In late May of this year, emulation site Retro Dodo raised awareness that a Lenovo-branded Game Boy-like emulation device, the $60 G02, was being sold to customers outside of China pre-packed with a wealth of copyrighted classic Nintendo and Sega games. After a couple of months of prevarication, denials, and a name-change, Retro Dodo is reporting that Lenovo has finally pulled the plug on the handheld altogether.
It’s absolutely not unusual for cheap Chinese emulation devices, usually sold on sites like AliExpress, Temu or Amazon, to come with an SD card already containing hundreds of copyrighted ROMs. I’ve bought plenty of GBA-like handheld emulators over the years that have arrived with the likes of Mario, Sonic and many other famous names all merrily pre-loaded and ready to play. But what’s unusual is to see this kind of product associated with a big-name brand. Lenovo’s G02, which according to Retro Dodo is a pretty crappy piece of tech in the first place, therefore caused a bit of consternation.
Lenovo’s first round of excuses had it saying that the G02 was never intended to be sold outside of China, and also that it wasn’t really Lenovo making it (despite the box and device both carrying the official Lenovo logo), but rather that it was a white-label product that had been leant the name. There was also the claim that the version of the emulator sold within China didn’t come pre-loaded with games, this only occurring via “third-party vendors” on AliExpress. However, despite this, the company still had the product pulled from AliExpress, and that seemed to be that.
Except, by June 15, it seemed the G02 was back on sale, this time with a not particularly subtle name change. It was by then, reported Retro Dodo, called the Sunyao G02 Handheld. Sunyao, however, appeared to be a Lenovo company. Oops.
But now, after an ever-growing level of international attention, Lenovo appears to have killed the G02 altogether, with the device removed from sale everywhere it had previously been available. Searches for “Sunyao G02” on marketplaces like AliExpress still auto-complete, but now return results for a dozen other near-identical emulators of equally dubious-looking quality instead. We’ve reached out to Lenovo to ask for the company’s perspective on all these events.
If you’re still looking for a handheld emu that comes with a few hundred copyrighted ROMs pre-installed, you remain absolutely spoiled for choice. Amazon results will even boast the number of included games in the product title (usually wildly exaggerated into the tens of thousands, although I just found one claiming “100,000+” which would be something). But it’s probably not the best look for huge-name tech companies with billions in profits to be getting involved in that whole market.