Just got my Gen-X Dual Station NES/GENESIS clone
I just got my Gen-X dual station NES/GENESIS clone today (amidst an eBay fiasco with a shady seller, that caused me for the first time ever to file a report with PayPal asking them to refund my money ... which they did, very quickly when they saw that the seller was in fact ... a shady, sheisty, jerk.)
But, I digress.
I know there was a thread detailing the system's release, but I'm not sure if it had an actual review of the hardware in it ... and, for some reason I can never seem to get the forum search feature to work (I always get a "you didn't input the minimum amount of search terms" error, even if I type a dang sentence in the thing) ...
so, here's my short review on the system.
Looks nice ... somewhere between the size of a Genesis 2 and a Genesis 3 (closer to the 3, but larger). Made of the same grade plastic as most Hong Kong clones. Nice pin-sets on both the NES and GENESIS side of things - VERY TIGHT, which is never a bad thing when it comes to cartridges.
The controllers are reminiscent of 3rd party 6 button Genesis controllers, and have a slow-mo button (woo freakin hoo), but no turbo buttons unless you're in NES mode, in which case the top three buttons serve as turbos. All the buttons and directions worked great, and Street Fighter type "hadoken" moves were in full effect with no headaches.
The NES software compatibility is typical of NOAC clones, no Castlevania III support, but a few games seemed to have less graphical inconsistency/scrambling than my little YOBO, or myriad of other strange-named clones...though, there is one MAJOR issue with NES titles that I'll address at the end of the review.
The Genesis compatibility seems pretty nice from what I tried ... I couldn't find anything in my collection that wouldn't boot up or play ... but the sound seemed a bit tinny at times ... I guess that'll be the standard issue with Genesis clone systems if they're the "flavor of the month" in HK for the next few years (since this is the first I've really seen).
Now...with the good comes the stupid.
Everybody knows that the NES button layout is as follows reading from left to right:
B,A
...I guess the developers of this thing couldn't have the buttons function as A for NES and B for Genesis, so they decided the NES should get the short end of the stick and have it's button functionality bound to the letters on the controller.
So, what we have is a NES clone that has backwards button mapping on the controller. The buttons on the Gen-X controller read from left to right:
A,B,C
Now...there SEEMS to be a saving grace .... sort of.
Button C appears to function as A+B however it must in the first micro-second of it's "macro" press the A first.
SO, in a game like River City Ransom, it will always make your character jump. Not bad for River City Ransom - having that function mapped to it's own button.
AND, in the case of Punch Out, it allows the C button to function as the RIGHT punch whereas the buttons would otherwise be backwards and the LEFT button would be the RIGHT punch. I tried it out pretty extensively in the case of punchout and it ALWAYS threw the right punch with C, every single time.
HOWEVER, in Super Mario 3, where after you jump while sporting the tanooki tail, you'll have to move your thumb over to A to get the "flappy" tail action as after the macro designates that first press as the JUMP, the rest of your mid-air presses seem to designate the "360-spin" action.
SO, now then.
Does this mean the system is NES crippled? No, not totally. There may be instances of NES games that will drive you nuts with a reversed button scheme, but from what little I've tested, the C button "macro" seems to always press the A (the right-most button on a real NES controller) first.
Personally I consider that a major issue with the device that has never been eluded to in any review of the system I've seen, and I felt the DP crowd should know about it.
Otherwise, I'd recommend the whole setup as a decent, unique, space-saving dual-format clone.
Me, I'm a clone collector, so it was going in my collection regardless.
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