Controls

Everywhere

Buttons	Does
SELECT + Up / Down	Brightness
SELECT + Left / Right	Blue light
VOL+ / VOL-	Volume
VOL+ and VOL- together	Mute
Hold POWER	Power menu

At power-on

Any button skips the opening: the terminal fades out at once and the shelf comes in. The press that skips it does nothing else, so A inserts no cart. Once the shelf shows through, a press ends the opening and does what it does on the shelf. POWER and the lid end it at once. Brightness, blue light and volume work through it.

On the shelf

The bar along the bottom says what SELECT and START do. Between them, a pill shows the shelf's system: GBA, GB, GBC, SNES or PS1. It is always there, even with only one shelf, and hidden while the core picker (X) is open.

Buttons	Does
Left / Right	Move along the shelf
Up / Down	Jump to the next letter. The letter shows in the pill for about two seconds, then the pill goes back to the system
L1 / R1	Switch between the shelves: GBA, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, SNES and PlayStation, each that has games. The pill rises in with the new one
Tap A	Insert the cart and resume its last save state
Hold A	Insert the cart and start the game fresh
X	Open the cart and choose its core (GBA and SNES); see Systems
START	Settings, including the [[Theme
Tap SELECT	CONTROLS: what every button does, on the shelf and in a game. B or SELECT closes it

The carts sit centred between the top bar and the bottom bar. Starting a game, the cart in the middle rises a little, then is pulled down out of the bottom of the screen into the handheld; it is gone at 0.6 seconds, and keeps its size all the way, a Game Boy pak too. Then the game's screen turns on like an old tube TV: a dot, a line across, then the picture opening white and fading to its colours, over 0.6 seconds. Leaving a game plays it backwards: the TV goes off over 0.5 seconds and the cart comes back up from the bottom of the screen. A cart that can't start, such as a GBA game with no GBA core, comes back out the same way with its warning sign.

In a game

Buttons	Does
Hold MENU	Save a state, eject the cart, back to the shelf
Double tap MENU	Save state switcher
SELECT + MENU	Link screen on the GBA and the Game Boys, see Link Play. DISC on the PlayStation
SELECT + R1	Save a state
SELECT + L1	Load the most recent save state
SELECT + Y	Colour correction on or off (GBA and Game Boy)
Hold L2	Rewind (not on the PlayStation)
Hold R2	Fast-forward. Double tap R2 to lock it on, again to unlock. On the PlayStation, SELECT + R2
Hold X / Y	Turbo A / turbo B (GBA and Game Boy)
L1 / R1	Stretch to fill the screen / original size (Game Boy and Game Boy Color)

In a SNES game, A, B, X, Y, L1 and R1 are the game's; L2 and R2 still rewind and fast-forward. In a PlayStation game, L2 and R2 are the game's too, so fast-forward moves to SELECT + R2 (double tap it to lock it on) and there is no rewind. ✕, ○, □ and △ are B, A, Y and X. See Systems.

On the DISC screen

SELECT + MENU in a PlayStation game on several discs opens DISC, with the game paused under it. A game on one disc says Only one disc instead.

Buttons	Does
Left / Right	Pick a disc
A	Put it in the drive, and back to the game
B, SELECT or SELECT + MENU	Back to the game, with the disc that was in

In Settings and the other menus

The bar along the bottom says B RETURN and A CONFIRM. Keys a screen adds are shown in the middle of it.

Buttons	Does
Up / Down	Move between rows
Left / Right	Change the lit row, on a row that shows ◀ ▶
A	Confirm: open the screen of a row that ends in ›, join the network under the cursor, set the clock
B	Back one screen
START	In Settings, back to the shelf. On Labels, fetch labels
Y	On Network, forget the saved network under the cursor. On Labels, sign out

In the save state switcher

Buttons	Does
Left / Right	Flick through the states
A	Load the one on screen
B	Back to the game

On the on-screen keyboard

Buttons	Does
D-pad	Move between keys
A	Type the key, or press Shift, #+=, Space, Delete or Done
B	Delete the last character. On an empty field, go back
X	Shift: capitals, and back
Y	Space
L1 / R1	Symbols, and back
START	Done
MENU	Go back

The lid

Closing the lid saves a state and turns the screen off; opening it carries on. Left shut for three minutes, omega-zero powers off and resumes from that state on the next boot.