the 3DS's Homebrew ecosystem. It is the feeling that the device is not finished out of the box, and that the rest of its potential is waiting for you to uncover.

After a month, I have only two real complaints. The first is comfort. The symmetrical analog stick layout, similar to the PS Vita, is not ideal for longer sessions. Coming from the New 3DS, I prefer the left stick placed higher. I bought the official grip to compensate, and it helps significantly, though it reduces portability. The second issue is the ABXY buttons. They are loud and clacky in a way that interrupts the experience during quieter sessions. There are modification guides that replace or dampen the membranes, and I may attempt one eventually, but for now it remains a minor irritation.

Even with those flaws, the G2 is the first handheld since the 3DS that has made me want to slow down, savor games I missed, and explore the underlying system for its own sake. It brings back a kind of discovery that had gone quiet for years.