Hello I'm Calm Cal welcome to another video, in this one we're going to have a look at
this device, called the retro arcade, it's a six button joystick with built-in
games. Some people don't like messing around with emulation themselves, it's
tricky backing up your own games or trying to find roms On-line can be a bit iffy!
setting up your own hardware and then buying controllers and putting it all
together it can be expensive in comparison to something like this. This
unit was under 20 pound. It's a very simplistic plug and play it, it has 145
games built in and boasts 16-bit emulation!
It requires batteries and plugs directly into your TV set. Lets have a look, I'll just take it out the
box and have a quick look at it, turn it this way, there we have it - six buttons and a joystick and
two additional buttons. Just lift this out. There's wires at the back, little turny thing here. That comes out.
Looks as though theres some good suction on here, let's just feed this
wire through.
First impressions, buttons seem a little bit high but they do press, so that's
what they are for, joystick feels a little bit too limp to be honest....microswitches....
microswitch's are nice and clicky but not much resistance on the joystick itself.
Here's the AV lead that plugs into the TV, it's approximately 190 centimeters
long. On the base there's four suction pads and the battery compartment.
There's a screw missing here, it takes four double A batteries to power this
unit.
First impressions then, it's not too bad especially for the price, let's get
some batteries in here plug this in and try it out. The on/off switch is on the
back where the a/v cable comes out. This first screen of the list of games looks
terrible it has splash screens for the games but it just looks so amateur, I feel like
I've been robbed! - But it does get better, I promise you, I'll just run through the
screens to show you the list of games, so get ready to press pause. Left
and right to go page by page and up-and-down to highlight the correct
game and then press Start. Reset will take you back to this menu, there's no
save states on this device though, I'll show you some game play at the end of
this. I've played some already and I will say that the games look and feel very
much like the Mega Drive games do, they all look a hell of a lot better
than this first screen! So dont let this first screen put you off, controls do
feel cheap and for £20 it is!-- for a plug & play device though, this is
pretty good, being able to place it down on a table with a suction cups rather
than having to hold it, move the joystick and press multiple buttons at the same
time makes game play more comfortable. I've bought an AV to HDMI adapter to
capture the screen as the original footage wasn't great, I recorded the
sound on the capture device too the sound is mono not stereo, hopefully when I render
the video I can change this to stereo but I didn't really notice this when I
was playing on my TV set.
When you load into a game it just seems slower than normal this is down to the
emulation but game play is still good, the controls and buttons are surprisingly
responsive even though this is made cheaply, you can see this in the rate of
fire when I play Xenon2, there's no rapid fire on this unit - this is all
button press the action here!
First thoughts on this device then, if you want to experience a bit of
nostalgia without having to pay out too much, this is a device to try before
you dip your toes into the water by buying a single board computer, case, power supply,
memory storage, joypads etc, this is the cheaper alternative, just to try things
out. The output to the TV isn't great, but it is how it was, so to speak, it's very
easy to use, there's a good selection of games. You won't be able to play
simultaneously multi player but there is enough length on the lead to pass it
around to take turns with your friends. For £20 it's a great trip down memory
lane and well spent I think, there is better emulation out there, but that all
comes with a price.
If you are thinking of building something yourself have a look at my build your own
console series using Blast16, this is for the megadrive format as well.
I'm Cal, have a good morning, afternoon, or good evening, farewell till next time and I'll see you
later, thanks for watching!
And thanks for reading also 👍