Recently I got into Pokémon cards and collecting Japanese cards of the game. I have amassed a small collection, nothing too expensive or valuable except a Golden Charizard from the Ruler of The Black Flame set (Japanese version of Obsidian Flames in English). That got me thinking how I miss playing the games especially the one ones from the Game Boy and Game Boy Colour era. Red, Blue and Yellow.

Emulation exists and I have tried them on my phone in the past but with life and using the phone and notifications its too distracting. I could buy an old Game Boy to try but then it is a bit iffy like will it have any faults and would it be expensive to repair or upgrade parts. Similarly you can buy emulators which look like a Game Boy or handheld console, but there is lots of choice and is it something I want to sink £100 into and not use in a week or twos time.

I was mulling it over and thinking then it dawned on me…. I have a PS Vita somewhere collecting dust. I could turn that into an emulator and play the games that way. After much hunting I found it finally. My only issue was the cable which I could not find, unfortunately the PS Vita uses a proprietary cable which is unavilable to buy like a generic USB-C or Micro USB cable. Eventually in my box of old cables and shit I found it which saved me a trip to China and AliExpress.

To be safe once the device came to life after years of neglect (came out in January 2012 and probably was dead as a device by May 2012) I decided to be safe and give it a complete wipe so none of my info was on there. Given that I was installing homebrew and unknown things to me I felt it best to safe than sorry.

All in all it was a relatively straight forward process first of all installing HENkaku to hack the device and then VitaDeploy, iTLS=Enso and VitaShell to name a few things. The one bit I had an issue with was ShaRKF00D which wouldn’t open and run properly but I found a work around for that and no more issues were faced.

I used mGBA to play the roms of Pokémon Yellow, Red and Blue and they work pretty damn well. It’s a fun blast of nastalgia playing the games and I am enjoying them.

I also decided to try and emulate the SNES/NES and Sega Mega Drive for those I use Retroarch and run the various cores to play the games and so far so good. Sonic and Jurasic Park The Lost World play very well on the Sega cores and McDonald Land and Super Mario World play well on the SNES/NES cores.

It does the job I want it to, is it perfect? Probably not but its perfect for me and has saved a nice chunk on money and put some old tech to good use and a new lease of life. Perhaps one day I may buy a purpose built emulator like an Anbernic RG35XX or Miyoo Mini Plus. For now though I am perfectly have with repurposed PS Vita.