A SNES in a Jag shell. That about sums most of it up.
Remember that time it was a random VGA capture board in a clear Jag shell? That was fun!
Here's a pretty good article on the whole mess from last year.
As far as this newcomer is concerned, I see this as falling into the same pitfalls, regardless of whether or not they have, or will ever have, a prototype. This company is saying they're going to be developing loads of peripherals and modular slots to put on this thing, and that's just the hardware side.
From the looks of it, they're also going to have some pretty extensive software in the thing. Who knows what the hell they mean by "hybrid emulation" (pat pend.). But by the screenshots it looks like they even want to have a robust digital distribution platform. The biggest criticism I and others had with the Coleco Chameleon before it went up in smoke was what developer is going to plan on supporting this thing in the long run? (Who knows if they even got Sega, Square Enix and others' permission to use game logos and artwork on their site?) If a company wants to re-release some classic games, they're going to release them on a more established platform like PS4, XBox One, Steam, or even the Switch, not some niche-appeal console's digital download service that'll be getting 100 users per month not long after release. Same deal for "retro-inspired indies" that the Chameleon seemed to be courting so heavily.
At the end of the day, this is an awful lot to ask of a game company starting from nothing. Even if this rains crowdfunding from the heavens, they have an extremely uphill battle. A large percentage of Kickstarter game *software* projects that succeeded in funding, still wind up failing after they realize they didn't ask for enough money. Imagine trying to develop a whole game *console* out of that.
