I’m not afraid to admit I’m a man who likes tiny things. I’ve been an adult longer than I was a child, but the last two years in a row I definitely bought myself a Mini Brands Advent calendar. If you’re not familiar, Mini Brands are just very small versions of the boxes of commercial products, but without the actual commercial products inside.
I’ve got fake tiny toy boxes, fake tiny food containers, and… that’s about it, I think. I’ve built miniature landscapes and dioramas for people. I once tried to sell a TV show about miniatures and failed miserably. So, when I saw the Kickstarter for the Thumby Color, I was already in. This was not a hard pitch. You could sell me dog crap as long as it looked like a cute baby version of other dog crap.
This Is Not An Entirely Useful Machine
Moving on! What is the Thumby Color? Why, it’s a tiny video game console of course! It’s technically the sequel to TinyCircuits’ Thumby, an even smaller video game system that I also pre-ordered immediately. That system was barely longer than an inch and had a black and white screen with a resolution of – this isn’t a typo – 72 x 40. A year or two back I worked at a non-video game writing job where my boss was also a massive fan of video games. When I left, I gave him a Thumby as a gift. His response was to gently smile and ask, “What am I supposed to do with this?” So, that’s what we’re working with. If I love anything more than tiny things, it’s tiny useless things.
Although, I’m being a bit unfair. Both Thumby and the newer Thumby Color come with a surprising number of playable games and have thriving communities making more. And the Thumby Color is actually massive compared to the original, at a little over two inches long. This includes the color screen which is now a far more reasonable – although still kind of funny – resolution of 128 x 128. You can still buy both systems and while this is sort of the follow up, I kind of love owning both and having them on my coffee table and lost in my carpet when they fall off the coffee table.
But The Games Just About Hold Up
The games pre-downloaded on the Thumby Color are mostly clones of other games. But I will say this: almost all the included games come with surprisingly nice graphics and even some impressive scaling effects. There’s a Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble clone, a Puzzle League/Tetris Attack clone, and even a sort of Balatro clone, although that one has a bug that causes the vibration motor to just endlessly run, which made my fingers numb, so I kinda jumped out early. Also, yes, this tiny, tiny machine now has a vibration motor that I definitely was not expecting. You could probably fit two of these rumbling consoles inside a Nintendo 64 Rumble Pak.
Yet, the games play well! Is Chess on the Thumby Color the ideal way to go about it? No! It’s not supposed to be. But compared to the Thumby – which I essentially had to play with my fingernails – this is easy. The hardest time I think I had was actually seeing what was on the screen in games like the Bust-A-Move clone. And that’s only when objects on the small screen were only a few pixels wide. Otherwise, playing on it is oddly great, even with hotdog fingers like mine. True, you probably aren’t going to play it through a flight. And to be a bit critical, mine seems incapable of holding a full charge according to its own battery icon. But I think a hamster on a wheel could power it so, you know, shrug.
The thing that this won’t do – at least not right out the box and not without a lot of extra work – is emulate games. I know, I know. The Thumby is designed to look like a Game Boy. The Thumby Color is designed to look like a Game Boy Advance, which you’d think would make them name it the Thumby Advance. In your head, you’re probably imagining delightful bus trips with strangers watching in admiration while you squint to play Pokemon Ruby. I’m sure that time will come.
The Thumby Color Is All About Ideas
But the GBA has a higher resolution than the Thumby Color (just like the GB has a higher resolution than the Thumby), so even if you did emulate it, it’s not going to be the most amazing experience. There are far better small machines made specifically for emulation if that’s all you’re looking for. The FunKey S isn’t perfect, but playing Civilization 2 for the PSX on it is.
The Thumby Color is more for experimentation and indie games and python programming practice. It’s a tiny console made for tiny projects. And it’s my dream. While I sucked hard at trying my hand at programming something for the Thumby, I want to try again with this one. Who cares? I’ve got no good ideas, but going by the many game clones included on the system, that ain’t stopping people. And, like I said, the Thumby Color actually feels more like a playable system rather than a novelty made to confuse former bosses. There’s a great community, there’s a lot to play around with, and this is so small it’s probably harder to break it than most electronics.
Look, I love jank. This isn’t a review because I wouldn’t even know how to review this if it was. There are cheaper systems more filled with clones of better games. I don’t know what score or recommendation I’d give a system whose most interesting feature is a limited sand physics simulator. But this is a janky piece of hardware for people who just want to mess around. I’m excited to upload fan games and break it trying to play my own. I’m excited to lose this in my backpack and find it in three years. TinyCircuits makes ridiculously small things for ridiculously weird people. I don’t mind being one of them.
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