BUYER BEWARE: Hyper Base FC - I have it & it’s not good.

This Chinese retro console comes w/ 53,000 games (PS1, N64, Dreamcast, Arcade, etc) which sounds great...but it's not. Bad performance, audio issues and a high price make this a system you probably should stay far away from.
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** DISCLAIMER: This was sent to me for review, but all of the opinions are my own. I mean, obviously. **

[@MetalJesusRocks]

Uh oh. I didn't know what CPS systems are... I mean I played a lot of Capcom arcade games...but never really paid attention to arcade boards that much. Also never seen them listed in an emulator before like this (usually arcade games are under MAME). Next time I'll google it before guessing what they are. 👍

[@VictorGonzalez-xs9oc]

Did you get sega genesis mini 2 console from Amazon? Because sega America had it in Amazon.

[@ArrowEntertainment20]

yeah the dreamcast, n64, psp and ps1 games work a ton better on my galaxy note 10+ than this thing lol and i thought the chinese were well advanced in tech lol

[@pyrocore]

What is the game at 12:46? I loved that as a kid, but could never find it as I never knew its name. Please help!

[@saqibmasud8155]

@@pyrocore that's Pocky & Rocky. Great game!

[@pyrocore]

@@saqibmasud8155 Thank you. From there I found the exact game I was looking for. KIKI KAIKAI the 1986 Arcade version.

[@fearlessfreep]

Don't hate me, but I actually dig the hard drive disguised as cart look. That's awesome!

[@theodorerelic2718]

Yeah, that reminded me of a Retroflag case for a RaspberryPi 4 board. That case comes with an NES game shell that you can put a laptop HDD or SDD in, then slide into the case like a game. Now if the prices of RapberryPi 4 would come down to their original price, then I'd get one.

[@Ni5ei]

I'm totally with you on that one!

[@WH250398]

They could have made it more visually interesting in my opinion. This doesn't look like a cartridge, it looks like a boring slab of plastic.

[@fearlessfreep]

@@WH250398 maybe that's what the stickers are for!

[@WH250398]

@@fearlessfreep Yeah, but what I mean specifically is some detailing on the plastic itself.

[@aforce82]

Capcom Play System is more widely known as CPS, thus CPS1, CPS2, CPS3. Was huge in arcades back in the 90s.

[@MetalJesusRocks]

Ah. That makes sense. And I've never seen it included in a list of emulators like this. I was mostly a PC gamer in the 90s.

[@Dreddtube]

Not knowing CPS systems is big gap on you knowledge sir. But I'm pretty sure you have already payed some of the games so it's ok. I often eats things without knowing the name or the recipe, it doesn't make them less tasteful.

[@MetalJesusRocks]

I learn something new every day 👍

[@CharlesHepburn2]

@@MetalJesusRocks To own so many games and systems for so many years on end, and to be so IN the hobby and having zero knowledge on the CPS arcade boards just blows me away. How could you go this long and get this deep in the hobby and never heard of it.... CPS powered the most popular arcade games of the 90's. Have you ever heard of NEO GEO? LOL (not trying to be rude, j/k)

[@MetalJesusRocks]

@Charles Hepburn II - I don't really play fighting games...and honestly, in the 90s I was a PC gamer almost 100%. I was in the arcades in the 80s mostly and never really paid attention to the hardware.

[@dutchgameboy8097]

I always really like that you are honest when you just don’t like something. I can imagine that when an item is send to you for review you could feel like you need to be a bit positive but you just call it as you see/feel it. Also I like that you not only show the mainstream stuff. Keep up the good work!

[@kz.irudimen]

What a joke comment, he is just taking a dump on something that everyone knows is garbage. How noble and courageous to shit on cheap unlicensed garbage sold on amazon by random chinese companies that pop up and disappear 2 months later ! Much wow

[@scottcreesy6084]

N64 has always been a harder system to emulate than PS1. This is running regular Emulation Station & RetroArch. So the company can take no credit for the user interface (other than installing it on their hardware lol). Emulation powerwise it seems to be about the same capability as a Raspberry Pi 3b.

[@theboone3848]

Yeah I laughed about that part too N64 is probably the hardest platform to properly emulate. Still wouldn't buy this junk though.

[@mustangmckraken1150]

It doesn't help that there isn't any good N64 emulators. The best ones are a joke when you take emulation accuracy into account, compare that to Duckstation and it's not even close. Project 64 is probably the best and it's been hijacked to spam people with nagware that makes you wait 30 seconds to use it, combine that with games being unstable and if you're trying to play anything like Resident Evil 2 you're going to spend half your time staring at a beg screen. N64 emulation is in the toilet, you're better off using an everdrive lol

[@Lau5am88]

Thank you for the content Metal Jesus! I’ve always loved games and very fondly remember watching my older brother play games all day in the late 90s early 00’s but he hardly let me play 😂 I discovered your channel last year and must say you’ve brought out the same excitement I had many years ago watching my brother. Hi from Wales, Uk

[@MetalJesusRocks]

My pleasure! Have a great weekend.

[@apr2499]

Metal Jesus, those are default Emuelec settings. Emuelec is what most of the Chinese handhelds use. I know Powkiddy and Anbernic use it on their systems. It actually is pretty sweet. Oh and the ftp option does work. You can Google and find the default ftp password. It’s probably something like root, and emuelec.

[@hendoiii3487]

Love the videos man! Always tune in for retro games and buying guides. Another amazing video

[@BSIM13]

The Pokemon Mini was also sold in America at the NYC Pokemon Center (back before it was Nintendo World) - I actually have 2 of them, they were my brother and I's souvenir from the city that year! Funny to see those games on this device.

[@MetalJesusRocks]

I should have remembered that...DOH!

[@BSIM13]

@@MetalJesusRocks haha it's hard to remember cause so few were sold! Zany cards and pinball were the best 🤌

[@Rabbitlord108]

@@MetalJesusRocks To be fair. Most of the titles for it WERE Japanese only.

[@koolmothafunker6027]

Also european release too. I have one from a regular games store

[@loismustdie555]

I bought 2 at target back in the day as a kid.

[@purringc5552]

You should have a series of videos where you buy these systems and review them. Really entertaining to see how and if these systems work.

[@PublickGamer]

I love these reviews you do of obscure or niche consoles and bootlegs. These sorts of devices are something I'd never touch myself, but it's really interesting to see the scope of how they work and how good/bad they are. At least this one isn't as cursed as that noisy penguin console lol. Have a good one, MJR 👋

[@MetalJesusRocks]

I still have nightmares about the Penguin console 😂

[@Rabbitlord108]

What penguin console (Update. Rewatched the start of that video and I've seen it before. It's the one with the power supply that had a corrosive odor)

[@gameexe6337]

the removable hard drive is a really cool idea and convenient too cause you can plug it directly into your computer to laod it up with games without having to fiddle around with usb sticks

[@MetalJesusRocks]

...or just skip the device altogether and run the ROMS off your computer (which would probably have better performance). I should have mentioned that but I didn't think of it!

[@FISHYFILMPRODUCTIONS]

I dont think that would be possible with this particular HDD. Batocera is installed on it, which is an OS. Batocera is linux based. You would be better of buying a mini pc (for around the same price in fact) and DIYing it, which is not hard

[@Rabbitlord108]

Why even bother with USB sticks when the device has a MicroSD card slot?

[@bradtraq1]

Hahaha, you actually emailed them to ask if they licensed the games. Made me smile 🤣🤣

[@billyno-talent345]

It’s wild they’d reach out and ask people to review this. They’d have better luck hoping people fall for the scam, cause that’s what it is

[@rodruvalcaba]

Great review!!!!... yeah, N64 is one of the most difficult consoles to emulate. So far the best emulation I've seen is using Open Emu in a Mac, but in general is a hard to emulate console, even the official Nintendo emulators have serious issues.

[@medes5597]

Currently the official Nintendo emulator for the switch appears to be mostly an open source emulator based on credits because their internal one was allegedly not as good.

[@kidthorazine]

Yeah and even on good emulators you generally have to configure settings for each game. DC emulation is also pretty finicky and probably needs more power than this system has.

[@RetroDakota]

EmuElec is actually a free open-source Linux OS that anyone can download and use to set up their own emulation PCs, but it also gets used by these Chinese companies to install on all these clone consoles. It uses RetroArch/libretro as the emulation backend. EmuElec contains a hotkey combination (such as pressing in both of the analog sticks) which will bring up an advanced settings menu whenever a game is being run. This is where you can fiddle around with all sorts of advanced settings like frame skip, output resolution, audio sample rate, and more. This can improve performance with N64 games, but it also comes down to what choice of emulator the game runs with. By pressing Select in the game menu and selecting "Advanced Game Options", you can choose a different emulator to run a certain game on provided there is one included. Based on my experience with a Super Console X Pro which has nearly the same hardware specs, the S905X chip is just too slow to handle N64 emulation with any emulator I tried. The way the FTP function works is to use another computer on your network to directly connect to the clone console using the file manager. It requires knowing what IP address your router has assigned the clone console. I used my Eero phone app to find the IP of the Super Console X and was able to fix a configuration file that got messed up. I assume this is also how you can add in your own ROMs.

[@olabergs]

I also reflected about that when Metal Jesus brought up the FTP function. He did’nt mention the possibility to ssh into the machine to make some twitching or upload games or whatever. 👍

[@CarbonatedTurtle]

One thing they definitely seemed to get right was their curation. I obviously didn't see nearly as many games listed as I'm sure you dug through, but everything looked clean, with cover art and descriptions, and I didn't notice any doubles are badly named games. The removable hard drive probably would've made a lot of sense if the system could run newer consoles better and you wanted to swap out the drive for another one that would hold all your bigger roms.

[@thebasketballhistorian3291]

That's all EmulationStation which is the program it's running and anyone can download for free. Along with the menus, EmulationStation will automatically group the rom files into systems and download box art, titles, and descriptions from the internet.

[@CarbonatedTurtle]

@@thebasketballhistorian3291 I know that, but there are countless cheap Chinese emulation devices where someone clearly just dumped a bunch of roms onto them without cleaning up the titles and removing duplicates. Others might have cover art and screenshots missing for half the games. But on this particular device, it seems like a human actually went through everything and tidied it up.

[@myvirtualtoyz7338]

These consoles were super popular in Europe in the 90's. They basically had many NES games on the memory and were taking cartridges too.

[@Evercade_Effect]

Great honest review! Thanks for keeping us informed.

[@silverian]

Looks like this console needs more processing power. Little Johny part made me LOL! Opening console and looking inside was interesting!

[@Bo_Knows_Tecmo]

These issues are a combination of hardware being underpowered but the main issue is the emulators are not properly configured. Beatle Adv Racing is known to have that issue but you can use a different graphics driver and the issues with the glitches sky will be fixed.

[@darkspartan566]

These little devices are awesome, but the big trouble of having to get the right one is a rollercoaster. Great video and interesting topic would like to see another like this 😉

[@koilamaoh4238]

the idea is there with the HD drive but poor quality control, as there tons of these copycat devices using the same design and hardware :( You need to spend quite a bit to get something quality and hard to find from china. Hyperspin spin HD drives or pre loaded HD drives with all the system games(even ps2/and ps3/xbox and all the classic systems) on them, just add on whatever external PC/android system for USB and good to go perfect; tend to be more expensive.

[@medes5597]

Any idea which the right one is? This seems like something my little sister would love.

[@nayyarrashid4661]

@@koilamaoh4238 Where do you get those? A HDD or SSD filled with ROMs and a set up file for each type of emulator with a front end as well.

[@monolithgeometry3221]

I have kinhank super console x it's great but the first one I bought was a glitched out mess. These China systems are highly unstable and their controllers lack any superiority

[@jameslocke1416]

Loved seeing the H.E.R.O clip at the end! 2600 lives in my heart, for sure. There’s a guy called Wicked Gamer & Collector who has a channel concentrating on these cheap Chinese systems, including various Pandora’s Box systems, if you wanna get a crash course in them. Love your videos! 😎👍

[@MysticMike]

Once I saw the system menu I'm like... Retropie! Its totally retro pie which is used on raspberry pie. Obviously custom hardware.

[@dr.charlesedwardflorendobr3952]

The hard disk as a cartridge is a cool touch. You can probably change the hard disk into SSD and easily plug into a computer to add your own games.

[@SolidSonicTH]

That performance for Soul Calibur is almost exactly the same as what I saw for something called an Archos GamePad that was reviewed by Stuart Ashen. The background corruption at the start of the fight looks identical. I'm willing to bet that it runs Crazy Taxi correctly because he said that in his review so I'm assuming this is using the same emulator.

[@nicholsliwilson]

The Pokémon Mini was not Japan only, @MetalJesusRocks mine originally came (officially) from Toys-R-Us UK. The S905 is more capable than this but only if you’re using the right optimised emulators. Honestly I doubt the OS is optimised, never mind the emulators? FYI: N64 is a lot harder to emulate than the PS1.

[@roufaass3089]

This helped me find new games, some of the random games you played were new to me from different systems. Retro gaming is the coolest nowadays for me., so i added a lot to my list from your tested games. really loved ur videos.Thank you Metal Jesus, more power!🔥

[@EcSsAwS]

Been reallllyyyy looking into these emulator systems. Glad I found this. I’d be so mad playing those games with such lag

[@Johnny82Utah]

Thanks for the video I almost bought this. Side note did you ever do a review on the Retrotink 5x pro and I missed it? Welcome back!

[@yogibear2k220]

Just had a look from your link and (unless it is because I am from the UK,) they do not seem to be selling it anymore. That's a shame as I was really looking forward to getting one! Thanks for the review of this, Jason. What an absolute load of junk! Still I am so glad they sent this to you and you did review it for us.

[@ItalNico]

Great review and always appreciate your honesty. It's too bad this thing is such a lemon. I've only ever used emulators on my PC and think I'll stick with that for now.

[@arthurp3ndrag0n]

02:33 that "It's okay to play with yourself " sticker had me laughing.

[@dvdknight1]

I have original consoles but have considered buying one of these 3rd party units. I’m so glad I haven’t, appreciate the review, cheers!

[@eugenemorrison2720]

$120 is double what I paid for the Kinhank "Super Console X Cube" which is essentially this but in a mini NES shell. Same controllers, same UI, same amount of games. Mine doesn't seem to have many issues aside from a few N64 games that won't run at all or run at unplayable framerates. For $60, I'm happy to have something to play old school multiplayer stuff with people and explore retro games I never played as a kid. For $120, it wouldn't be worth it to me when there are much cheaper options.

[@crusherbad64]

I'm using an Atari VCS running Windows 10 to house my emulation of games. I'm slowly adding more but so far, it's rock solid.

[@davidbullard1671]

Hey MJ, I enjoy your reviews and latest pick-ups. I have to agree on this one. It definitely needs more power. That hard drive is very similar to a program called BATOCERA. It’s a great emulator, yet performance is determined by your device used. Since it’s program more popular with PC’s. You can probably boot it from your PC (hard drive) by pressing f12 or esc to enter your bios and launching the program. Still though, great review.

[@greghill00]

That's because Batocera uses Emulationstation and that's also what was installed on this "console".

[@BrD4GOD]

Wow this was a great video. I don't know so many things about gaming man. But hey, that's why I watch your channel. Won't be getting this for sure. Thanks for going through all of the headaches for your subs. Personally though I always try to get OG hardware. I like my little small collection. Won't be buying a multi-cart anytime soon.

[@npc.retro87]

I bought a similar device but a handheld version for $99. I like it a lot. Its based off the Anbernic. It has the same interface and games you showed. There's a community that upgrades the OS and it runs soo much better.

[@quikeism]

Which device did you get? If you don’t mind me asking

[@MrAmaar]

This is Batocera, it's a Linux distro dedicated to retro gaming. The issues you notice have two primary reasons: 1- The graphic chip is not up to par, and 2- (which is most important) some game's BIOS are missing, which is necessary for the game to work smoothly.

[@davem12dim17]

No it's not. It's emuelec

[@buhshmuh]

I'm so glad i bought a few pi 4s when they came out because all i ever hear online is that they're hard to come by especially at their original price. Pi 4 runs all of these games better but PC is the way to go for emulation.

[@fattomandeibu]

It's just a Batocera box, mate. You could make the same thing by buying an old Core 2 Duo Dell office or something off of Amazon for like £50(likely less if you shopped around) and then installing Batocera on it yourself, it's free to download. It would likely run better on the hardware, too.

[@greghill00]

It's not Batocera but is is Emulationstation

[@leonidas14775]

That's Emuelec, its made for Amlogic ARM boxes. Batocera is the similar OS for PCs.

[@fattomandeibu]

@@leonidas14775 Was gonna say something like that. They're compiled from the same source. My point was that you could just buy a thin client computer or some such and undercut the price of this piece of crap AND get better performance.

[@leonidas14775]

@@fattomandeibu Agreed, there's plenty of better mini-PCs available for less money.

[@timily25]

The front end on this thing is called Batocera, I installed the same thing onto my arcade1up MKII cabinet.

[@MrJDNJ]

What would happen if you plugged that hard drive into a computer with "enough power"?

[@user-hr5di5fg8b]

I wonder if you could connect the hard drive to a PC run the emulator from a standard PC for performance.

[@lasskinn474]

Well probably you could get the files off it but why would you? Just copy them off the internet. Its just a pirate console after all.

[@crunchyfrog555]

I have a KinHank Super Console X that John Hancock reviewed a while back and generally I'm pleased with it. It seems about the same spec (as the CPU is the same, iirc) and runs the same Emuelec and Retroarch frontend. The same knock off PS3 controllers are also included - but the main difference is the price - £40 or less on AliExpress. Quite a difference from the price given here. I wouldn't be surprised if the performance on mine is slightly better than this as it uses microSD cards rather than a mechanical drive. All in all you can get far better or rather the same for much less.

[@MisterOlaf75]

Great video again! I have seen a lot of reviews of similar consoles and they all can barely play ps one games tops. Everything above, it’s a mess. As you are saying, retro games (8 and 16 bit) run pretty good. But I prefer my SNES classic for retro gaming. 😄

[@thebasketballhistorian3291]

This basically can be done with a Raspberry Pi. Menus and emulators are all EmulationStation and RetroArch. Those programs also automatically download the box art, titles, and descriptions. For game collections, there are pre-made, self-booting disc images you can download from the net. Just download, write to an SD card, and insert into your Pi.

[@brocka.6479]

When you can find a Raspberry Pi at or anywhere near MSRP, that is.

[@MickeyTTT]

Retropie is also available for PC's running Linux. I've got a Raspberry Pi 400 but my PC runs it better. It's available for Windows too but the Linux version is easier to set up. Retropie doesn't include the bios's and games, these have to be added to it.

[@brocka.6479]

@@MickeyTTT A similar solution that's more designed for "normal" computers would be Batocera. Good stuff either way though.

[@respectedprophet6247]

So I’ve never really done emulation so this is a genuine question, isn’t all emulation kinda laggy, I’ve only tried it a few times and its never been like playing the original game idk if thats because of the settings i had at the time or my pc specs but I’ve never been able to get it to work without being a little off in some way

[@DiddyKongVsLuigi]

6:16 original script: “Don’t be surprised if little -Jesus- Johnny is uh, spending a little bit extra time in his room with the door closed.”

[@lucarosania1358]

The interface is default EmuElec, a very popular front-end for emulators in the emulation boxes world. It's free and open source, so they didn't really have do anything about it except flashing it onto the hard drive and maybe choosing a theme and a few options. EmuElec usually comes with CPS 1, 2 and 3 and the Pokémon mini, they're standard. Sooo well, it seems to me the only impressive thing about this machine is some piece of software that is available everywhere else. :/

[@davem12dim17]

It's not free and open source to a degree that they are allowed to use it. It is very very specifically on a no commercial use licence Use of it on this system 100% is against the licence. (I make the default theme, crystal, for emuelec)

[@supermegaretrosmr]

Regardless of SOME of the negativity in the comments, I enjoyed and appreciated your views on this device man. Alarm bells were already ringing for me when I saw the Famicom style body paired with PS3-like controllers 🤣

[@ShadowBasch]

Been thinking of grabbing one of the Kinhank ones as convenient mini console. I wanna play some games that are pain in the ass to buy for modern consoles like turbografx/pc engine stuff.

[@pyrocore]

What is the game at 12:46? I loved that as a kid, but could never find it as I never knew its name. Please help!

[@Ye_old_goth_dj]

Man thanks for this. I had seriously been looking at one of these for the bedroom. Glad I didn't waste my overtime

[@rstanyan]

The "cartridge" really reminds me of the RDX cartridges I use for backups at work.

[@blake3one6]

The fact that you have all these subs and you continue to shoot B roll on your floor is hilarious 😂

[@wesleysexton8774]

If you're looking for any more of these to test, I highly recommend any of the Kinhank devices, I got the one you showed in this video and I got another one called the X3 that handles all Sega Saturn, Dreamcast and PSP perfect with other stuff. As a younger gamer who can't afford and didn't experience all these games getting one of these systems that has all the games you talk about it awesome. Most of these have more emulators too so if a rom doesn't work on one you can switch to another. N64 is always tough. Don't spend more than 100 :)

[@Quasi-stellar_object]

Nice review. Thanks. Going to buy one of these :)

[@criptin4075]

These under-powered Chinese devices often add these higher end systems even though they aren't going to run well almost solely so they can advertise those systems when selling them. That can make the console appear to be in a higher league especially if you don't understand or have access to the specs. Pretty common thing to see these days unfortunately. I am a bit surprised you aren't more versed in emulation consoles haha. Then again if I had a massive physical hardware collection I would probably be in the same boat. Cheers bro.

[@Superbad22]

Hey metal Jesus, just wanted to say thank you for making my day better with this video. My dog for 15 years just passed away and watching some of your videos have been making me feel a little better. Thank you for doing what you do, take care

[@makedaevilmage]

5:45 I'm pretty sure we also saw a release of the Pokemon mini here in the Netherlands. Believe I even cut out the ad and kept it, for some reason. And I remember seeing it on store shelves as well. So not a Japan exclusive ...

[@campionpesate4647]

Can you delete or disable categories from the front end? For example "Capcom" "PC Engine" etc.

[@gregorys351]

Good day sir, you should try dropping some frames from the option menu. I also follow a chap called The wicked gamer who does all the reviews on machines like this. Give him a go pal. Keep up the good work and rock on 🤘

[@MetalJesusRocks]

Thanks for the tip!

[@GYTCommnts]

You have a lot of different things to analyze about this type of devices, and in USA you may find them a little odd, but in other countries, where you can't afford to buy a lot of software or prime hardware, they are common. 1) In reality the majority are repurposed TV boxes as retro consoles. They use dated chips sometimes recycled from other uses. 2) The base gaming system is "Emuelec" (not the TV part that is a tuned Android), an excellent project based on the likes of RetroArch, that has nothing to do with this companies directly. The chinese companies use the project and tune it for their needs. The original project is intended to repurpose hardware that maybe e-waste otherwise, and convert it to a retro console. It doesn't have any of the shenanigans that they may add, and DOESN'T COME WITH ROMS. You add them based on your... "backups". It's free, even open source if I remember correctly, with a GitHub official page. The configuration, looks, etc... it's all totally customizable. 3) The price is for your market and it is high. In other countries you can buy a cheap equivalent TV box without the form factor, that comes with SD support as media, or USB connections for other types. So, one thing is the hardware, that was intended as a TV box or media center for TVs or displays that don't have SMART capabilities, and it is based on sort of "recycled" chips. The TV part firmware is a "shady Android", common in this TV boxes. The gaming system boots aside, and is based on Emuelec, an independent project that is open, so the companies use it and change it, but it's not FROM them. And the original project is totally open, free, and fan supported. EDIT: The majority only go up to 16 bits era correctly. More than that you need more powerful chips and RAM. And, again, the price is high compared to similar devices in other countries without the look as a Famicom.

[@mrburnz884]

First thing I noticed: "Gee, that menu font sure looks familiar..."

[@Boris82]

When you read 53000 games you should already know that quality is gonna suffer. And suffering it does hard in this case.

[@surferbrg]

Yep I'm usually skeptical when it comes to these consoles and looks like that might be designed to play older games. But you know what for the same price you can buy like a SFF or Slim Dell Optiplex upgrade memory to 8GB and stick in a decent GPU and you could get something better if you want to play the 3D or arcade titles. Overall love the content.

[@theoldone22]

For that price you could get a Raspberry Pi 4 and Retroflag Case that looks like a NES. That HDD case looks like the one for the Retroflag too.

[@carlosvalverde2928]

This almost happened to me back in late 2018, I saw a Chinese knock-off of the NES mini for about $25 with 600 games and I was pretty much sold out until I arrived home and read some Amazon reviews

[@4KbShort]

From the way it's acting with the laggy/bad 3D games is that the CPU is shared for Graphics/Sound/Physics and what you're hearing is basically the interrupts for graphics updates interfering with its ability to play sound. If they had placed a dedicated Graphics chip on there it may have fixed the issues. These are the same issues I experienced in the early 2000s trying to emulate PS1/N64 on old Pentium machines. Even though the software was fine the graphics were terrible and there were tons of audio issues.

[@reverendgrizzly]

I was really into retropie for a few years and would build them for friends and family on a raspberry pi 3b+. I got a lot of n64 games very playable by experimenting with different emulators and settings for each game. It took hundreds of hours though and there were still controller mapping issues in some n64 games. For some reason these tiny single board computers just dont like n64. the rpi 4 is much more capable though. For the money Hyper Base wants for this, I'd just buy a rpi4 and make my own.

[@theodorerelic2718]

Right now RasPi 4s are obscenely expensive. I currently have a 3b in a RetroFlag SNES case hooked up to my TV, and would dearly like a 4...maybe if the price comes back down.

[@reverendgrizzly]

@@theodorerelic2718 Someone else mentioned the playstation classic and how easy it is to run emulation station on it. Those are about 70-90 usd rn and run games flawlessly. I'm currently using one for my retro gaming.

[@theodorerelic2718]

@@reverendgrizzly I have Autobleem on mine, since I just use it for PS1 games, but I have heard get great results with running other systems on it.

[@matthewbarrios1028]

I bought a retro pi clone console a few years ago off ebay and it is actually very capable. It runs PS1 games beautifully but I imagine that is as high as it can handle. It has 4 player support and came with two USB SNES style controllers and 2 PS2 style controllers. I have had zero issues with it. It was about $150. Given the jank of this clone console, I would have definitely avoided this thing. The 8 bit do wireless controllers even work on it.

[@themohels1]

I have on and when you mentioned security it got me thinking. Is it safe to connect to my wifi?

[@JSFTR]

I have a question how do you boot back to the arcade from the android?

[@wardrich]

Is that not just running a standard Emuelec/EmulationStation setup? Would be curious if you could swipe the roms, wipe the system, then re-install without any issues. Seems sketchy that you they don't give you the root password with it...

[@gamernaut8864]

Looks like another cheap android box running a version of EmuELEC. These devices are a dime a dozen and not too difficult to make yourself for $20-$30. They emulate 8bit and 16bit eras pretty good as well as some early handheld consoles, but struggle with 32bit, 64bit, and beyond as you would expect. Yeah the price is a little high but I guess you're paying for their build and collection of games. These Chinese boxes are really for people who don't have the time or the no-how to make their own. In those cases, they kinda make sense. Not for me tho. The nVidia Shield Pro is still one of the best options for an android box + gaming emulator, in my opinion. You gotta install all the software yourself, but there are many videos on KZbin to help. Great video. Great review MJR. At least anyone who might want to buy now knows what they're getting into. And BTW when will the N64 be 100% perfectly emulated on other hardware? It seems to be the impossible still here in 2023.

[@user-zo9dc1lu3q]

Nice video about a curious machine. P.S. If you really want to test the GBA capabilities of the device you should try to run some complex 3D games like Driv3r or one of the Need for Speed games 😉 Weak emulators usually tend to mess-up the sky background of Driv3r or run Need for Speed at a really low framerate.

[@thechonkahedron]

The Pokémon Mini wasn't Japan exclusive, it was released in North America and Europe/Australia too. You can even see the ESRB ratings in the footage here.

[@Timjacks01]

What is the best emulator you can buy which is plug and play?

[@jessragan6714]

I've bought so many set top devices and mini consoles over the years, but I've found that the Xbox Series S tops them all. It runs all the stuff the Hyper Base FC (and many, many others) cannot, like Playstation 2, Dreamcast, and GameCube. These emulators aren't technically supported by Microsoft, but it's still very much worth adding them to your system.

[@LordHonkInc]

There's one reason I could think of why the HDD solution was chosen: You're not gonna transfer 50k+ games (or however many there really are) over USB 2.0, you'd _need_ to use a SATA dock (or one of these stand-alone "drive-duplicator" things) to get to a viable throughput of devices in manufacturing. SATA hard drives ain't the fastest around anymore, but if you're a chinese knock-off manufacturer it's leagues ahead of cheap USB connections or low quality SD cards. Also, I honestly dig the look, with how storage media have evolved over the past few years and games taking up more than a bluray's worth of data to ship physically, I wouldn't be surprised if we went back to cheap quasi-cartridges like that in the coming console generations.

[@TheKurtsPlaceChannel]

Very entertaining and fun to watch. Thanks for posting this.

[@MetalJesusRocks]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mxmaverinho8115]

I built a raspberry pi in a nes mini case. It also has a cardridge with an ssd. I actually have 2 cartridges. 1 with kodi and 1 with emulation station like they use in that system The cartridge idea reminds me of it.

[@asteroidrules]

The hard drive is very similar to a Raspberry Pi case called a NESPi. That's a case designed to mimic the NES design and fits 2.5mm SSDs in its cartridge bay.

[@gnagarysteventon]

Can anyone suggest any one of these plug and play easy systems Chinese system to purchase there is many id like one just for the guest room something that works and is full of games

[@DemigodTodd]

That menu looks just like a retro pie. You could make one these for half the price!

[@Aringka]

seemed like a good idea at the time, but probably ran into compression issues to pack all those games in, even if it is a 500g hard drive, would love the system just for the old retro games though

[@nielsvandesype5827]

The highest portion of the total price is for the laptop HDD. Dual system means that it can also work as android based mediabox/tv-box. What these Chinese manufacturers do is purchasing lots of old SOC stock and put it in there emulator consoles. For me it looks the same as an external HDD/SSD station to connect trough USB to your computer.

[@twithnell]

Amberelec is the OS I swapped my Anbernic RG351V handheld to. As long as they didn't tamper with it, it's fine. IT's community open sourse software using emulation station. With tweaking, there probably could be better results since it has multiple cores per system that can be used. That system is worth maybe $20 though. Just get a PC, put batcoera on it, and be done with it to be honest.

[@davem12dim17]

It's using emuelec (illegally). Amberelec is for rockchip devices

[@twithnell]

@@davem12dim17 rip

[@albericozapata4086]

Little Johnny will be playing in the living room, not close doors in his room. For a moment I taught it was an April fool's day review but it's Friday the 13th, even scarier. Thanks for the heads up, it does help to guide some naive gamers and parents regarding emulation systems. Have a great weekend. Can't wait for the next video.

[@alastair9870]

Missing the MJR crew. Damn. A little get-together would be great. Doesn't have to be all of them since I know one is overseas but just a few. It's just a different vibe when y'all just hang out and talk about games.

[@Epsilonsama]

For the price of that you can get a Retro Handheld which you can play old games on the go with. Also CPS was Capcom Arcade Board they used in the 90s with CPS1 game being things like Street Fighter 2, CPS2 being Super Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter Alpha, CP3 being used for Street Fighter 3. By then Capcom switched from developing their own hardware and simply moved to using Arcade Boards from other companies like SEGA Naomi board which was basically a SEGA Dreamcast. The more famous Arcade System was the Neo Geo MVS which was the same hardware as the Neo Geo AES but the MVS was an arcade board while the AES was a home console.

[@Azuris190]

The menue looks as nice because it is a open source community thing. It is for example also used on the Ambernic Handhelds.

[@vincentj9794]

Some of those emulator consoles are significantly cheaper on AliExpress if you don't mind waiting around two to four weeks for shipping. I have the Game Console X Cube. I got it for around 50 dollars on AliExpress. I noticed it was over $75.99 on the Amazon listing that was shown in the video. I like it. The 50,000 or 70,000 plus games is deceptive. Because many of the games are rom hacks, demos or different language or region versions of a game. Especially on the 16 bit and earlier systems. If a game has more than one disc then those discs also count as separate games.

[@timothykatch1855]

Do have a recommendation for a similar console?

[@sno28]

Curious if there is a similar item that would be recommended

[@ibatman82]

Thanks for the review and the headsup

[@twilightofthegods33]

Who do you think are, taking apart the hardware, Spawnwave? Keep up the good work

[@100Bucks]

Metal Jesus doing teardowns like ETA Prime. Good content.