this by fair will be my favorite emulation android based console it looks like the Japanese Nintendo Famicom Classic Mini Edition that was released in 2017 or the original from 1989 I'll keep it and I'll play it for sure
I'm usually the first person to point out gimmicks, but this is really charming and makes me think that the people who make them care and put heart into it.
oh man, BERSERK!!!! i remember playing this what I was about 5. Just ordered me a console, i have this game in my giant mame directory etc.. but i just cba anymore lol. Ill plug this new console into my G7 and switch to it during BG3 downtime.
I've never seen that before. I don't know that it's optimal or necessary, but there's just something pleasing about shoving a game cartridge in your console to play our games, just like the good old days.
@@TechDweeb Yep. I’m a big believer in that certain ‘sting’ one gets from physical media. Putting a cart into a slot, a disc into a tray, a record onto a turntable… … I’ll have a think about it. Thanks again.
Sure it has Doom, but does it have Quake? That's the real question. As much as I liked Doom back in the day, Quake was my favorite old school FPS. Still is.
Oh yeah Quake was the king. I was nuts about that game. I was a big Nine Inch Nails fan and that was the first game that actually a soundtrack that I liked enough to listen to OUTSIDE of the game itself. It was way later in life before I had a computer that could actually play it, but I used to play it at my buddy's house (actually I had 2 buddies with the game & good computers, but I chose the buddy with the Gravis Ultrasound!)
Great video. Subscribed. But can someone answer me a simple question I can't seem to find an answer to? Since this is also an Android box, can you download games from the Google Play store that work with a physical gamepad (racing etc), and use the controllers that COME with this to play Android games ON THIS DEVICE itself? Is this unit set up to do this? Thanks for any reply.
Probably not. It's a very old version of Android on here, so you will likely not find anything compatible on the Google Play store. Also there's a good chance it doesn't actually have the Google Play store and you would need to side load everything anyway. And it would be likely that the controllers would not work with most of the games you would be able to get running even if you could.
Thanks for responding! I usually only spend this amount of money on something if I know everything possible in advance, unfortunately there are no reviews of this yet on Amazon, which is where I buy a lot of stuff. I think I heard one YT reviewer mention you can play Google play store games on this, was just wondering if it would pair or recognize the controllers that came with this? I have a ton of retro systems and roms/games on my Nvidia Shield but it was a tedious process collecting all of that and getting it to work. I can get all the basic retro stuff to work great on the Shield, up to PS1 and can even get most Dreamcast and N64 to work. PSP not too good, and nothing above that. But I've been looking at these boxes for a long time and this unit seems to be an all in one, already set up and the GUI looks great. I still have a lot of questions though lol. Would be great if you could try to play an Android game like a driving game (Real Racing, Asphalt etc.) using the gamepads that come with it. Last question. Can this actually play the N64 Star Wars games, particularly Rogue Squadron? I've never been able to emulate this game. It was probably my favorite game of all time. If this console can run that, I think I just have to get it lol. So, is the Force strong with this one?
Can I assume you can play games in full screen mode? Another reviewer said it has the Google play store. The android part of it is great if you can run stuff like Kodi. Can you update the Android version? Is it easy to upload and download roms, etc? Sorry, I must sound like Columbo. It was funny you said at the beginning there's 1001 such devices. That's why I haven't bought one yet lol. This might just be my Christmas gift to myself... 🤔
I'm not going to bother testing the droid stuff, sorry. You can look up this chip to see the performance. It's an S905X chip, you can find gameplay of the games you want to play. Honestly it's not a good idea to get this device for android gaming, the internal storage probably won't even be enough to allow for larger games to be downloaded because it's filled with the emulation software. However I just tested rogue squadron. It ran sorta okay. There was some audio stuttering but nothing terrible. That's at 640x480. At 320x240 it ran much better but the text wasn't readable. This thing may struggle on the more demanding n64 games so if you want those I'd suggest looking for a device with at least a S905X3 chip (although it sounds to me, for your needs, that a higher end device would be a better choice, since you want solid android performance). The controllers are standard xinput controllers so they will work with any game that supports xinput controls. Hope this helps!
Thanks a lot man. I bought one. Three reasons. I'm tired of downloading roms, I'm tired of having to pick from 100 other boxes out there now, and three, it's on Amazon now but that may not be true next week. Several other videos I watched on this console filled out some info you didn't cover, and I just bought one. Thanks again and have a great holiday! 🎁
I just bought this brand new from Amazon and tried for hours but could get NO SOUND. I had everything set up correctly, am pretty good with tech and emulators but the HDMI port audio was working fine cause I could plug in another device like a Firestick and sound was fine. Such a pain to return this. any ideas or just a defective unit?
I assume you have checked the audio settings in the system settings of the device? (You can select which audio device it outputs from there). Try a different HDMI cord? Those are the only things I could think of.
Yeah, I spent 4-5 hours trying to get sound out of this, EmuELEC settings, tv settings, nothing worked. This was my Christmas present to myself, but this thing is a lump of coal. So disappointed. Thanks for responding. Dread the hassle of returning this. Have been looking for something like this for a long time. Can't get any sounds at all. Bummer man.
I would like a physical copy of "TechDweeb and A Quest for Cheese" back in the day. But sadly I was but a poor broke little lad at that time, and the ones on ebay sell like hot potatoes on a winter night. 😔 So glad you secured one for yourself, my dude.🙌🙌🙌
I think that's a really clever gimmick and kudos to them for coming up with. it well done. It's not my cup of tea cause I have enough of these things lying around I think it could definitely be a selling point for a lot of people
When my dreamcast gdrom died (until I fixed it with usb gdrom) I used to play dreamcast games on nulldc, but I had my dreamcast in front of me turned on. When it dies totally I am going to use one of those consoles and put them in the same casing. So yeah, having real world thing is very important, even though many think this is very weird behavior. Who cares?
I don't see why you couldn't plug your own drive in. You could even swap the drive in the cartridge shell, put your own drive in there. You won't be able to run batocera on this machine, but you can definitely put your own drive in as a games storage drive.
My buddy has this and accidentaly did somekind of reset and now all the retroarch cores are gone. Any Idea how to get them back. The system still works and the games show up but none will load because of the lack of cores.
That's tricky. Can he get into retroarch on its own? If so he can probably use the in-app menu to download the cores. It might also be possible to contact the company, they may have an easy reset option.
Hehe 1982, 40years old... Well hello fellow class of 82. I also came into this world in 1982 in good old Johannesburg, now 40yo and sits in Adelaide, enjoying good old retro stuff 🙂
Can you delete or disable categories in the front-end? For example, suppose I never want to play Capcom games and delete all games in that category, does it disappear when you scroll through the menu? (I don't need 5 billion games, about 100 of my favs will do). Thank you
To add more games the easiest way would be to add them to a USB drive and then copy them over using the built-in file browser (you'll need to attach a keyboard, press F1 at the main menu). To exit out of a game press start+select at the same time.
I've heard people warn about the SD cards that come with the games loaded on them. They say the SD cards are poor quality and crash easily, so you should move the games over to a better card. But since these games are on a real hard drive, should I be worried that it will crash easily the way the SD cards would? Is it more reliable?
This is true, I bought 5 handhelds that use micro SD cards and they become corrupt after a few months (30 or so hours of usage, I don't play that much)
I just got mine and love playing my old favorites. I can't seem to figure out if this unit is capable of saving games though. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if it just can't do that.
Oh it can totally save games. You can either use save states, or the cartridge save. To save via cartridge, just save the game in-game the way you normally would. To save your state, you'll need to hold the hokey (default is select button) and press the save state button (not sure what it is, you'll need to find out, it'll probably be one of the face buttons or the bumper buttons).
@@TechDweeb Cool, I'll have to play with it more to figure it out. I just did a save within the game, and then powered the unit off and back on, and it didn't recognized that I had saved. I only tried it with one game so it could be just that one game.
I still remember in the early 1990's when i got on christmas a nintendo famicom the action set that have a gun that was the best christmas in my life i hold it and begin jumping with it saying finally i got a videogame console that i've wanted it for a long time
Same! My aunt gave it to me when I visited her house near Christmas. I still remember when she pulled it out from behind the couch, my amazement that I was actually getting "mario" (to me the 'nes' was just a 'mario machine'). Gotta love those childhood gaming memories.
I kinda like some stuff that looks like other stuff. Like pizza that looks like itty bitty bagels. Or pizza that looks like french bread. Actually, I don't care what pizza looks like as long as it tastes like pizza.
16:50I'm curious about this console's list of ROMs VS the ones you plug into your PC and boot from them. Obviously the bootable drive will enable you to play virtually anything, but which list is more expansive? And can you easily swap and or add ROMs from device to device?
The rom lists seem pretty different on different devices. Some of them try to go for a high number of roms (like my previous RB2 drive review), so there are lots of duplicates. The BC2 batocera drive had fewer duplicates but also a weaker selection of higher end roms, IMO. And then these android consoles are each different as well. Most of them have game lists that you can look up through the official website or aliexpress page so if getting a rom collection that is perfect for you is important then I'd highly suggest checking out the game lists and picking your fav.
Adding roms to this is tricky as is said on the manual. The roms are in zip files on the hdd. If you add something, you should also somehow add it to the gameslist.xml - a file that I could not find anywhere.
Definitely a bagel.... ThatDrastic DS emulator is the best on android imo... Must be some fork because drastic for me allows me the hybrid view as well as custom layout to resize the screens how I wish :)
Yeah I checked my SCX after this video and it has Drastic but with way more options. I'm considering trying to manually update some of the stuff on this box because I really like the look of it. And I DID print my cartridge sticker btw ;)
One big fat agreed from me! No, a retro console shouldn't look like just one more Android box. I prefer old Super Console X to the new, improved model simply due to the design (and the fact it has sd card reader, while the new one has usb stick jutting out like a gigantic square pimple). If I want it to look like an android box, I'll pick one up cheaper and make it myself. Or, I'll plop a pc next to the TV. And a batocera pc next to the office TV, just because I can! But definitely not a definitely-android-box that's trying to pretend it's a console and failing miserably.
Right!? I miss the days when these toys actually looked different from each other. Everything now is just a black box. Crazy to think in like 30 years an Xbox Series X will be considered a 'retro' device and there will be emulation consoles mimicking its look for nostalgic reasons 🤦♂️
@@TechDweeb and I forgot a very important thing - congratulations on getting devices sent to you for testing! You've been noticed by manufacturers, that's huge!
It's just e-waste and money given to people who steal intellectual property. The hour or two invested to do this shit on your own phone or PC is well worth it. Emulation accuracy here is going to be trash compared to what you can get for free in minutes on windows or android or linux. I bet those controllers are real piles, too. If I'm frank all the focus on these cheap, low end emulation consoles is borderline unethical and definitely in no one's best interest but the outfits selling them. As a consumer you should just spend the 10 minutes setting up Retroarch or another emulator and sourcing roms, then playing that on your currently owned PC or Android phone. Whatever the consumer is watching this video on has a better ability to emulate games than the device being reviewed.
that console is certainly committed to a specific nostalgic style. for this one, theoretically, you might be able to use a sata ssd in place of a mechanical hard drive. i think the general concept of it with the hard drive cartridges can be redesigned to fit a sleeker, modern look to appeal to more people. the function is there for what it does and lends room for the company to make a customisable 2.0 version with backwards compatibility, where some of the issues could be addressed… and build out your own console with color choices. also, being sata, having a sata usb adapter to plug into an ordinary computer would be awesome… either as part of the console itself or as a separate product to interface into the computer. the cartridges could then run off these different console types, making the cartridge itself more valuable because it won’t be stuck to one specific type of console in front of a tv. you can bring it with you and plug it in wherever. it stands out and you know what it is as opposed to a flash drive.
Maybe go a step further and have decided control panel associated with each hard drive cartridge. I am planning to creating mini bartop cabinets with controllers specific to a specific genre. 4way, 8 way, trackball, etc. as well as special control panels for games like Robotron, Qbert, and Defender. One emulation device, one screen but multiple usb control decks with artwork associated with genre or specific game.
