Genesis 2-player Plug & Play Hong Kong Clone/Emu w/SD Card Slot *NOW WITH REVIEW!*

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30606

Ordered one yesterday, I'll be sure to report back on the quality when I get & test it.

*EDIT* The review is up, about half a page down.

I don't have any kind of unrealistic expectations, but even if it's AS good as the worst Genesis clones out there, it should be passable and the fact that you can throw compatible roms onto the internal memory or an SD card has me intrigued/excited at the prospect of more devices like this to come!

*edit* prior to my thoughts, here's an early review I found, SOUNDS PROMISING!

http://genesisdevice.blogspot.com/

And some videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZWBnjo2hYw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00umqbMeX-Q

[AB Positive]

Damn... I might have to get this. I can't wait to hear your review - if the d-pad and buttons are responsive enough this may be the steal of the year!

[MASTERWEEDO]

i kinda want this

[Pantechnicon]

Holy geez...I'd totally get one of those if the quality is decent. I was kind of saving my pennies for this upcoming portable Genny with an integrated screen but this might be a more tempting proposition.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I like what I've read in the review, and the videos look good.

Looks like the controller has a small bank of memory and games are swapped out from the SD card into that bank. ALA old DS pass cart/GBA cartridge systems.

I could be wrong but that's what it looks like in the videos.

The review even reports that it is compatible with actual Genesis controllers in the 2nd player input!

[Pantechnicon]

I guess the main thing I'd like to know about is if this unit supports game saving, and how?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I guess the main thing I'd like to know about is if this unit supports game saving, and how?

From the review - "Game saves work but dissappear with the game that is being overwritten, so anyone playing a long-term RPG or anything that saves progress will have to do so with care!"

So, yes, this would confirm that the controller has, like old DS pass card systems, a small bank of memory and the games are swapped/passed from the SD card to that memory bank.

Once you over-write the games in that bank the .sav file probably goes away with that game.

From the video it looks like it'll bank 2 games on the controller, so you can have up to two games with saves running till you want to play something different.

That's not as ideal as typical emulators ... but I've seen worse.

[gamesboro]

I'm willing to bet the Firecore SD cart will work the same way with save games, so thats really cool to know.

[StoneAgeGamer]

I'm willing to bet the Firecore SD cart will work the same way with save games, so thats really cool to know.

I wouldn't be so sure. There may be a hack, but I heard out of the box it may only be Firecore compatible for legal reasons.

[TonyTheTiger]

I think what's funny about it is that people will now fight over who gets to be second player. "I want to use the good controller!" "No, I do!"

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Just noticed that my order status switched over from "waiting for supplier" to "in stock", should be packaging and shipping soon, if I'm lucky I'll have it in about 2 weeks.

Can't wait to get this one.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

w00t!

It arrived in the mail today (well, techincally I had to pick it up from the post office) and I played with it for about a half hour.

While I do have a few minor complaints about the unit, overall I'm very. very. impressed.

*UPDATE*

Here are my over-all thoughts on the unit, and the purchase experience from DealExtreme.com

It took about a month to get to my door from DealExtreme, and considering that I ordered it the first week that they had it listed, I’m pretty happy with that and that’s also pretty typical of DX’s free shipping service. It was well packed (bubble-wrap bag instead of their usual padded envelope) and the box it came shipped in was in perfect condition, not even a ding or a dent!

The box is so completely choc-full of hilarious “engrish” that it’s ALMOST worth the purchase for that alone.

The unit I received does NOT have the ugly sticker on the front of the main joy-pad featured in the pictures on DealExtreme. It’s gloss black plastic with a mixture of yellow, blue and red buttons. Not the prettiest looking 6-button controller, but it’s a good size (not too big, not too small) and it feels nice in my hands.

It’s got about 6 feet of AV cable (mono) hard-wired to the controller, an on/off toggle switch on the top left (it’s pretty out of reach contrary to the review which claims that it could be easily switched off during play) and a battery compartment on the back (3 AA). No AC adapter, though I’m sure somebody with a high level of technical skill could wire one in.

The D-pad is convex, and I find it and the buttons to be very responsive on games like Street Fighter II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Truxton, etc. anything that requires a fast twitch seemed to translate pretty perfectly on-screen.

The player 2 controller that was included is a clone of the Genesis 6-button pad (without the top right “alt” button),but made of UBER cheap grade plastic … it also seemed to work fine despite the low-grade plastic. And while I haven’t tested it, the unit is reported to work with a REAL genesis 6 button pad as well.

As previously described, the unit itself has a bank of on-board memory in addition to the SD card slot. It doesn’t use the SD card as expanded memory, instead it reads that as external data. It displays the games on the card in alphabetical order and you can scroll through the list and select a game to “load” into the controller’s system memory.

I didn’t have a tremendous amount of time to test compatibility, but everything I threw at the controller worked. (I didn’t try Virtua Racer, but I suspect that won’t work.)

There was no visible slow-down or lag on any game I played, but on my HD TV set there was some minor graphical interlacing tearing when the screen scrolled up/down quickly. I’m not sure if this is a product of the emulator, or if a real Genesis would exhibit this same distortion if I plugged it into my set. Either way it didn’t distract me during a session of “Saturday Night Slam Masters” or Sonic 2.

I also noticed some games displayed a bit darker than they probably should have. Again, not a huge distraction considering that the unit is an emulator/clone.

Sound output, like most Genesis clones was hit or miss … not terrible, some games output volume a bit lower than they probably should, and some sounded a bit flat or tinny, but nothing made me sit up and say “oh man, I need to mute this in order to enjoy it”.

Here are the most serious issues I have with the unit –

1.) The SD card menu has no option to fast-scroll or page-down. I appreciate the fact that the unit auto-alphabetizes the content of the card, but it’s just brutal to have to slow-scroll through a rom full-set to get to the end of the list. And, no, you can’t do a multi-folder organization system, just one folder containing roms.

2.) When selecting a game to “copy” over to the 2nd slot of the 2-game in-system memory I repeatedly encountered the unit switching back to the main system memory menu from the SD card list. After trying over and over again with specific titles I think that this MAY be caused when the 2nd game you’re choosing is too large for the system memory to hold. Of course there’s nothing in the instruction manual to confirm this, but after trying to load both “Castlevania Bloodlines” in the 1st slot AND “Genesis 6-Game Cartridge” in the 2nd about 5 times, I THINK that’s the problem. I didn’t experience this when trying to load anything into the 1st slot of the on-board memory … so, it’s really not a HUGE issue unless you’re dead set on loading 2 games into memory that are larger than the on-board system mem.

3.) No AC adapter. Batteries are fine and dandy, and honestly, the less cords the better when dealing with something like this - but there’s really no reason for this to not have an option to plug in to the wall if you want to.


So, yeah, I’ll add some pictures and maybe a video later … but other than that, I’d say this is MORE than worth the low price they’re asking for it on DX. I wouldn’t pass it up if you’re looking for pretty unique, space-saving, portable, 2-player Genesis experience!

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

And here's some photos, sorry for the color/brightness exposure, it's not completely indicative of how the games look on-screen, for the most part color display is accurate.

[Sanriostar]

'Design According to Human Engineering'? Holy crap, I've been looking for someone to do that. I'm sold!

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

'Design According to Human Engineering'? Holy crap, I've been looking for someone to do that. I'm sold!

Dude, that's nothing, here's the back of the box.





And, no unlike the description, there is not "voice control". Only manual control.

[Purkeynator]

Voice control!!?? The Genesis was light years ahead of its time heheh