It’s always a risk betting on new video game hardware from a little-known company: what if game developers never show up? But the $50 Thumby Color, on sale this week, is an easier sell — the two-inch handheld is cute as a button, fits on your keychain, and lets aspiring programmers build and publish games right on the web, and I’m finding it so much easier to play than the tinier $30 original!
Here’s my video comparing the two and showing off playable takes on Tetris, Connect 4, Minesweeper, Doom, Bust-A-Move, 2048, and more:
Where the original Thumby uses a 133MHz Raspberry Pi RP2040 to power a black-and-white screen measuring just 0.4 inches diagonally, with a mere 1.4MB of space for games, the new Thumby Color can double the clockspeed with its RP2350 chip, has double the screen at 0.85 inches, and nearly 10 times the storage at around 14MB usable space.
As you may have just seen, that isn’t a lot of power, but it’s enough to wow in such a tiny package. (Yes, there’s legitimately a real, playable copy of Doom running on the original Thumby thanks to Graham Sanderson, with tweaks by James Brown, and you can install it here yourself!)
The original Thumby was so difficult to play. Forget thumbs, I needed to use my thumbnails to press its buttons and D-pad, and I practically needed a magnifying glass to tell the tetrominoes (Tetris shapes) apart on its 1-bit OLED.
The original Thumby, playing Doom. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Thankfully, the Thumby Color’s D-pad actually has a tangible pivot point. It’s stiff, but I can actually roll it with a thumb! Now all those original Thumby games (the color is backward-compatible!) and new Color games have moderately usable controls — and when you add the 16-bit color LCD screen at 128 x 128 resolution, it’s far easier to make out those pixels. Especially when each tetromino gets its own color.
The Thumby Color also has new shoulder buttons a la Game Boy Advance — which are so much easier to actuate than face buttons at this size that I hope TinyCircuits will let us remap them to A and B for original Thumby titles. For now, they’re underused by current games, as are the new rumble motor and speaker.
The Thumby Color, playing a Bust-A-Move clone, with thumb for scale. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
One obvious win is a new USB-C port for data and charging; no more digging out a micro-USB cable like the original. And you’ll want that cable. TinyCircuits estimates a battery life of just two hours, and I saw the Color’s LED indicator signal low battery every time I took it for an extended play session.
I won’t pretend there’s a lot to play on a Thumby Color yet, any more than there was on an original Thumby when it first came out. But I didn’t have to look hard to find fun.
I’d definitely whip one out for a quick game of trick shot pool (ComboPool for Thumby Color), the relaxing zen of my tiny sand and water garden (Sand for Thumby Color), or the novelty of challenging someone to the tiniest game of two-player Pong (2pddl42ppl for OG Thumby). You can browse previews of every Thumby Color game here and every OG Thumby game here, and even try playing the latter titles in a web emulator (click the game, then click “open”) so you see what you’re getting. The website also handles updates and loading games onto your Thumby, and power users can connect and upload files with Thonny as well.
It feels like the Thumby Color is launching a touch early. It’s slower than the original Thumby to boot, and its UI is slower to scroll through games than I’d like, which would be helpful considering how many more it can fit. Some original Thumby games also crashed at launch for me. “I hear your criticisms, we do have an update planned for later this summer that address some of these,” TinyCircuits founder Ken Burns tells me. But the Thumby Color is now fully shipping to new orders; he says all Kickstarter backers have already been fulfilled.
Call them novelties, call them stocking stuffers, but the Thumby and Thumby Color are cool; like the company’s TinyTV, I’d gladly be gifted one, and I could see buying one if I enjoyed programming and wanted to create a tiny game of my own. I’m also eager to see what other shenanigans Thumby Color owners manage to pull: the RP2350 chip is technically capable of SNES and Game Boy Color emulators elsewhere, as well as a fast full-color version of Doom.
Though if you want emulation in a Game Boy Advance package, and don’t mind potentially supporting piracy, there’s also Anbernic to look at.
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