How small can you shrink the Nintendo Game Boy Advance? That’s a question TinyCircuits is answering with the Thumby Color, a GBA clone measuring just two inches in size that still manages to fit a directional pad, shoulder buttons, a rumble motor, a 16-bit color screen, and the ability to link two of them together with a USB-C cable for multiplayer gaming.
Unlike the myriad Game Boy and GBA clones released by companies like Anbernic, the Thumby Color is not an emulator. It doesn’t have enough processing power to play retro games nor enough storage to hold hundreds of ROM files.
It’s powered by a 150MHz Raspberry Pi RP2350 processor that’s paired with just 16MB of storage — yes, that’s megabytes, not gigabytes. Not being able to play actual GBA games on the Thumby Color is probably a good thing because its 0.85-inch square LCD screen has a resolution of just 128 x 128 pixels, which is less than half the resolution of the GBA.
Games are instead programmed in MicroPython. The Thumby Color will come with six open-source titles preinstalled, including a first-person shooter called Monstra and a dungeon crawler called Thumbgeon 2. It will also come with all the monochromatic games that shipped with the original Thumby back in 2021, which was the company’s ultra-tiny clone of the original Game Boy.
The Thumby Color isn’t a handheld you’re going to want to play for hours on end, but it is one you can potentially sneak into any setting where you want a distraction — without trying to hide more conspicuous handhelds like the Steam Deck. It’s also a good excuse to learn a programming language, as TinyCircuits has created tutorials and guides available for free through its website.
TinyCircuits has opted for a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to bring the Thumby Color to consumers. The original Thumby still sells for $42, but this new color screen version is available with a pledge of $49 for a purple version, with shipping expected as early as November. If you want a Thumby Color with a clear or transparent purple housing, the price jumps to $55, and if you want a Kickstarter-exclusive black version, it’s $75.
Keep in mind that there’s always the chance a crowdfunded product will not deliver all the features promised at the time of the campaign. It could also be significantly delayed, or never delivered at all, without refunds. TinyCircuits has successfully shipped several Kickstarter products before, so there’s slightly less risk here, but there’s no guarantee the product will materialize, even with its funding goal already being met.
