The Retro Champ Is A Switch-Like Hybrid Console That Plays Your Original NES Games

#stopaspectratioabuse

Just what we needed, yet another expensive toy to play your expensive 100 year old cartridges.
Now if only we already had a Switch-looking console that played NES/Famicom games...

1. Why does the handheld mode use 4 buttons instead of a D-pad?
2. Why do the controllers have 4 face buttons and L/R buttons but the handheld has 2 and none?
3. I am pretty sure none of these images are photos, they seem like mock ups.
4. Why only NES/Famicom in 2019? Surely they could build a device like this that could also run SNES/Super Famicom, perhaps even Game Boy/Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. (Doubly so, as this is almost certainly just dumping roms and running an emulator.) [edit] even if separate adapters for other cartridges cost extra.
5. Can it switch back to the default aspect ratio, and if not, WHY?

Bonus, 35 hours of play time? With the screen on, in portable? For 80 bucks? I flat out don't believe that.

The design reminds me of the Super Gameboy

@Silly_G 6 hours is a bit much, but even if you're only getting 2-3 (I feel like I comfortably get around that even on demanding games), that's 1/3 to 1/2.

I would be really shocked if this thing gets 10 hours, with the screen on. My 300 dollar ASUS tablet doing nothing, with the screen on, wont last 10 hours. And 10 hours isn't even 1/3 of what they are claiming.

Oh, so this was the actual device that appeared in C.O.D.!

‘My Arcade’, I’ve seen their crap at Walmart. This looks crappy too

Wow, this is a really bad design.

1. Poor Aspect Ratio
2. No Dpad
3. Poor start/select placement (for games like Punchout that are used within the game)
4. Poor A/B placement (I've always much preferred using Y/B on the Snes controller rather than B/A because your thumb rolls naturally)
5. Reversed A/B. Nintendo controllers always have had B first then A, but this has the other way.

I'm a retro lover, and I get why these things exist. But this seems like it was designed by someone who doesn't actually play games but just thought it would be a quick cash grab to make something retro.

"Portable" and play NES games on the go, yeah I'll just carry around 20 NES cartridges as well as this thing. Then you have the complete absence of a dpad and the screen looks to be the wrong ratio. If you want to play NES games on the go, buy a PSP, spend 5 minutes hacking it and off you go.

One thing I don't understand is all these devices, converters and special light guns to be able to play old games on modern tv's, yet nobody seems to have thought about making a TV which is compatible with old consoles in the first place

I wonder what would happen if you accidentally nudged the cartridge...

Thing looks ugly, I'll stick to a Game boy... or better a Switch.

Only handheld like this I thought was any good was the Supaboy, mainly cus that doubles a portable SNES but a Super Game Boy as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4mu-n-MWAQ

no proper d pad, no thanks! A shame bc it looked pretty good

@AlexOlney But if you've gotta have one, you've gotta have one.
Just wish they'd be a bit more generous to Switch owners who don't have subs to online systems and bring back the VC

@cleveland124 I was going to make some similar comments, but couldn’t have said it better! I didn’t even notice the a/b buttons being flipped. Yuck! There’s a market for this kind of device if it’s done well. There are some good ideas here, but its current state is a poorly executed mess.

Looks like something Soulja Boy would sell. No thanks, I already had tons of Chinese systems that makes it easier for me to play NES games.

D-Pad looks terrible and it's going to be one of these cheaply made Chinese devices but without a low pricetag.

That D-pad issue is going to be the biggest self-inflicted wound here.

Like everyone else, I’d love something like this done with an eye toward quality, and compatibility with SNES. Speaking of NES games, we don’t even know what’s coming this month to Nintendo Online. It would be cool if we get a big announcement in a direct that we are getting SNES or N64 games, but not holding my breath.

Why is the joystick SNES style if it plays NES games?

The NES is a meme at this point.

Genius executive: "Remember the NES?! I know what you're thinking: if only there was some way to play those old classics again today!"

But why the 16:9 display?

@carlos82 You know, that is an interesting point. But part of the issue is not the TVs so much as the old cables. Old composite cables are just really low quality, even back in the 90s there were better alternatives, just more expensive ones. Many of the adapters you refer to are designed to make the consoles compatible with modern HDMI cables, rather than the plethora or now-obsolete-but-still-better-than-composite options.

So is this the PolyStation of the Switch era?

@Agent721 Probably A+B turbo buttons. Famiclones have been out for decades with turbo buttons (or maybe even non-functioning buttons!) so it looks newer than it is.
Suddenly I'm remembering when I had this Saturn-like gamepad for the PC which should've support 8 buttons, but it was only 6 (since it duplicated the L and R buttons to two of the face buttons) so I couldn't use it to properly play SNES games in emulator, needing to map Start and Select to keyboard which is awkward.

@Heavyarms55 yeah but very few are a perfect solution owing to things like the analogue output of those consoles, resolutions which aren't supported and in Europe the PAL format which creates even more issues with 50-60hz conversion. There are a few options such as the Frameister but that's really expensive and doesn't play well with PAL and certain games which switch resolutions during gameplay. Certain N64's can be fitted with the Ultra HDMI on the board before the signal is converted to analogue but it's very expensive and difficult to get hold of and we have that adapter for the Gamecube's digital output. The Wii has a cheap HDMI adapter and the results seem pretty good

I just wonder if somebody could make a new tv specifically for retro gaming with a low maximum resolution like 480p, a true 4:3 display mode and plenty of SCART sockets, maybe some scanlines. It just seems odd that all of these companies seem to be creating bespoke needs for each console when about 15 years ago we had tv's which just worked with all of them. At the moment I have an early HD ready (720p) flat screen which does have SCART and AV support, my 8/16 bit consoles work but the image is stretched and colours can bleed but my Saturn looks great on it.

Well at least Retro-bit are making some new official Sega controllers for the Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast, who knows maybe they'll make some new versions of those consoles with HDMI built in 😉

@carlos82 So you mean a modern TV with built in support in some way? But that doesn't fix the low quality obsolete cables. Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are getting at.

@Heavyarms55 yeah that's what I'm getting at. The low quality cables could easily be replaced and aren't the problem, even with those you had far better picture quality on a crt than a HD screen today when converted.

The issue today is that you can't directly connect these consoles to the TV and modern TV's generally have no idea how to display the signal, particularly interlaced as they don't support those resolutions and analogue signals, creating blurry stretched images with input lag as the built in scaler upscales the image. This is why we need expensive work arounds and things like the Frameister to do the bulk of the leg work to modify the signal to something that the TV can use. I'm just surprised nobody has tried creating a screen which has these solutions built into it in the first place and a much lower resolution so that it will be closer to the native signal, a bit like the Switch at 720p on handheld, it looks great because it's output signal matches the screens own reolution but 720p blown up to 4K worth of pixels makes the image blurry and a bit muddy.

@carlos82 It is true that they worked better on CRTs than most modern TVs. Someone probably could build a modern HD TV that still does support those legacy resolutions, formats and connections. But the cost of doing so probably is too high. How many people are really gonna buy a specialized TV for retro hardware? There is totally a market for it, but a very limited one. It is an easier sell to push small adapters or clone hardware for retro games, than it is a specialized TV.