A new style of case on the way for iPhone owners aims to be protective and functional, particularly if you’re a retro gamer.
Gaming on your phone tends to exist in two styles: made for folks who want to carry an external controller — such as the sort made by Backbone — or made for folks who are happy to go touchscreen all the way. That’s the way most phone gaming options tend to go, leaving you with either an option to plonk your phone in a case or just opting to leave things as is.
However there could soon be an option for gamers who kind of want the best of both worlds.
It’s coming in a case, and it’s one specifically focused on retro games, now that the iPhone and App Store support game emulators, a change that occurred last year.
If you’re someone who loves themselves an old school game and wishes your iPhone could double up as a GameBoy of sorts, that appears to be exactly what Bitmo Lab’s GameBaby case aims to offer.
On the one hand, it’s a colourful case with a controller section on the back, offering directional pad and buttons almost like a throwback to the days of Nintendo’s classic portable. But the GameBaby has a secret: the rear gaming section on the back can snap off from the back and snap onto the front of the phone, covering where the on-screen buttons would be and pressing them for you.
There’s no Bluetooth or hard-wired connection here; Bitmo Lab’s GameBaby will basically use physical buttons to press the screen for you, providing a more tactile-friendly approach to retro gaming on a phone.
The game case is made more for game emulators than anything else, and provided you have your own supply of titles you’re allowed to run, should see you playing retro games easily enough, with the Delta emulator on the App Store the main option GameBaby has been designed to work with.
Bitmo Labs hasn’t yet provided an Australian price or whether there’s local availability, but with an expected price of $40 USD when the case ships, it probably won’t be far from $100 in Australia once currency conversion and shipping is thrown in, and looks like the sort of gaming accessory you can easily pocket. You can’t say that about everything else out there.
