Today’s retro recreations are so good at replicating the Game Boy’s look, feel, and portability. The problem is, my pockets are already occupied with my mobile supercomputer that contains my life behind a 6.3-inch pane of glass. If my phone has a powerful processor and excellent AMOLED display, why can’t it also become my gaming device when I’m on the go? MCON, the controller hyped to hell and back by young engineer Josh King and brought to market by phone peripheral makers OhSnap, could be enough to make me leave my handheld at home.
I first saw the $150 MCON phone peripheral back at CES 2025; only then it was a very early prototype using 3D-printed parts. Even then, I came away impressed with the collapsible phone controller. I had to duck and weave through many, many halls at IFA 2025 to find the miniscule stall for MCON’s designer OhSnap. The company let me wrap my exhausted hands around the new, black and clear plastic MCONs that will be shipping later this year after its successful Kickstarter from earlier this year.
MCON has surprisingly great-feeling controls
When I look at most modern phone controllers, whether they’re the Backbone, the 8BitDo mobile controller, or a Razer Kishi, they all boil down to an Xbox controller split in half to make room for a phone. Some of those devices offer better controls or larger cavity space for up to the size of a 13-inch iPad. While they’re slim enough to fit in a bag, the issue with this classic design is they’re not so portable you can slip them into a pocket. MCON is about the size of a phone itself. It’s compact enough that it may fit into cargo pants-sized pockets or into a pocketbook. I doubt it could fit in most thin jeans without tearing a hole in your pants or thigh. The collapsible mobile controller also uses a MagSafe magnetic attachment point while it communicates with the phone over Bluetooth, rather than a physical USB-C connection.
You can think of MCON as a Nintendo DS or a slide-out PSP Go, though without a screen or PCB (printed circuit board) of its own. The controller collapses to the size of your average phone. With the press of a button, the spring-loaded front plate shoots out to reveal twin thumbsticks, four face buttons, and a D-pad. Two fold-out wings fan out from the base to create a pseudo-controller feel, though you can game without them if you can retreat to your Game Boy glory days, before companies cared a lick for wild concepts like “ergonomics.” The extra benefit of MCON is how it keeps the screen angled up, which may be more comfortable when sitting and gaming compared to Steam Deck-like handheld PCs or the Switch 2.
The version I used was a prefab design, though it’s the closest model the company had available for when the device went into full production. The full-size drift-resistant TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance) joysticks didn’t feel constrained despite being deep-set into the controller. While the buttons had a pleasantly shallow and clicky feel, I wouldn’t have been able to hear how loud they were in such a crowded convention hall. The real surprise was the two triggers. Despite being so thin and close to the device, they dipped to a surprising depth. I didn’t feel as much resistance for each trigger as I may have liked from my favorite controllers, but I would still prefer them over the clicky triggers of many DS-like devices.
Time to work out the kinks
I didn’t get to play anything but Warped Kart Racers, a game that automatically accelerates for you. I imagine most people who backed the MCON controller are more interested in games without solid touch controls. It may be an option for cloud gaming when you have access to a strong Wi-Fi connection. What may be more exciting is how it could be used for retro emulation. The MCON’s MagSafe dock can slide out and reposition vertically for playing old-school Game Boy games on emulators, like Delta on iOS.
The pop-out mechanism felt fast and smooth, though I found it was difficult to push the magnetic plate back into place. It took two hands, offering a grating feel as the rail ground against itself. OhSnap! told me it was working on making that mechanism smoother as they run into full production. This is the kind of device designed for taking out while ignoring the world on your daily work commute, and it would be especially handy to collapse the MCON with one hand and slip it into your pocket when you need to. OhSnap said MCON should launch some time late in October, so we’ll know then if my phone might finally become the Game Boy I wanted it to be.
