The Analogue Pocket is getting a Sega CD core

Developer obrien654j has successfully booted a Sega CD core on the Analogue Pocket. The recent footage proves the 1991 Genesis add-on can run on the handheld's internal FPGA hardware. Retro gaming enthusiast MegaZXRetro shared the development update online. The post pointed to the original Reddit thread and tagged outlets like Time Extension to highlight the breakthrough.

This shows Sega CD working on an analogue pocket. The analogue pocket is limited compared to the Mister and has problems with CD streaming. It took a long time for the TurboGrafx-CD to work on it. Looks like soon Sega CD will be working!

Squeezing into the Cyclone V

The Analogue Pocket launched in December 2021 as a premium way to play physical Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges. Analogue later introduced the openFPGA platform. This allowed community developers to write custom cores for other vintage consoles and arcade boards. The handheld relies on an Altera Cyclone V FPGA chip. This chip is physically smaller and less capable than the DE10-Nano board used in the open-source MiSTer project.

That size difference is exactly why CD-based systems have been such a headache to port over. Optical media emulation requires managing large amounts of data and specific memory bandwidth constraints. The Pocket's architecture makes this difficult. The TurboGrafx-CD core required clever memory management to function properly. Developers have to optimize their code heavily to make everything fit.

A second Motorola 68000

The Sega CD is a complicated piece of hardware. It is not just a disc drive bolted onto a Sega Genesis. The add-on includes its own Motorola 68000 processor running at 12.5 MHz. It also houses a custom ASIC for hardware scaling and rotation, plus a dedicated Ricoh audio chip. The base Genesis already has a Motorola 68000 and a Zilog Z80.

Emulating all of those chips in software is trivial on a modern PC. Recreating them at the logic gate level inside an already crowded FPGA is a completely different problem. The developer has to fit the entire Genesis architecture and the Sega CD architecture into the Cyclone V simultaneously.

Grainy video and great RPGs

Once the core goes public, Pocket owners will have access to a weird and fascinating library. The Sega CD is famous for full-motion video games like Night Trap and Sewer Shark. The video compression is terrible, but that is part of the charm. The system also houses traditional classics that hold up much better today.

Sonic CD, Snatcher, Popful Mail, and Lunar: The Silver Star are the heavy hitters. Playing them on the Pocket's high-density 3.5-inch 1600x1440 display is a massive upgrade from a blurry CRT composite signal. The core is currently in the experimental phase. There is no public download link or release date yet.

Analogue bumped the base price of the Pocket to $239.99 in March 2026, citing import tariffs. Even at that price, the handheld continues to get more capable as developers figure out how to squeeze larger consoles into its silicon. We just have to wait for the final release.