Anbernic is a Chinese handheld gaming console company founded in 2017 in

Shenzhen Shenzhen is a prefecture-level city in the province of Guangdong, China. A Special economic zones of China, special economic zone, it is located on the east bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of Guangdong ...

by Shenzhen YangLiMing Electronic Technology Co. The company is known for producing devices that emulate video game systems from the first five generations, such as the NES,

Sega Genesis The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Sys ...

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

, SNES,

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

, and

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo E ...

, as well as more recent consoles from the seventh generation, like the

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PA ...

and

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

. More recent handhelds are able to play some games from later handhelds and 6th generation consoles.

History

The Anbernic trademark was registered in 2017 by Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen YangLiMing Electronic Technology Co., Ltd, which released its first handheld console, the Retro Game (RG), that same year. The brand gained prominence after launching a series of popular

retrogaming Retro gaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and collection of computer game, personal computers, video game console, consoles, and video games from earlier decades. Usually, retro gaming is based upon syste ...

devices, including the RG351P, RG353V, and RG35XX models. In December 2018, American rapper

Soulja Boy DeAndre Cortez Way (born July 28, 1990), known professionally as Soulja Boy (formerly Soulja Boy Tell 'Em), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to prominence with his self-released 2007 debut single, "Crank That ...

launched the emulator console ''SouljaGame Console,'' which was actually a rebranded version of existing consoles developed by Anbernic. The project was shut down less than a month after its release. Over the first seven years, the company has released an average of 4-5 models per year.

Software

The devices typically run on Android or

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and allow users to play classic video games through software emulation. Due to their popularity, several

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

projects provide

custom firmware Custom firmware, also known as aftermarket firmware, is an unofficial new or modified version of firmware created by third parties on devices such as video game consoles, mobile phones, and various embedded system, embedded device types to provide ...

for these devices, offering additional features and extended support. These include ArkOS, AmberElec, ROCKNIX, and muOS.

Reception

Its systems have consistently received acclaim and are considered among the best retro gaming devices. In 2020, Begina de Miguel of ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

'' praised the RG350 model, stating that it "combines high performance with excellent gameplay," and named it the "best retro handheld console" for under 100 euros. In 2023, Billy Givens and Harry Rabinowitz of ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (often abbreviated as ''PM'' or ''PopMech'') is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do it yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation an ...

'' praised Anbernic's user-friendly interfaces, selecting the RG351P model as the "best handheld game system for emulation." However, they warmed that "loading old games into emulators and then selling them in this way is legally questionable in the United States," though consumers are "protected from the illegal nature of these emulations" since the company is based in China. In 2024, Jordan McMahon of '' The Strategist'' described the Anbernic RG35XX as the "best handheld gaming console for retro gaming," while Keith Stuart of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' referred to Anbernic consoles as "unofficial handhelds" that "play thousands of games –as long as you don’t mind about the shady legality of homebrew emulators and downloadable rom files."

List of devices

RGXX lineup

Identified by the inclusion of "XX" in their model name, this line of Anbernic handhelds are powered by the same Allwinner H700 chipset. Beginning with the RG35XX Plus, these devices are relatively cheap (35-70 euro) and low-powered compared to other emulation handhelds. Emulation ability tops out at PS1, with most N64 games and Dreamcast games playable at full-speed. The only difference in these handhelds are available controls and form factor. For example the 35XXSP is a clamshell device with no analog sticks, while the 35XXH is a horizontal handheld with sticks. Custom firmware is usually compatible across the entire lineup. Sometimes this may require a small update from the firmware developers.

References

{{reflist Manufacturing companies based in Shenzhen Companies with year of establishment missing Video game companies of China 2017 in Shenzhen