How the Miyoo Flip broke my heart

Earlier this year I found myself suddenly coveting a retro handheld. If you’re not familiar, they’re small gaming devices, typically running Linux or Android, that are designed to play old games from an SD card. It’s a pretty crazy market — there are several Chinese companies churning out multiple new models each year, and usually when you buy one it comes with thousands of games pre-loaded, which these Chinese companies obviously have a license to distribute. From there you can install custom operating systems and so on, and generally have a lot of fun. Choosing a retro device is the tricky part. The cheaper Linux ones are really cheap, we’re talking like £30 new. Even the cheapest retro systems will generally play anything up to and including PlayStation 1 games. There are so many, all shapes and sizes with different capabilities and features (and, being quite cheap Chinese products, usually with their own strange quirks). I fell for the Gameboy Advance SP-style clamshell devices. I…