I’ve just published a different kind of AYN Thor Lite feature, looking at why the lowest-spec Thor makes more sense in 2026 than it might have at launch. Back when this all started, AYN sent me the Thor Pro for review which clearly I loved and reviewed to high heavens, but I thought that with how things are at the moment (current cost-of-living conditions, the RAM crisis making prices skyrocket), the very base model makes more sense than ever. Mostly because the community surrounding the Thor has just grown and grown and grown, the things developers and makers have created are just incredible.
For any who don't know, the AYN Thor is a dual screen retro gaming handheld, which is first and foremost an amazing way to emulate 3DS games, especially with the cost of original systems rising so much these last few years!
So instead of the whole specs and performance angle, I wanted to look at what has grown up around the hardware, and I was lucky enough to speak to, interview and quote a whole bunch of the people making it happen, some of them friends and some of them just so lovely to want to chat with me:
- Moth (lead developer of Cocoon)
- Nathan (lead developer of iiSU)
- PlayTranslate's developer
- Camille LaVey (lead developer/creator of Eden)
- MithrilMods (behind amazing magnetic buttons/d-pads/grips on etsy)
- Kitsabble Creations (who created Pokémon-themed decal front skins for the AYN Thors, also on etsy)
- MagiGamer (whose custom-made buttons are the prettiest damn thing ever made)
Plus a few other community creators and accessory makers.
(Jiayu, one of the replacement button creators I chat to in this article, and her work!)
(as is tradition, my cat and my handheld of focus for the article)
I talked to them all about the software ecosystem, dual-screen development, Japanese games and translation, emulation on the Snapdragon 865, custom grips and controls, handmade buttons, skins, and all the other ways people have taken AYN's hardware and made it their own. My focus for this whole article was how AYN released a near-perfect handheld, but the community around it has now taken it and run with it.
I hope some in here enjoy this, at least to hear from some of the people behind the programs and projects you might know and love :)
Good article! It's always interesting to see the ecosystems that spring up around these devices, even if the Thor itself doesn't interest me (my main console growing up was the 360).
Just a heads up, the first link in the article (the metrics one) 404s.
Seems like an interesting device, not too keen on Android since it's a very busy OS under the hood.
But it seems there is an arch port ongoing- Thorch https://github.com/thorch-os/thorch - that makes the device a whole lot more interesting.