This New Handheld Console Is Almost Too Tiny
2021 has been a great year for portable systems. It's simultaneously seen a resurgence of interest in retro systems, which have captured the hearts and wallets of gamers. The mere rumor of N64 games on Switch making fans go wild, signaling interest in older technology. Luckily, there's a new console on the block that combines the gaming community's love of handhelds with their affinity for retro games. Meet Thumby, the handheld console that's smaller than your thumb — but still takes two thumbs to play.
The finger-held gaming system called Thumby launched on Kickstarter recently, with an end goal of October 28. The project is led by TinyCircuit, the same group behind TinyArcade and TinyScreen, which the group pointed out also started on Kickstarter and saw amazing success. Essentially, Thumby wasn't the group's first time coming up with a tiny project.
Thumby can travel anywhere with you. The Kickstarter mentioned multiple times that it can attach to a keychain so people can bring it on all their adventures. The price of the device is cheaper than some keychains, too — the early Kickstarter price was only $9 and included a light gray version of the handheld. Even if you missed the early bird special, you can still get a Thumby for less than $20. If you want to pick a color, then $4 more will let you do just that. The best part about Thumby isn't the price or the ultra-tiny size of it — it's actually the impressive number of features it contains.
Everything Thumby can do
Thumby wasn't just meant to look cool on your keychain. The handheld will have five preloaded games on it: "TinyBlocks," a "Tetris"-like title; "Space Debris," a space game similar to "Asteroids"; "Annelid," a game where you collect food as a snake; "Delver," an adventure game with enemies and loot; and "Saur Run," a dinosaur platformer.
That's not all, either. Thumby was created to help people learn how to program games, and connecting Thumby to a computer allows people to customize the pre-loaded games while also creating their own games with help from a TinyCircuit program.
Even if playing alone doesn't sound fun, Thumby can connect with friends using an included cable. While it's not clear what pre-loaded games are multiplayer, fans could definitely create a multiplayer game using the tools from Thumby. In fact, there's a Kickstarter deal that includes multiple Thumbies to share with friends or family.
While the device might not be a hit with everyone, especially if your hands cramp up easily, it's still pretty impressive and an exciting throwback to retro systems, which continue to be popular with gamers.