- Joined
- Jul 9, 2001
- Posts
- 3,753
So I came across IsamuBlue's WTB a Retro freak system thread on Friday and said "what's that," and proceeded to do some online research, and did not have too much luck finding Youtube English reviews, nor many reviews at all, Japanese included. I usually don't say "what the hell, I'll order this" without doing some research, but I decided to give this a chance, I was toying with the idea of getting a Retron 5 to condense many of my systems into one all purpose system to play on my HD TV despite some of the negative reviews, but then when I saw this I was sold on the pc engine, supergrafx, and turbografx support this unit has.
Here is IsamuBlue's thread on this, and thank you for making me aware of this
:
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...sole-with-controller-adapter&referrerid=13277
I decided to buy the standard edition and not the premium edition with controller support that was about $30-$40 more. I figured I'll either buy the controller adaptor later, or give one of those SNES usb controllers a try off of Ebay or Amazon. The included controller didn't look bad and the one English unboxing I saw said it was pretty good, it reminds me of the Wii Classic Controller which I don't mind using with my WiiU.
So I ordered this from Nin Nin Games on Friday and it arrived this morning via Fed Ex.
The unit itself came packed in small box with the system with removable "guts," a 2 ft HDMI cable, a 100-200v AC adaptor, the controller, and a Japanese ad for the MK II Game Gear Adaptor coming I believe in February.
The system itself reminds me of a second generation SNES system, the "guts" of the system is removable which has two usb slots for controllers in the front, the power connection, the hdmi port, the micro sd slot, and the power button. You can load roms on this, remove this, and play games off of this. The "cartridge slot" portion has a PC Engine/ Turbografx slot, a Genesis/ Megadrive slot, a Snes/SFC slot, and a Famicom slot. The "cartridge slot" portion also has three usb controller ports in the front.
I connected the system via HDMI to my Onkyo 7.1 receiver and hit the power button. I had to hold the button to get it to boot, once it booted a light lit up on the CS portion and booted to the Retro freak screen, and from there to the language settings with English as the second choice down. Then I got the license agreement, and finally it asked me to calibrate my screen size and then recommended I set my HDTV to game mode.
From there the system screen reminds me of an interface you would see on the wii, the system has 3.2 gb of internal memory and has a section for the microSD card and characters for the different systems the Retro freak supports for the purpose of saving and loading games or roms from the microSD card (I will have to look for a microSD card to give this feature a try). The bottom right corner has a section for system, power off, and a manual all in Japanese.
So from there I inserted a bootleg Famicom multicart, no luck. Next I grabbed one of those weird Interplay Genesis carts of Star Control to give it a shot. The system loaded the cartridge quickly. recognized this as a Megadrive game, and booted up. My receiver dropped the signal (it only did it this initial time), and then the Interplay logo came up.
After trying the game whichbooted up in 4:3 and the controller (no problems) I hit the option screen. The option screen has a section for video (aspect ratio, image filter [I set this on Super 2xSal], scanlines (more on that later), original resolution, screen refresh rate, screen size, full range HDMI, the audio section has sound enhancement on/off, bass and treble boost, volume, and GUI sound effects. There is also an option to save the state and take a picture of the screen. I personally do not like using scanlines with Mame, but I did set this on and I seemed to get some flickering on the screen so I set this off again.
Next I tried Ninja Spirit for the turbografx, it recognized this as a PC Engine game and booted up. All of the text with this and all English games came up in English. The game played fine. Next I tried Power Drift for the PC Engine which has a lot of different scaling and had no problems.
Neither the Genny nor the PC Engine/Turbografx games had any problems with the "grip of death." Next I tried Power Instinct for the SNES and experienced the "grip of death" trying to take the game out. It wasn't too bad, but it was definitely there. I had no problem having the controller and system recognize quarter circles and I did not perceive any delay (btw you can do controller button mapping as well). Next I tried my Famicom copy of Lum No Wedding Bell, and again experienced an even tighter grip of death. Lum No Wedding took a few times to get it to recognize and then boot, but that could be more of a dirty cart than a problem with the system.
Lastly, I tried a NES to Famicom converter I have and had no luck getting the system to recognize my copy of Pro Wrestling , which I tried inserting a few different times, the converter and the game.
I did not try a SFC or Mega Drive game but I would imagine if the US SNES and Genny games worked the SFC and Mega Drive games should have no problem. If I do have any issues with these once I dig some carts out I will post later.
I've had no problems with the limited time I spent with the system, I am a little wary of the "grip of death," but so far so good. I have no idea how to update the system since everything is in Japanese, but my thoughts are that it updates via the microSD card.
If anyone has any further questions I can answer I will try, I know in the previous thread someone asked about Everdrives and this. I do not have an Everdrive, but if I get my hands on one I will be sure to give it a shot. Here are images from the system.
Here is IsamuBlue's thread on this, and thank you for making me aware of this
:http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...sole-with-controller-adapter&referrerid=13277
I decided to buy the standard edition and not the premium edition with controller support that was about $30-$40 more. I figured I'll either buy the controller adaptor later, or give one of those SNES usb controllers a try off of Ebay or Amazon. The included controller didn't look bad and the one English unboxing I saw said it was pretty good, it reminds me of the Wii Classic Controller which I don't mind using with my WiiU.
So I ordered this from Nin Nin Games on Friday and it arrived this morning via Fed Ex.
The unit itself came packed in small box with the system with removable "guts," a 2 ft HDMI cable, a 100-200v AC adaptor, the controller, and a Japanese ad for the MK II Game Gear Adaptor coming I believe in February.
The system itself reminds me of a second generation SNES system, the "guts" of the system is removable which has two usb slots for controllers in the front, the power connection, the hdmi port, the micro sd slot, and the power button. You can load roms on this, remove this, and play games off of this. The "cartridge slot" portion has a PC Engine/ Turbografx slot, a Genesis/ Megadrive slot, a Snes/SFC slot, and a Famicom slot. The "cartridge slot" portion also has three usb controller ports in the front.
I connected the system via HDMI to my Onkyo 7.1 receiver and hit the power button. I had to hold the button to get it to boot, once it booted a light lit up on the CS portion and booted to the Retro freak screen, and from there to the language settings with English as the second choice down. Then I got the license agreement, and finally it asked me to calibrate my screen size and then recommended I set my HDTV to game mode.
From there the system screen reminds me of an interface you would see on the wii, the system has 3.2 gb of internal memory and has a section for the microSD card and characters for the different systems the Retro freak supports for the purpose of saving and loading games or roms from the microSD card (I will have to look for a microSD card to give this feature a try). The bottom right corner has a section for system, power off, and a manual all in Japanese.
So from there I inserted a bootleg Famicom multicart, no luck. Next I grabbed one of those weird Interplay Genesis carts of Star Control to give it a shot. The system loaded the cartridge quickly. recognized this as a Megadrive game, and booted up. My receiver dropped the signal (it only did it this initial time), and then the Interplay logo came up.
After trying the game whichbooted up in 4:3 and the controller (no problems) I hit the option screen. The option screen has a section for video (aspect ratio, image filter [I set this on Super 2xSal], scanlines (more on that later), original resolution, screen refresh rate, screen size, full range HDMI, the audio section has sound enhancement on/off, bass and treble boost, volume, and GUI sound effects. There is also an option to save the state and take a picture of the screen. I personally do not like using scanlines with Mame, but I did set this on and I seemed to get some flickering on the screen so I set this off again.
Next I tried Ninja Spirit for the turbografx, it recognized this as a PC Engine game and booted up. All of the text with this and all English games came up in English. The game played fine. Next I tried Power Drift for the PC Engine which has a lot of different scaling and had no problems.
Neither the Genny nor the PC Engine/Turbografx games had any problems with the "grip of death." Next I tried Power Instinct for the SNES and experienced the "grip of death" trying to take the game out. It wasn't too bad, but it was definitely there. I had no problem having the controller and system recognize quarter circles and I did not perceive any delay (btw you can do controller button mapping as well). Next I tried my Famicom copy of Lum No Wedding Bell, and again experienced an even tighter grip of death. Lum No Wedding took a few times to get it to recognize and then boot, but that could be more of a dirty cart than a problem with the system.
Lastly, I tried a NES to Famicom converter I have and had no luck getting the system to recognize my copy of Pro Wrestling , which I tried inserting a few different times, the converter and the game.
I did not try a SFC or Mega Drive game but I would imagine if the US SNES and Genny games worked the SFC and Mega Drive games should have no problem. If I do have any issues with these once I dig some carts out I will post later.
I've had no problems with the limited time I spent with the system, I am a little wary of the "grip of death," but so far so good. I have no idea how to update the system since everything is in Japanese, but my thoughts are that it updates via the microSD card.
If anyone has any further questions I can answer I will try, I know in the previous thread someone asked about Everdrives and this. I do not have an Everdrive, but if I get my hands on one I will be sure to give it a shot. Here are images from the system.
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