Huh, that's actually something I'd like to own, although I have a PSP smashed with Genesis games already. This just seems like a little novelty Genesis-only, lovely little emulator thing. And for 20 quid, you say? Edit: holy fuck, the sound on Sonic 1 was terrifying, abort, sticking with the PSP
The SektorZ The PSP is the best portable emulator I've found. Nothing beats a console that was actually meant to be held for hours of play (and actual buttons, instead of a touch screen). All my favorites from the GB(C/A) and PlayStation are on there. If I add any more, though, I'll have to shell out for another one of those crap memory sticks...
Yeah Sony did a damn good job on the PSP, but they keep fucking up when it comes to cables, disks and memory cards. I only have 2 PS1 games - MK4 and Castlevania:SOTN to fit all the Sega, NES, SNES and DOS games I need :>
Isn't the pandora poorly constructed and easy to break? I was thinking about getting one, but the reviews turned me off. Now I'm looking into smartphones with physical keyboards or a keyboard case to fit on my 5-inch smartphone, that'd be good enough... I am actually super interested in pocket computers but like you said, simply giving my phone a keyboard makes it one.. we live in good times.
Stavekoff I mainly use Picodrive, it can do Mega CD games too. Some games require a little playing with settings but it works pretty well overall. The psp is my go to games machine these days with all its emulators and portability.
If I remember correctly, the reason of the totally off pitch sound is a license issue with Yamaha, the one that produced the sound chip used into the megadrive, so they did this on purpose. By the way AT@ames has a lot of megadrive hardware clone, all with the same sound issue, even one used into south korean school buses and a traditional tv console with 20 pre-loaded games and a slot cart
MasterControl90 I wouldn't think there was a license issue, as I don't think Yamaha 'licensed' anything to Sega or anybody; they produced the components and anybody could buy and use them in their products. The YM2612 was used in many devices. I would guess in this case they used a cheaper clone chip for price reasons.
I've got two of these AtGames Handelds. One is the presented on the video blue model with SD card slot and most of Sonic games... And well, despite problems with sound and lack of save-game it's quite nice device. It's working quite well even with rom-hacks (which is really good thing, especially since there are plenty of good rom-hacks made by community of Sonic Retro). The latest model, with 80 games, (in fact with 40, because other 40 are some simple homebrew games, like tick-tack-toe or chess) is probably the best option to avoid these strange lacks of titles (what is more, there is even Street Fighter II, usually there are only games made by Sega). Probably that's one of the biggest issues for someone who is interested in this device, a lot of shops is selling older models (for lower price). I've got also quite interesting model, with games for Master System & Game Gear. It's working on normal batteries, but it's really nice thing - very comfortable D-pad, sound is quite good, and everything else is working fine. If only it would have this SD-slot, it would be really nice substitute of Game Gear.
I got a mini mega drive console from Argos with 180 games inside and a working cartridge slot so I can add games later on. So it's basically a re-release of a real mega drive but smaller.
Glad I bought a Nomad a few days before he did a video about it. Screen may be poor, but sound and buttons are great. Next best thing for mega drive emulation would be a GP2X with picodrive. Wasn't there a blaze/ATgames sega handheld the took real mega drive /genesis cartridges a few years ago?
I think the shimmer you are talking about is interlacing. One way emulators can typically alleviate it is with a TV Scan Lines Effect. Can be effective if you can make the effect subtle, otherwise its too distracting.
Got the nomad and this. Both are quite good, its just that the one from atgames has sound quality that's a bit off. By the way, can you play 32x games on this?
Anyone that's wondering it's actually A T Games. Lol. I have one in the house and the video works fine, but the sound is a bit pitchy and quite frankly sounds like shit. Games are fine, though, if you just play them on mute, or (as mine has a cart slot) play a cartridge game they are fine.
Mustang McKraken Also, that second unit is a 16:9 screen, so the image is stretched, which I personally hate. The shimmering might also be region differences, not sure how this thing handles them as mine's not a handheld.
Interestingly, I have one of these, but mine is green instead of blue and has a menu that allows me to adjust brightness. Best part, the sound is spot on, and I have a Genesis, so I can verify. HOWEVER, the battery life on mine is ABYSMAL. We're talking 30 minutes max. It's called Gopher, oddly, and only cost $30, so I really can't complain.
I own a white and blue one with x y z buttons, 60+ games with some of them being crappy bootleg games, and an sd card slot that allows you to port other roms.
agreed. on actual hardware or a really good emulator it has some of the best music to offer in the history of gaming. messing that up is the same as drawing over a historical painting with crayons.
Software developer here with a quick explanation of what seems to be happening with the scrolling: The screen is slightly taller (in pixels) than the games require, but the system tries to use the entire screen anyway. The easiest/fastest/laziest way to do this is to just double the height of every nth row. This distorts the image, which isn't too bad on its own, but when you start scrolling an image vertically (or horizontally if the screen is the wrong width), you get the ripple effect seen here. (If all you wanted was an explanation, feel free to ignore the rest. From here on I'm just getting ranty, because I'm a developer and these things bother me.) The fact that this happens at all is pretty telling of the effort that went into creating this handheld. Generally speaking, every game for any given console is going to have the same exact resolution. Thus, if you're designing a device to only play a single console's games, you should know the exact resolution your screen requires. Placing an off-resolution screen in the device screams "fuck quality, just slap whatever cheap ass components you can find in there and start shoveling that shit out to our customers." Of course at the end of the day, none of us are subscribed to Ashens' channel because we expect quality, are we?
@@garfieldinheat664 I wouldn’t say they fixed it, they made it bearable but didn’t fix it, since to get proper pixel scaling it needed to be a small image in the middle of the screen.
I can understand why they had trouble finding 320x240 screens in 2014 but they could’ve found 640x480 or something at least I’m sure, putting in a wrongly sized screen is just lazy, as is the fact that they didn’t include any kind of scaling options or some kind of interpolation.
I'm _many_ years late here, but I wish to point out that this also happens with pretty much any kind of display that isn't the same resolution as the game, if the game video isn't filtered or properly scaled. You reader may have seen this when emulating games on your fancy PC, or on your big screen television! The only solutions are to use integer scaling; i.e. scale the video up by an exact multiple of the original resolution (which can lead to letterboxing or the game being reduced to a small window depending on the display's resolution, and doesn't fully resolve the problem if the game needs aspect ratio correction), or to use a filter to blend the pixels together (which has varying results from looking awful to almost as good as an unfiltered display, depending on the filter used).
I noticed that. My guess is either the graphics designer for the box did a Google Image search and didn't know the difference, or they somehow found the beta build and put it on the device, but decided not to tell anyone.
PixelBro64 Seeing how AtGames is a chinese company and how the "Simon Wai" build was pirated so commonly there it was probably the first Sonic 2 Rom they could find. Just a guess.
My only guess would be that the shimmer is because the Genesis/Megadrive ran at various resolutions (256x224, 320x224, 256x240, 320x240) that don't all scale nicely to the LCD which is probably 320x480 or 320x240. For shits and giggles try putting the PAL and NTSC versions of the same game on the SD card and see if you notice any difference in the shimmering. I THINK the resolution for NTSC is 320×448 and PAL is 320x480 not exactly sure. One version may scale better and not shimmer.. worth a try if you are bored. lol
Yes, I would imagine so. If you were designing these things with perfection in mind, and cost was no object, the screen should have been 1280x960, since that covers all possible resolutions, though you would have to use black bars to deal with NTSC resolutions without odd multiples. 1280x960 is the perfect resolution for 16 bit consoles in general, within reason. 320x240 multiplied by 4 in each direction. 256x240 multiplied by 5 in the horizontal direction, 4 in the vertical 320x480 multiplied by 4 in the horizontal, 2 in the vertical The only problem would be for snes if anything tried to use the high resolution modes 512x240 or 512x480 Because that's 2.5 Almost nothing on the snes uses high resolution mode, but it's still a problem. You'll notice the multiplier is 2.5 though. Which means if you absolutely MUST have perfect scaling even then, the simple solution is to go to a 2560x1920 display (4:3 aspect ratio) Of course, who even makes displays like that is an open question, so you're going to end up with a VERY expensive system at that point. (near 4k resolutions but in a 4:3 aspect ratio!? Kinda insane huh.)
sonic the hedgehog and knuckles sonic the hedgehog 2 and knuckles Dr robotniks mean bean machine and knuckles sonic and knuckles Knuckles and knuckles ristar and knuckles echo and knuckles sonic spin ball and knuckles streets of rage and knuckles streets of rage 2 and knuckles comix zone and knuckles Alex kid and knuckles altered beast and Bruce golden axe and knuckles flicky and knuckles and those snes kids think there so cool. us Genesis kids have *knuckles processing*!!!
@106699738938306798058 That's especially insulting considering some newer models come with Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which has save files, so if you got to Yellow Devil on MM1 and turned off the system, tough fucking shit, you have to do all the bosses all over again!
Regrettably, it sounds like SEGA's been selling off IPs left and right, so if these devices were recently made, this may be the last we see so many of SEGA's franchises together. "Amid" is more of an American term, whereas "amidst" has more British usage. I see this for "among" and "amongst," as well as "while" and "whilst." We Americans just don't like our prepositions and conjunctions ending in "st." Saturday Night Slam Master's first shot is of a burly man's crotch. Good way to introduce people to the game.
Oh man. I hear him say that I will weep for Sonic's sound quality. I'm thinking to myself that I wouldn't. As soon as it hits the high notes I'm crying with an awkward mixture of sadness and laughter. It's the sort of butchering of music that physically hurts to listen to.
If I were to put an SD card inside, I'd fit it with EVERY single Mega Drive rom in existance (or what I can find anyway) Also, even though the sound is a load of tripe, I'm the kind of man that can put up with crappy sound. =P
***** I have one of these and some Genesis games like Ms. Pac-Man, Revolution X, and Contra (and probably many others) don't work on it. But there's a patched version of Contra that works.
MrAdrenaline1982 SEGA Retro says this about using ROMs on the device: "To boot games from an SD card, Sega Mega Drive ROMs should be placed inside a folder called "GAME" at the root of the card. ROMs can be either .bin or .smd and all regions are compatible. There is not full compatibility with all games, if you find that a particular ROM doesn't work; try to use verified dumps [!] and if a certain region doesn't work, try another. The games will be listed in the order they were added to the card, you can use a tool called folder_sort to force this order into alphabetical order." So I'm assuming that the roms with [!] at the end (like the ones you'd find in huge Mega Drive rom packs, because as you might know, they usually repeat roms with different names like [E] [U] [J] [!] etc.) would be the ones that work. But since I don't have one of these portable Mega Drives (nor do I know if I'm getting one) I guess we'll assume it's true.
@@worldofjake2012 the ones with [!] mean that that's a clean dump. Other ones, you'd think they'd just get rid of them, right? But they hold onto them in ROMsets because it shows the progress of the different time periods of dumping ROMs; the most buggy one typically being the first, and again the one with [!] being the clean dump
@@christianschmidt-ljmg2249 fan made BIOSes for these things weren't even a thought back in the days they started shipping. But yeah, now one can softmod these.
the reason for the vertical scrolling problem is just cause by the hamster inside getting tired and hungry. upload some food to your SD card and it should solve it right away.
I totally agree with you. It was like SEGA and the Sonic Team were like, "Okay, okay. We have the idea for a new Sonic game. Looks pretty good so far. Anyone have any other ideas? I know, how about we fuck up the character designs! PERFECT! THAT WILL DEFINITELY MAKE THIS GAME BETTER! WE MAKE A GREAT TEAM!" I mean, what the fuck? Why did they do that shit? Making the characters look different doesn't make the game any better! There's no goddamn point to it! Sonic Boom is not very different from any other Sonic game, except for the useless change to the characters! Making a Sonic game where he turns into a werewolf is pretty damn strange, but at least it made the gameplay different and unique. Changing the characters does nothing!
"Man, Megadrive music was pretty good, wasn't it?" Yeah, when they did it right and it didn't sound like an electric guitar being put through a chipper-shredder while still attached to a wall of Marshall stacks.
The rippling is probably caused by the native resolution of the LCD not matching the system's resolution. The blue unit specifically is likely because the games output at 320x224 whereas the screen is most likely a 320x240 screen, so it's slightly stretched vertically and doesn't quite line up right with the screen.
Who would play Sonic & Knuckles without Sonic 3? Ew. I always used Adam when I played SoR. His jump kick was top-tier. Dunno why he never came back. ?!! Wow, all that audio was in minor key or something.
Considering AtGames has been repeatedly churning out turd after turd after turd since the original Asian MegaDrive Twin Pad Player in 2008, it comes as no surprise that the audio emulation is as shit as it is. It has NEVER changed since that console. I actually have two different AtGames home consoles for the sake of seeing the extent of their horrific emulation, the Genesis Arcade Motion Dual (basically, a Wii ripoff combined with a MegaDrive, takes ROMs through an SD card plugged into the back of the console) and the Genesis Arcade Classic (a modified Twin Pad Player with automatic region detection - this one works with original MegaDrive cartridges). These are the two worst excuses for clone console I have ever come across. Even the most inaccurate NES hardware clones and the worst-sounding MegaDrive 2s aren't this bad! The audio sounds like the emulator AtGames is using runs the YM2612 and SN76489 at a very low clock rate, resulting in very low sound pitch. Even if you compensate for the low sound pitch by hacking the games, you will see the YM2612 emulation is just beyond sub-par. It's inaccurate and the overall sound quality is very poor. To make matters worse, AtGames' clones are LESS COMPATIBLE than similar unlicensed clones available in North America making use of true cloned MegaDrive hardware (which we abbreviate as GOAC for Genesis-on-a-Chip). While Virtua Racing is a game that many GOAC-based clones don't work with (mostly due to corner-cutting because the chipsets themselves actually CAN work with Virtua Racing) and all AtGames clones with cartridge slots don't even recognize the game, some games that don't work properly or at all on an AtGames clone work on unlicensed GOAC-based clones. One such example is Super Street Fighter II, which works on GOAC-based clones, but boots to a red screen on AtGames clones except those with SD card slots (the clones with cartridge slots don't support the game's bankswitching hardware, hence the red screen indicating a checksum error). Also, I tried using a Master System converter on my Genesis Arcade Classic, which was a TERRIBLE idea because doing this causes the console to short-circuit. Simply put: DON'T DO IT! Really, all you need to know about AtGames clones is that you should expect the same shit from every one of them. These clones have been around for about 7 years and all complaints about horrible audio have fallen on deaf ears. Ignore their products if you want a MegaDrive; get a MegaDrive Model 1 instead, or if you're interested in a modern clone, look for one based around a GOAC. These will most commonly be 3-in-1 consoles with a Super NES and NES along with a MegaDrive like the Super Retro Trio, which is my hardware clone of choice. It's not perfect, but it works better than every other clone I've tested for the past 8 years.
Streets Of Rage 2 does indeed have one of the best soundtracks ever. It was the one Megadrive game that made my SNES-having ass jealous of the rival console, and let me tell you that was serious business back in the day! Edit after watching rest of video: Good grief, that does sound horrible. Am I imagining things or is the music actually out of tune? That's a dreadful shame, totally ruins an otherwise perfectly lovely system. Boo!
***** It's not hard at all, it's just that portable baked-in emulators can't handle it. Play it on decent PC with KEGA Fusion and it sounds pretty good.
That megadrive looks awesome actually. o.o and I play without sound, so it wouldn't bother me. I need to get me one if it's cheap enough/can import cheap enough
The vertical scrolling rippling effect must have to do with the image being slightly upscaled vertically but not horizontally, this screen must be 320 x 240, the Genesis/Megadrive runs at 320 x 224...
If you want to play these games on the go legally I recommend that you just get the Mega Drive/Genesis collection on PSP or Nintendo Switch. They're cheaper, you can save and the emulation is better too.
Oh Mastera! That sound emulation is horrible, and sound is one of the reasons why I favor the Genesis over the SNES. Face it, SNES kids, our FM synthesis may have been harder to get to sound good, but it was cool and sounded great! I thought about getting one of these, but after hearing how it butchered the theme of my childhood, I kinda want to stay away and play my original genesis instead.
Oh there's that Sonic 2 Beta Title Screen. :V I don't get why they added that. The sound emulation in these are shit. You're better off getting a PSP and getting emulators. They really need to fix the sound issues in their emulator, there's no reason why their emulation is off when there are better emulators on the internet. Hell they should have asked Steve Snake if they could use Kega Fusion on these!
Unfortunately it's a emulation problem. I mean at least there's a fix for the Radica, but that's because it's the actual hardware just compacted into a tiny shell if I'm not mistaken. Atgames uses their own emulator, and it's not accurate. It all comes down to their sound chip emulation code, which something isn't adding up at all.
Well it's a system on a chip, but removing a transistor and making a few connections sorts it out. I doubt the audio is entirely emulation as it still needs some pre amp.
eLJaybud I suppose someone needs to open one of these things up and see if there really is a fix for the shitty sound. :P I don't have one, and I don't even touch hardware. I'm more of a ROM hacker so I just stick to that and let the other guys who are good with using a soldering iron do the hardware mods.
Just bought one of these at a boot sale for a fiver. To think years back I paid up to £40 for a single title.... Now I have a handheld console with 12 games wow!
+no hassle Yeah, and the quality is garbage. Sorry but these games look, sound, and play better than any crappy clone allows. There has yet to be a clone console that compares to the quality of original hardware. Whether it's the controls, lag, v-sync, poor sound emulation, compatibility/limited selection of games, speed/timing, or off-color graphics, they all fail. I could see getting one of these for a young kid as a birthday present. But since what I care most about is playing the games, I would never want one for myself.
leadbones The Retron 3 is a really good clone console. NES, SNES, and SEGA. It can even run Master system games and Japanese titles. It's not 100% perfect but its the best clone I've ever had. Got it back in 2013 for Christmas.
+Corey Venice Hassle? LOL! Yeah, Sega Genesis is so complicated to emulate. Any resolution beyond the system's native resolution is a complete waste. These games look best on a CRT, and play best on original hardware. If you aren't going to do it that way, then emulation is the next best way. It's more accurate than any clone, and plays all of the games with resolution as high as you want. I play on my HD TV with emulators and original hardware, no trouble at all. The Retron 5 is garbage.
+Corey Venice Playing a MD game on an HDTV is going to be shit. It just will. Upscaling will destroy the picture and the end result will end up looking artificial. CRT is the way to go. Just get a good CRT like a Trinitron.
As Ashens and others have speculated/pointed out, the 'shimmering' is almost certainly caused by very basic (and unnecessary) scaling. The biggest problem with every unit he tested is that all the tones generated by the emulated(?) sound chip are at considerably lower frequencies than they should be, effectively transposing the music/most sound effects down a number of semitones. Samples appear to be unaffected. Some games only sound wrong as in 'not like they sounded on the real console', but for others (Sonic 1 included) it really makes some tunes sound totally discordant. A really blatant flaw that could have been fixed so easily!
The Genesis ran at a screen resolution of 320x224, which is slightly less vertical resolution than 320x240, which (alongside 640x480) is a common resolution for small budget LCD screens, so yeah, they're probably just scaling the vertical from 224 to 240 without any sort of filtering, thus producing that ripple effect. (MegaDrive ran at 320x240 due to PAL... might want to see if PAL-format ROMs have the same effect...) And yeah, if my ears could bleed, I would be dead from blood loss from that sound emulation... x_x;
Big fan of your POPstation saga. Got one you might want to keep an eye out for, unfortunately I'm not certain if it's even on the market yet. games.yahoo.com/news/chinese-game-console-borrows-ps4-184500048.html Give that a read. Combines the designs of the PS4 and the Xbox One with the name of the Ouya... with one changed letter. Talk about disappointing.
If it was 'At Ames' they must really like Defunct Discount Stores, and they even used Ames' Color!! (You might have to look it up if your'e not in the Northeastern USA)
Kind of sad when you think about it, this little thing has the power to emulate Mega Drive games but the 3DS can't even emulate Game Boy Advance games.
If you get lucky you can buy a Genesis/Mega Drive on eBay for 30-40 bucks (USD) with a controller or two and a few games if you're lucky. Despite some controversy all 3 models are decent and better than clones/emulators.
When you showed the games on the back i was like 'oh, no streets of rage?' lol i loved that game!!! i actually had the mega drive that worked. it was kept at one of my relatives from when i went round there when i was younger to play on when i went, i went to reclaim it recently but said that she'd thrown it away a couple of months before :/ And i agree about the sound thing, things like that put me off!! if something doesn't sound the same i find it really difficult to get my head around it :(
