GRcade

So my folks came good and got me a Retron 5 for Xmas.

For anyone who's not heard of it, it's a clone system that supports playing Mega Drive, NES, SNES,Game Boy,Game Boy Advance, Famicom and Super Famicom cartridges. It also supports Master Sytem games via a Power Base converter.

It supports hdmi and outputs in 720p so makes the games look way nicer than playing on a HDTV using the original hardware.

From what I've played so far it's a great little console. The included wireless controller is a bit rubbish but it supports the original consoles controllers so have been using Mega Drive 6 button pads. As an added bonus you can use any controller to play any systems games.

I've got a bunch of Mega Drive games already and all work and look great on it but am wondering what games from the other systems people would recommend looking for. I was always more of a Sega gamer back in the day so missed out on much of the Nintendo stuff barring Game Boy and GBA..

I got an e-mail about this from Gameseek. So you can plug your actual cartridges into this (I.e. not downloaded ROMS) and use your original SNES controllers? One thing that concerns me is the talk of 720p output, I' m guessing the games still look terrible.

Can only vouch for Mega Drive titles so far but they look really good.

Been playing on my 42" tv and it looks great. It uses the original cartridges but runs them using emulation. I think when you insert the cartridge it reads the data into memory. You can't use roms on it though unless you install hacked firmware.

You can choose to run games in their original aspect ratio or widescreen and can apply a range of filters to make them look a bit better still. Can also choose to apply scan lines to make it seem like an old crt tv.

It has 2 contoller ports for mega drive controllers,2 for SNES and 2 for NES.

Mine was from www.funstock.Co.uk - if you've got a range of retro games for the supported systems it's a really neat way to play them on newer tvs. Only game I tried that looked bad was Virtua Racing but that's more down to the game itself.

Just to add to this - picked up the original Game Boy version of Tetris off ebay and it looks surprisingly decent on the big screen through this.

Been playing loads of Mega Drive games on it last few days, loving it. Micro Machines 2 and Sonic 2 look great on it with some of the filters enabled. If can get some photos up somewhere I'll post a few.

Some pics would be appreciated, I'd like to see how the games look upscaled to 720p.

Here's on of Sonic I took xmas day. Will sort a few more. That's running on a 42" 1080p tv with one of the retrons filters applied and the stretch mode enabled to make it fullscreen..

That phone in the bottom left would drive me mental.

[iup=3647164]Johnny Ryall[/iup] wrote:That phone in the bottom left would drive me mental.

LOL! It did but it's moved again now. We have a little table it normally sits on to the left but had to move it to make room for the xmas tree. Trees down now so phones back where it belongs out of the way.

Few more photos (had to sneak them in quick whilst the missus isn't using the TV so bit of a rush job)..

Can also view them here if want them in a larger size: Retron 5 Gallery

Some of the colours have come out a bit dark on my phones camera but best I can do.. it looks even better on the tv screen but hopefully they'll give a rough idea..

Micro Machines 2 (Mega Drive):




Sonic 2 (Mega Drive):




Virtua Racing (Mega Drive):




Tetris (Game Boy):

That is the sexiest Tetris I have ever seen

I'm compromising with my wife that if I can have one of these I will get rid of my Mega Drive. I've always wanted a SNES as well.

Does this work with Game Gear games if you plug the converter into the Master System converter?

Get this going:

I was thinking of that exact picture

I might get the older model though, it only has Mega Drive and SNES/NES support, but it's half the price. I don't care about the Famicom support to be honest so that might be the one for me...

Don't think this does Game Gear but will do Master System if you get one of the convertors to plug into the Mega Drive slot.

Aside from Famicom, this does also do Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.

I'm not sure if the older model supports hdmi either (it may do but they seemed to make a big deal of this one having it).

[iup=3647224]Spindasher[/iup] wrote:Get this going:

That's quite amazing. I do have an original mega drive 2 with a 32x but no mega cd.

Back in the day I had a mega drive 1 with a 32x and mega cd2.. beast of a machine

Is this multi region?

Yeah. Haven't got any import games to try but it says it is.

Eurogamer did a good review a while back - worth a read if not seen it..

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... on5-review

I want this.

I am interested in this, but too pricey for the use I will get out of it. I think I'd find it impossible going back to SNES level graphics, as I found out when I tried to play the SNES version of F-Zero on the Wii U.

[iup=3647343]Death's Head[/iup] wrote:I am interested in this, but too pricey for the use I will get out of it. I think I'd find it impossible going back to SNES level graphics, as I found out when I tried to play the SNES version of F-Zero on the Wii U.

Just put emulators on your wii u, same result and better imac quality to boot. And free

Given that I thought F-Zero looked gooseberry fool, can't see the point. Given the Retron 5 runs Android, would be interested if it runs Mame in the future.