Home Reviews ,,,,,The nostalgia of the Game Boy relives with Gocomma, a portable console that recalls its shape and style of play but which contains all the modern technologies to be light and even more practical to use.
In fact, there are no cartridges to interchange because it includes 168 of the most famous arcade and retro titles in memory and no batteries to replace thanks to the integrated lithium battery that can also be recharged with a powerbank.
Thanks to the video cable included in the package it can even be transformed into a console to play the same titles on the TV and it costs very little. Our editorial team had the opportunity to try it: here's how it went.
As did
Out of the box, the first thing that strikes you is the weight: despite its size, this console is really light. Including battery weighs 107 grams and is rather compact and handy (measures approximately 11.5 x 7.8 x 2 centimeters).
The shell is made entirely of plastic and consists mainly of two parts that are held together by 6 small cross screws: we immediately removed them, curious to see how it is done inside.
The circuitry is rather basic and this operation, which we feel we should advise against for those who buy Gocomma, however, allowed us to understand a little better the overall quality of the product.
In fact, if the overall quality seems good, some plastic connectors seemed very weak such as the On / Off switch switch which, in the long run or following a fall or a well-aimed blow, could break with not too much difficulty.
The buttons instead have a very good response and a sufficiently long stroke to prevent any accidental presses. The volume is adjusted by turning a side wheel but, as mentioned, there are two of the most interesting features and they are both located on the upper edge of the console.
In fact, here, in addition to the switch to turn it on and off, there is a miniUSB socket (pity because we would have preferred the more common microUSB) for recharging the internal battery and a mini-jack socket to connect the video cable included in the package with the two yellow and white plugs for connecting to a monitor or TV.
1 of 12 
How does it work
First, recharge the battery, because the console will arrive home completely discharged. In about 2 hours it will be fully recharged (you can also do it via powerbank).
To start using it, simply move the power switch to the On state: the language selection screen, English or Chinese, will appear in an instant. Do not be frightened by the absence of the Italian language because in reality it will only be necessary to read the names of the games which, in 90% of cases, have never been translated and in fact we have always known them in the original language.
There is no waiting time for startup or latency in using the console except for the page turn in the games list, which takes about half a second to refresh.
Like the handheld console that inspired the design, it features a joystick with right / left / up / down directional arrows on the left and four A / B / X / Y game buttons on the right, the Start and Select keys along with an additional button in the center, recessed to avoid accidental presses, which allows you to reset the console and restart from the home screen without having to turn the device on and off (excellent thing, given the aforementioned weakness of the connector that would arrive at the end of its life much earlier if there were no key reset).
Included games
Below we list the 168 titles present in the console:
How is it going
For this writer, playing on this console was a short but pleasant blast from the past. It allowed us to brush up on old games that were part of our childhood and in fact it could hardly attract the attention of generations other than ours. As clear from the aforementioned list, those included are in fact video games that made the fortune of consoles like Nintendo or arcades in the 90s.
Emotions aside, playing with Gocomma is not difficult. There are no instructions and games that we had never seen before, however, it was not difficult to understand in a few minutes the functions of the keys (which obviously vary from title to title) and the purpose of the game.
The resolution of the display is not very high but more than enough to respect the graphics of the proposed games and where it loses most is in the color rendering. The colors it is able to reproduce are fewer than the original ones, so games like Super Mario (which the writer knows by heart) will be visually “different”.
1 of 9 
But the graphics are not the only point that made us turn up our noses a bit. Always to stay in Super Mario, unfortunately here as in all other games there is no possibility to save games. In fact, the console has no memory, so when you turn off or reset the console, all progress made will be lost.
Now, for pastimes like Tetris, Arkanoid or an F1 race, a game of football or tennis while waiting at the doctor or dentist it is not important to save the game, but with Super Mario, Lode Runner or other games that involve a story more or less long to follow means that you can only “try” the first levels and never complete everything.
Probably the absence of a save function is made necessary by the fact that titles are loaded that the manufacturer probably does not have the necessary permissions for commercialization (we doubt that Nintendo has given the green light for the various integrated Super Marioos). In this way, in fact, it becomes a console to try out the games and then perhaps entice the purchase of the originals.
Conclusions
For the price it is offered for – at the time of writing, on GearBest for less than 15 euros – the Gocomma console is a real bargain. It includes 168 games, many of which were the best known and most popular in the 80s-90s. Compact, portable and with rechargeable battery, you can play for hours (5 full with a full charge) and even on the TV, perhaps to spend an evening in the company of old friends to remember the good old days together or to distract yourself in moments of waiting or commuting.
Pro
Against
,,
