Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jI5n_GdWo
Last Minute Christmas Retro Gaming Gifts Reviewed!
Introduction
It’s one week to go until Christmas day and you know what that means - last minute gift shopping for that retro gamer in your life! So I purchased 5 of the cheapest retro game handhelds on Amazon and put them through their paces - but are any of them actually worth buying? Spoiler: Yes!
Script
It’s one week today until Christmas day, and you know what that means? Time for some last minute panic shopping for that extra special someone in your life - you know the one? That person who’s important enough to warrant purchasing a Christmas gift for, but not so important that you’ve actually bothered to get around to it yet.
So, for something a little bit different for this channel and a bit of festive fun, I thought I’d check out some super, super cheap retro gaming handhelds and see if they’re actually any good.
So, I think without any further ado, let’s go Christmas shopping!
And like many people in this situation, that of course means turning to Amazon - in this case, amazon.co.uk - no, they haven’t sponsored this video, I should make that very, very clear for all the cynical people out there - this channel isn’t nearly big enough or important enough to warrant such an impressive sponsorship offer, but let’s face it, it’s the realistic option, it’s where a lot of us in this situation are going to end up. So let’s start our search. I’m going to go for “retro handheld game console.”
There we go - I’ll go with the first suggestion. And let’s see what we have here. So I want stuff that I can get by tomorrow, and it’s getting quite late now - it’s getting on for eight o’clock in the evening, so I need to get a wriggle on.
And we’re going to sort these from low to high as well, because the person that we’re shopping for, we like them enough to buy them a present, but not so much that we want to spend a lot of money on them. So let’s see what we have here. This one looks quite impressive, actually, what’s this one? We have a mini retro games console, 240 inbuilt games, 8 bit retro gaming handheld console, 2.5 inch full colour LCD screen, pocket console, immersive sound, games console, thumbs up! That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Looks like it’s branded “Orb Gaming”. Never heard of that particular brand, but yeah, it looks quite impressive from the pictures. Got a bit of a selection of games on here - we’ve got one that looks a bit like Track and Field, yeah, we’ve got some familiar looking stuff on here - and nice and small and pocket sized as well. So £13.16, free delivery tomorrow, that’s the important part. So we’ll add that one to the basket.
Okay, so what else do we have here? We’ve actually got some much cheaper options as well - I don’t think Amazon quite understands the concept of sorting the price low to high…
£4.99, Bop It Handheld Game Sensory Toy for Autism… I don’t know, I’m not sure on that that black and white LCD screen, so I’ll probably leave that.
These two look identical, I think they’re the exact same product, so we’ll go for the slightly cheaper option - and that’s the Kids Mini Handheld Video Game Console with 400 Retro Classical FC Game Boy for Boy, Girl, 2.8 Inch Rechargeable Battery Christmas Birthday Gift Present for Adult Kids.
Wow! Catchy name. So it looks like it comes with a composite video output, we’ve got a mini USB for charging and it looks like it has a removable battery - I think that’s a kind of a Nokia style phone battery, so that’s quite cool - and we’ll just go through here: 400 classic games in one, and we’ve got - it looks like we’ve got Mario on there and a few other Nintendo classics so it’s one of these Famiclone type consoles. Looks quite nice and small, doesn’t it? It’s quite hard to get an idea of the the size of this one.
Now it looks like red is the cheapest option at £10.99 so we’ll go for that one - I think personally, I’d probably prefer yellow or white. Yeah, the yellow does look cool, doesn’t it? Like my old childhood game boy. White, of course, that classic look as well but the brief here is to get something as cheap as possible - so, £10.99, I’ll add that one to the basket as well.
Look at this one - that’s like a Nintendo Switch type arrangement, horizontal layout. Kind of like the, the Ambernic, isn’t it? And it’s got what looks like A Famicom controller with it - that’s very interesting, isn’t it!? Look at that! Fever grade! Fever grade… I don’t know, what does that even mean? Portable game console. 800 plus classic games, so for just £3 more you get 400 more games! 1080x680 resolution, 3.5 inch HD screen.
Yeah, looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? We’ve got two players, outputs to TV, we’ve got two players because we’ve got that second controller as well - look at the Photoshop work on this product image, that’s fantastic.
The Edinber handheld game console portable video game with three and a half inch large screen and built in 800 classic games USB rechargeable electronic game console. Add to basket.
Customers also bought these highly rated items: Hemp cream. Extra strong. The mind boggles!
I want to get five very different options - I don’t want to get things that look similar. There’s another one of these Game Boy clone things here, so we won’t go for that but what’s this? Do we want the orange? I quite like the orange and yellow option with this one, so let’s go for that.
Handheld game console player for kids adults retro game console game portable with classic video games orange colour. I actually really like the colour of that one, that looks quite cool.
So, it looks like it comes with a USB charging cable and a wrist strap.
Supports 319+ classic games. So we’ve got a list of actual systems on here: we’ve got the PlayStation, we’ve got the CPS1, 2, and 3, so of course they’re arcade systems. PBA? What’s PBA? Looks like a Neo Geo controller, but that’s probably not what it is. But we’ve got Game Boy - various Game Boys, Super Famicom, Famicom Mega Drive, PC Engine, Game Gear, Neo Geo, Sega Master System, and the WonderSwan Color!
Randomly enough, maybe it’s got the WonderSwan Color version of Mr Driller on there, which is one of my favourite games. Two and a half inch TFT HD screen - that’s HD, it’s 320x240, that well known HD resolution. Playtime seven to eight hours - and it looks like it charges via USB. It’s got a built in battery by the looks of it - oh, look at that, it’s tiny!
Oh, that’s quite nice. I quite like the look of this thing, especially for the price. Let’s add that to the basket.
So let’s pick up where we left off - we’ve got some of these brick game things, I’m not quite sure why they’re so expensive?
That’s not really the kind of thing that I’m interested in. So it looks like we’re going up - it’s going to be a bit of a jump in price for the next one, which is unfortunate.
What have we got? They look quite cool. What is the sort order on these!?
I’m not sure Amazon understands the concept of price low to high… But anyway, is it based on the RRP maybe? The RRP of this one’s £14.99 - in fact, let’s have a look at that one because that’s a TV game, that’s not a handheld by the looks of it. Plug and play, retro TV games, controller, console, 200 built in games, eight way joystick and two buttons for adults and kids, thumbs up!
Looks like it’s composite video again - I can’t see any HDMI port on that. Yeah, plug and play directly into your TV via the included RCA cables and start playing. This is one of the best gifts you can buy for kids and adults on all occasions, including Christmas, birthdays, and more. 3xAAA batteries required, not included - I’ll have to check I have some AAA batteries here at the studio - I need to make a note to bring some in, I guess.
But yeah, £11.49, we’ve got some classic games on here: Magic Egg, Man in Red, Meccano, Mirror Devil Word, Mouse Snare, Mouse Hero, Mowing, Mowing? and Nut Cracky - of course there was there was Hovver Bovver, wasn’t there? That was like a lawnmower simulator, maybe that’s what mowing is. But it looks like quite a nice compact little unit - what’s the kind of size we can expect? Yeah, so we’ll assume that this is a normal adult human. So that looks tiny, doesn’t it? You know what? Let’s go for that because we got four different handhelds and now we’ve got this TV game as well.
So what I will do is I’ll get these ordered and hopefully they’ll arrive together tomorrow - it is getting on, it’s getting a bit late. So let’s get these paid for and next you’ll see of me will hopefully be me unboxing these wonderful consoles.
…and here we go! So, as the eagle eyed among you will have no doubt spotted, we actually only have three devices here when I ordered five, and that’s because Amazon split it into two separate orders - these arrived first thing this morning, so that’s all good, and the second batch of two retro gaming handhelds is apparently due to arrive before 10PM tonight. Now, knowing what I know about Amazon and about our local distribution center and driver, that probably means that they are actually going to arrive at 10PM tonight, if not shortly afterwards, and just be abandoned outside my front gate. Anyway, the show must go on, so let’s review what we have here, and of course, I’ll pop back to the studio with the other two devices, and we’ll review those as well later on. So, one thing that I didn’t notice is that two of these are actually the same brand - they’re both Orb, apparently, that well known retro gaming brand, and of course, this one advertises over 200 games, and this one says 240 games.
So, it does make me wonder whether they’re running the exact same software. Of course, this one doesn’t have the built in screen, it’s designed to output to a TV, and this one doesn’t have a TV output, so two very different devices, I guess. But I bet they’re running the same menu system and the same set of games. So we’ll find out later, and I want to leave this one until a bit later on anyway, because of course that’s a TV game, so slightly different setup to get that one recorded.
And the other device that we have here is this one, of course, which is that really nice orange and yellow one that I was quite taken with when I was shopping for these last night, so really pleased that this has arrived first thing - and the first thing that I kind of spot on this box, of course, we’ll have a bit of a closer look in a moment - but the first thing that I think is really obvious is this copyright infringing font that we have here on the top of the box, reminds me of a certain Japanese gaming company… I won’t mention their name too much in this video because I don’t want to get hit with any kind of copyright issues.
But yeah, it’s Nintendo, it’s the Nintendo font, isn’t it? So we’ll have a look at that one as well in a moment. But I think the most logical place to start is probably the very first one that I ordered. So this is absolutely tiny as expected, but nice professional looking packaging here. It’s got this plastic outer bit. Now I must confess, I had actually started recording this video already and then I had an issue with my camera, which I’ve been fighting with.
So I’ve already opened this box and actually had a quick look at this one, but we’ll have another look. Let’s do take two.
So just a plastic outer sleeve with a hanger on it so, you know, the kind of thing you’d see in a petrol station or whatever, nothing too exciting there. It’s all scuffed up and it’s too shiny for my camera anyway, so we’ll get that one out of the way and take a look at the box.
So, Orb Retro handheld console, we’ve got a picture of the console on the front, includes over 240 8-bit games, as mentioned. Not much of interest on the back here. Conveniently play your favourite retro games wherever you go. Features 248 bit games and a 2.5 inch LCD colour screen. Requires three AAA batteries, not included, and yes, I did indeed remember to bring some batteries with me today, so that’s at least one bit of positive news.
So, we’ll just unbox this.
Now this was sealed originally, as mentioned, I’ve already opened this once, but we’ll just take a look inside, and we basically just have the console itself, and some instructions, and that’s it. That’s all you get in the box. There’s no TV output on this, as there will be on some of the other units that I’m going to be looking at today.
The instructions are very, very basic - it’s literally just how to insert the batteries and that’s it and it’s just that in about five or six different languages, so also nothing of interest there.
Now the console itself has this protective sticker over the screen. So of course, I’ll just remove that before we start…
It’s got this kind of brushed metal finish - it’s quite nice, it’s obviously quite plasticky and quite cheap - it’s not real metal, I don’t think, and the buttons do kind of feel a bit mushy and a bit cheap, but hey, that’s probably to be expected at this price point - and if we turn it over, we’ve got the battery compartment here which we need a screwdriver for - and just one more piece of information here. We’ve got to You Tec Ltd. P.O. Box 491 HA4 0EJ UK - so, I guess they’re the official UK importer for these.
But let’s get these batteries installed.
Oh!
Seems the power switch was already on! Let’s turn that off - and just get this battery cover reinstalled, just a small Phillips screw there, so you’ll need one of those on Christmas morning in addition to the batteries, and I’ll give the screen a quick wipe because it’s got some fluff on it, and we’ll turn this on.
So this is the Orb Retro Handheld Console, and yeah it’s got this built in screen - the screen’s not too bad, it’s a little bit wonky, I’m not sure if you can see that on camera, but the screen looks like it’s actually kind of rotated inside the the case a bit. That’s weird, isn’t it?
And we’ve got the three buttons across the top, so we’ve got to reset volume and start.
The volume…
…is just the single button, and it sounds like that that’s just muted…
…and we’ve got three different volume levels. So it’s not particularly loud. There’s no headphone output on this either, and it plays this constant background music in the menu.
I don’t know what game that’s from, if you can identify that please do let me know down in the comments. So we’ve got F22, Vanguard, Abscondee, Aether Cruiser, Aim Cruise, Air Alert, Star. I won’t read all of them but yeah, it’s left and right to go through the pages, and of course there are 240 games on here - can we go… if we go back to the start and then, yes, that’ll take us to the end.
These obviously aren’t officially licensed games, as you might expect, but to be honest, that’s probably for the best. I mean, you know, we don’t want any kind of copyright infringement going on.
My goodness, some of these names!
I tell you what, let’s go for Magic Bubble… Start, I guess? Yep. Oh, what’s this?
It’s Tetris.
It’s literally Tetris with a, a kind of a bubble theme.
Anyway, so that’s that - let’s reset that and see what else we have. Jungly Guy! That looks interesting, doesn’t it? Let’s try and check out Jungly Guy.
Jungly Guy!
Oh my goodness, what’s this!?
Is this like Bomberman, maybe?
Eugh!
So one thing I’ve noticed is in the scaling on some of the on screen text - you see this pop up? It’s really kind of, it’s evidently not designed to run at this resolution, and it’s been scaled quite badly. So that’s a thing.
Pizza Boy - let’s check out Pizza Boy.
Pizza Boy! Amazing. This text scaling issue again - what’s this?
Can I go in the buildings?
I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in that one.
Pretty much par for the course for this channel, I think. Oh, mowing! That’s one that I pondered, wasn’t it? So let’s have a look at that one - when I was shopping for these.
Oh, it is indeed a lawn mowing simulator by the looks of it, so let’s see how this works.
Ooh!
A bit of a turbo boost there!
Try not to run over the dog…
So, yeah, impressions of the Orb Retro Handheld Console: It’s not too bad, the controls actually don’t feel too bad at all. I know I said they felt a bit mushy before I actually started playing it, but they’re perfectly serviceable for something at this price. It feels okay - it’s quite weighty with the batteries in it, you know, it doesn’t kind of feel too cheap and nasty. Of course the issue is the games, I guess - no recognizable games on here, I’m guessing if I went through all of them, I’d find some things, obviously we had that Tetris game, so there will be some stuff on here that’s kind of clones of well-known existing games, I suppose.
The screen’s a little bit wonky. The emulation seems fine - of course, we had that scaling issue with the actual text.
It’s not terrible for the price - there might be some decent games on here, I’m not quite sure, but it is what it is. It’s a start to this video, I guess, and I suppose we should move on to the next thing.
…and here it is, the next thing! As promised, the Handheld Game Console 319-in-one - and as you can see from this box, it’s advertising a 2.5 inch screen, mode number - I guess that’s model number - N-101. Very interesting looking little thing, this. So yeah, we’ve got different colour options, as previously seen, we ordered the orange option - or the yellow option.
Now let’s get this open!
Oh!
Oh, that’s quite nice!
Nice presentation in the box there, actually, compared to the other one that was just kind of loosely flopping around. We’ve got some accessories as well - so there’s a wrist strap, that’s quite useful. We have a USB cable - and that’s USB A to USB C - so that actually has a USB C connector on the bottom, which is quite advanced for these cheap Chinese gaming devices, and we have a manual.
Now what do we have in the manual here? It’s a bit more comprehensive, it actually tells you what the buttons and things do, which is quite useful, and there’s a packing list for all of the bits and pieces that you should get in the box. I can confirm that everything is there, present and correct.
Initial impressions - it’s got some weight to it. Of course, it has the internal battery in this one, so it has an internal rechargeable battery. No requirement for those AAA’s as per our previous unit. I’ll just take the screen protector off.
Oof.
…and very distinctive styling on this - like I say, I quite like the look of this, and now I have it in my hand… it’s a thing.
Oh my goodness, that’s loud!
Right.
It looks like our games are sorted into categories: so we’ve got Shotting, Action, Fighting, Roles…
Why did it skip past that one? Puzzle, and Sports. So I guess we’ll start at the beginning with Shotting.
Which button do we press? That one? Ah.
65-in-one Roles Play: So we’ve got Desert, X Plan, Contra 7, F22 - that was on the previous one, wasn’t it?
Bolide, Fighter… Okay.
Jackal, Rush ‘n Attack, Star Wars, Combat, Galaga, Galaxian. I see. So of course, all fully above board, all legal and officially licensed - almost definitely. We’ve got Gyrodine - Yeah, some stuff on here that I’ve actually heard of: Twin Bee, Gradius, Spy Hunter, Tiger Heli, there are some good games on here!
I tell you what, let’s go for Galaxian - an arcade classic. Oh! Apparently they’re page up and down buttons. Right, so it must be that one to start. Here we go.
Oh wow!
…and we’ll turn the sound back on as well, if we can.
Okay, so something you will probably be well aware of if you are a regular viewer of this channel: I am terrible at games! But this isn’t a gaming channel, it’s a retro technology channel.
That’s quite impressive! The screen’s actually quite decent quality, the speaker is really, really tinny - in fact, at the highest volume level, it’s actually quite painful to listen to, but just turn the volume down a couple of notches and that’s fine. The buttons have quite a nice - I think these are tact switches underneath - so they actually have quite a nice tactile click to them, which is really surprising, you know, especially compared to that previous one - and we have some actual proper games that we’ve heard of on here. The emulation seems to run perfectly fine - at least for Galaxian anyway. So, quite impressed with this. First impressions, it’s quite a nice little unit. It feels nice in the hand. I am very, very surp-
Oh my god! Shush!
I am very, very surprised by this - of course, I’ve only played the one game so far.
But let’s see what else we have - let’s check out the Action category.
I’m just going to turn the sound off in the menus, but it sounds like there is a-
Yeah. Now we know we’ve got that page up and down button. So we have - I haven’t heard of any of those - oh, Berserker, maybe? Happy Angel, Elf Legend…
Little Hag, Frantic House, Fruit Dish?
So yeah, not quite so many recognisable titles on this one. Let’s check out Man in Red.
Man in Red, that well known game, level one.
Oh, now this does look familiar. What is this game?
Let’s have the sound on as well.
Oh, it’s like a Space Invaders clone.
Well, I think that’s that - I think we’ve seen pretty much everything that Man in Red-
That’s going to get me every single time, isn’t it?
I think we’ve seen everything that Man in Red has to offer. So what do we have in the other categories? There’s Fighting…
3-in-1 Fighting! Final Duel, Hokuto No Ken, and Aimless.
We’ll go for final duel then, I guess…
PREST START
Street Fighter, the final fight! A little background… What on earth?
Target vs. Kevin!
Wait, what!?
This isn’t Street Fighter!
What is this? This must be a game - there must be somebody watching who knows what this is.
But I have no idea - looks like an MSX game almost? Oh, you can kill the enemies…
Who knows? Anyway, I’m sure that’s probably someone’s favourite game. Runs alright! It’s actually really responsive and, you know, the music-
Again!
Oh dear.
Sport.
Turn this down again.
So we’re in the sport category now - and of course, we have some familiar titles in here as well - we’ve got Excitebike, F1 Race, Hyper Olympic, Hyper Sports.
Wow, look at these! Road Fighter, Yie Ar Kung Fu.
Okay.
Awful Rushing! There we go.
Ha!
Challenge Race… We don’t have that strange font scaling issue that we saw with the previous handheld, so that’s nice. Fonts are nice and legible.
I can’t even remember how to play this. You can wheelie can’t you? There we go.
Oh. Yeah!
Overheat!?
Oh right, yeah.
That’s annoying. Oh, I’ve overheated again.
Anyway, that seems to run fine again - the sound’s okay, the controls are nice.
I’m impressed! I am actually impressed with this.
I was ready that time. Right.
Puzzle Games.
Anti SARS!? Antarctic Advent, Balloon Fight - oh, Balloon Fight, yep, heard of that one - Binary Land, yep. Bomberman, Brush Roller, Burger Time. Chack ‘n’ Pop, Chess, Deflower, Defender… Rescue Kuck.
The less said about that one the better.
Raid Bungling, I guess that’s Raid on Bungling Bay, isn’t it?
We’ve got Load Runner, Mappy, I mean the categories don’t make any sense at all here - I guess these are basically sort of multi cart, knock off multi cart menus and they’ve just kind of dumped a load of them onto one flash chip or whatever. We’ve got Bomb Jack, we’ve got Dig Dug 2.
Ooh, Elevator Action.
So we’ll go into Roles.
Roles Play. Devil World, Doughboy, Wisdom Boy, Castle Excellent…
Devildom Doom - Devildom Doom!?
Angry Bird. I keep seeing Angry Bird, let’s go for that.
Oh, it’s Angry Birds! What? Okay.
I don’t know if I should confess to this, but I was actually a bit of a fan of the original Angry Birds when it first came out, you know, before all the microtransaction and advertising rubbish when it was just a, you know, just a decent mobile kind of puzzley type game.
I remember going through all the levels in my old job, in fact, on my lunch breaks and stuff, trying to get the three gold stars on all of the levels and everything. Of course, this is not that - this is someone’s interpretation of that on Nintendo hardware.
…and yeah, no disrespect to the developer, but I’m not sure it’s the ideal platform- the platforms collapse and everything!
Yeah, I’m not quite sure it’s a good fit platform wise, but they’ve done the best that they can with the hardware that they have available. So yeah, that is the- what does it say on the box?
Where is the box?
Handheld Game Console 319 in 1 - It’s the Family Games N-101. Now, I’m actually really impressed with this. Yeah, you know, some of the games kind of repeat and stuff and I don’t know what the licensing situation is - to be honest, I don’t think, you know, it’s probably not entirely legit, is it, let’s face it.
But the buttons are nice, really nice and clicky, nice tactile feedback on those - I actually really like those buttons. The screen’s really decent quality, the emulation runs okay, you know, no kind of lagging or anything like that. The audio is good - of course that speaker does let it down a bit, and there’s no kind of external speaker or headphone output on this, but for the price- and it feels decent. It’s got- it doesn’t feel cheap and plasticky. I am really surprised with this. I spotted this when I was scrolling through Amazon, as you saw moments ago and thought it looked quite interesting and I think it’s actually surpassed my expectations - so quite a cool little device, this and quite a cool selection of games as well. So that, I like that. That’s great!
Oh, just one more thing about this just before we move on - I decided to plug it into a laptop just to see, you know, maybe if it showed up as a USB mass storage device or something, maybe potentially you could copy your own ROMs and things to it, and for the stuff in this video that has USB, I will be testing it on all of these. But no, unfortunately not, it seems the USB port on this is purely for charging. There’s a little light that kind of lights up that shines through the casing - I don’t think you can quite see that. But yeah, it’s very subtle red light that lights up there just when it’s charging.
But yeah, no mass storage capability, but I thought I’d just test that for you as well.
And some more good news! I’ve just had a notification that my other two retro handheld consoles are now out for delivery, so hopefully they’ll arrive sooner rather than later - but of course we have a third one to look at in this first part of the video and it’s the Orb Retro TV Games Console. So, includes over 200 games, plugs directly into your TV.
Quite a nice looking box here - we’ve got screenshots of some of the games on here, and it says it includes over 200 games. So relive hours of video game nostalgia with these mini TV games featuring 200 fun games!
Simply connect to your TV to play. Video game controller features 200 8-bit games. Connect controller to TV to play. 3xAAA batteries required - same as that first console and, as previously mentioned, same brand as that first console as well. Sorry, I’m just chucking all the bits and pieces around here, I’ve just got a big pile of stuff. Orb. So yeah, we’ll finally get to see if these are running the same software and the same games.
Let’s get into this box…
…ah, okay! So we have some stuff in the box immediately.
Oh, it’s tiny! Haha! Amazing! Oh, look at that. Oh, that is lovely. Okay. So yeah, we’ll have a look at the manual first - so we have instructions and again, not really much of note in there, it’s just a couple of pages and then multiple different languages - and here is the little thingy itself. Look at that, that’s crazy!
I’m not sure I can quite convey just how tiny this is - I mean, I don’t have huge hands, I’d like to think that they’re kind of fairly average size, but-
the little joystick!
Okay. That feels quite clicky - a bit of a theme for this video. That’s nice. We’ve got the AV output on there and we have the power switch - and we’ll just take the batteries out of this one…
…and there we go. So again, with the batteries in - yeah, quite a nice weight to it for its size. It feels solid, it’s not kind of flexible or, you know, the plastic’s got some structure to it, which is nice, but of course, I don’t have any way of testing this on camera at the moment - I need to hook it up to my video capture setup and we’ll capture the output from this directly. Now one thing that has occurred to me is that this doesn’t have HDMI output and there are- I think there are actually some newer TVs on the market at the moment that don’t have the old style RCA kind of composite video input on them anymore.
I think it’s quite rare but I don’t actually have any TVs here at the studio, I just have computer monitors, so I’m going to have to use an external upscaler and everything, and it’s easier to just capture the video output from this. But yeah, I know some TVs, and I know with some of them the internal scalers are a bit rubbish, and they can introduce a lot of lag and kind of interference and stuff, so that is one thing to bear in mind.
I suppose at the price that this thing costs, you can’t really expect fantastically clean and crisp HDMI output from it. But anyway, oh, I’ve just noticed that’s not 3.5mm that’s a little tiny 2.5mm plug. So that’s quite rare, you wouldn’t want to lose that.
Anyway, let’s get it plugged in.
Right, so I think this is actually going to work - so I’ve got this hooked up via my RetroTINK 5X Which is a video upscaler thingy that YouTubers are very fond of for capturing footage and stuff from old consoles and old computers. But yeah, it seems to be working - so we’ve got the 200-in-1 menu. The menu is different to the one that we saw on that first Orb branded device so that’s interesting - so we’ve got some interesting looking games: we’ve got Magic Jony - of course, a few of these will be familiar from that device, we’ve got F22, I remember seeing that on that menu.
We have - what do we have here? Rabbit Village, Seawolf, Space Base, Police Vs Thief - and one thing I will say with the the quality of the video output is this is the absolute best it’s going to get, you know, this is going to be far better than the built in upscalers on a lot of TVs and stuff and as mentioned before, a lot of modern TVs won’t really like a composite video input. So this is the absolute best case scenario, and as you can see it is a bit crusty looking, a bit crispy looking, obviously that’s the kind of low resolution sprites that they’ve used in the menus.
…and we have Video Poker, Apple Chess, Fish War!
Ah, and here we have our old favorites: Man in Red and Mirror Devil Word, so definitely the same selection of games, just in a slightly, oh we’ve got mowing as well. They’re all on the last page of the list if you’re looking for those, the ones I tested on that first console. So I don’t know, let’s go for Nut Cracky - why not?
Press start button.
Save the princess!
…original concept. What is this!?
Oh, it’s a nutcracker, isn’t it? So it’s like a Christmas themed game!
Can I shoot? Yes, I can!
Oh, you only get one shot?
No…
How’s that even work!? Okay. So you get to the princess and that’s the end of the level.
I think this is pretty much- oh, I just died immediately there, that wasn’t very fair was it!? I think this is pretty much everything Nut Cracky has to offer. Let’s just reset that and start again. Go back to the menu.
Magic Jony, let’s check out Magic Jony.
“Because nutrition sucked by the-“
Oh, I’ve missed that. Well, that flashed by very quickly.
“The green land is becoming to wasteland, till one day a little hero called Jony has come up. He must defeat-“
That’s too fast even for me to read!
Oh, it’s like a-
What is this!?
Okay, so both buttons do the same thing. How do you collect the chest? No, it’s facing the wrong way. No, that way!
Game over.
Rabbit Village. Here we go. Let’s check out Rabbit Village. What is this game!?
Come on little dude!
Come with me if you want to live!
Ah!
I’ve got this thing at the top that’s dropping bombs on me as well…
Who’s that? That wasn’t for you! Who are you!?
Oh, that rabbit’s just burnt alive - lovely.
So that is the Orb Retro TV Games - includes over 200 games. Yeah, I mean it works as advertised, I guess. You’ll need a TV with a composite video input, of course. So if you’ve an old CRT or something like that, it’ll work perfectly fine with that.
Oh, I just need to turn this off. There we go.
No HDMI output, and of course the other stuff that I mentioned about TVs’ built in scalers not being brilliant and laggy and all that kind of thing - although I don’t think it really matters with this thing, the games are very, very simplistic. Yeah, it is what it is.
Similar selection of games to the first console, the Orb - whatever it was called - Retro Handheld Console. Really nice tiny little thing, feels quite well made, the controls are quite responsive, they’re quite sort of tactile and stuff. It’s not terrible again for the price. So that is that!
It’s day three and Amazon has come in clutch as the kids say - I think I’m saying that right? - with the final two handhelds that I ordered in that order of five, and as suspected, they did arrive late last night, but the important thing is they did arrive next day, so I suppose we can’t grumble too much about that. So we’ve got the Game Boy knock off looking thing, and perhaps quite fittingly, another Nintendo knock off looking thing, with the nice horizontal thing.
So I think what I’ll do is leave this one until last, because I’m hoping this is actually going to be the best of the bunch, and we’ll save the best for last, I guess. You never know. Anyway. So this is the…
Plus? Is that the brand? That’s the only kind of brand I can see on there. So it says, Plus, support external gamepad double against.
Indeed. And on the side we have a bit of information about this thing - so it’s a digital game system with a 3 inch super wide LCD. The console is slim, portable, and trendy, just like me. A digital multi platform device can play on TV. Backlit function of the screen ensures players can play everywhere, with powerful rechargeable battery pack - so no batteries required.
It includes an AC adapter and a lithium ion rechargeable battery for six hours of continuous gameplay. Now, I’m not actually testing the battery life in this video - and as we can see, again, we have multiple colour options, they haven’t actually marked which one it is, but I think I ordered the red one, didn’t I, because it was the cheapest.
So let’s open this up and see what we get in the box.
Cool! So we have the TV cable and that’s a 2.5mm connector again - a TRS connector with the audio and the video on there. Previous caveats to do with compatibility with modern TVs, of course, still apply. We have a USB cable and that’s mini USB as suspected, as per the product listing. We have a manual. We’ve got that - yeah, that’s definitely a Nokia phone battery, isn’t it? - so that’s the battery, and that’s fine, you know, that’s not criticism, it’s a very kind of proven and well established battery format - and this is the console itself. So let’s just pop this open.
Protective film on the screen. Now, this immediately feels very cheap and plasticky to me - it’s kind of A bit flexible, a bit lightweight, the finish - it’s got like this strange - it’s got a texture to it, but it’s got like weird kind of marks and molding marks and things in it. So yeah, there’s like a line across there, I don’t know if you If you can see that, but yeah, evidently not the highest quality, certainly feels lower quality than the previous-
Ooh, ooh, those buttons do feel squidgy. Okay, this is going to be an interesting one.
Oh, and as before, it starts up immediately with music and everything. I tell you what, let’s switch that off for a second. Let’s get all of this other stuff out of the way.
So we will just remove this film…
Oh, yes!
And unlike some of the previous handhelds I’ve looked at in this video, that battery is very lightweight, so it doesn’t really help at all with the lightweight cheap feel of this. A couple of the previous ones, once I put those AAA batteries in, they actually had a bit of a decent weight to them, but that’s something we’ll talk about at the end - and let’s get this fired up again.
Is there a volume control on here? Ah, I didn’t spot that. So there is an actual proper-
That’s very old school, isn’t it? So we get to choose between Chinese and English. Of course, I’m going to choose English.
Look at this menu, 400 in 1. We’ve got - is that Chip or Dale? I don’t know which one’s which from the the old Rescue Rangers cartoon back in the day, and I can instantly see that we have some really nice copyright infringing games on here: so we’ve got Super Mario Brothers, Mario 14!? Mario Brothers 3 - I guess that’s probably Mario 2 based on its position in the list?
Dr. Mario, Mario Brothers again, Turtle 1, Turtle Fighter, Contra 24 in 1. Some more Contra games, Rush ‘n Attack, Adventure Island, Chip and Dale, Bubble Bobble. We’ve got all the Donkey Kong games on here - we’ve got Excite Bike again, Dig Dug, Galaga and Galaxian again.
Yeah, this is quite the comprehensive list of games.
Oh, and I’ve just got to number 313 and this looks suspiciously like that first screen again - so yeah, I don’t know if the the list of games starts to repeat? Yeah, it looks like it is, isn’t it? So it’s actually- there aren’t 400 games at all! There’s around 300 games and then the list just repeats! That’s a bit cheeky of them, isn’t it? But yeah, going through the list, there’s pretty much every NES game you can possibly think of on there - so if you’re looking to play original games and they’re not hidden behind strange names and things, this is the device for you.
I tell you what, even though I wasn’t very good at it, I did play Galaxian on one of the previous devices - on that really nice orange one that I think is easily my favorite so far - so let’s play it on this and see how it compares. How do we start the game? There we go.
So the screen’s okay. It’s not as good as that previous one…
…but it’s certainly okay.
Yep, I did just about as well as before. Just a few sort of initial observations based on that: the buttons are really squishy and unresponsive, I really don’t like the feel of those. The screen isn’t very bright and there’s no brightness control that I can see. Is there anything in the manual about that?
Maybe we can adjust the brightness somehow. I don’t think we can. So yeah, the screen isn’t very bright and as you’ve probably seen at looking at my reflection of my face, there we go, it’s really, really shiny - it’s quite hard to hold it in such a way that you don’t get reflections from the lights and things. In fact, is that..?
…no, I think that’s just an imperfection in the plastic in the corner. I didn’t know if maybe there was a another layer of protective film on there.
I’ll go back to the menu in English and I guess we will pick- let’s play Mario 14.
Super Mario 14! That well known instalment in the Mario series where he took on a ninja staff and - what is this!?
What does that even say?
Copyright 1993 Wario.
Can you see that!?
Oh, I see - so there’s a normal jump and a high jump button. I guess there’s two different- Oh yeah, there’s a kind of a faster attack and a single attack.
What on earth is this!? This is incredible!
So, I’ve just been stuck in this pit for a while, I have no idea how to get out of this, and there’s just endless waves of enemies coming at me. A really interesting game, Mario 14. Not one I’d come across before. One of the, perhaps, lesser fondly remembered games in the Mario series.
So I guess to sum this one up: the emulation seems to run perfectly okay, the screen’s not quite as bright as it could be and it’s very reflective which might be a problem in very kind of bright shiny environments. It’s got a decent selection of games on it as well as some very strange additions as well. The controls are quite unresponsive, quite squishy, I really don’t like the feel of those, a bit of lag as well I think.
So it is what it is
…and last but hopefully not least, because I am hoping for great things from this, it does look pretty cool, is the Gamebox Power 800 in 1 G3 - and here it is. So, what’s not much information on the box here. It’s the Lake Blue version, apparently, and it has a three and a half inch LCD.
That’s it! That’s all we have on the box. So let’s pop this open and see what we get - this was the one with the additional Famicom controller as well for two player support. Unfortunately, not something that I can test today- Or, well, I’ll try my best. But yeah, I’m here all on my own today, so I don’t actually have anyone to test that with, but we’ll see if it works, I guess.
…and let’s see what we get in the box. So we have the actual thing itself, we’ll take a look at that in a moment, of course. We have the user manual, not much in there at all, pretty much par for the course. Same battery again, so it’s a BL-5C battery, the same as that previous console, of course that Nokia phone battery, a bit of a standard. Looks like this has - oh, this is micro USB this time - so we’ve got the full set, micro USB, mini USB, and USB C with these consoles. We have the TV cable, again, with that 2.5mm TRS connector on it - and this is the most exciting part… Oh, that’s micro USB! Oh, I wonder…
Let’s have a look.
So this is the Famicom style controller - of course, the Nintendo Famicom, the original version of the NES in Japan, released in 1983. One of my favourite consoles, and, wow, okay. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Famicom controllers in the studio here that I can compare this to, but that feels horrible, quite frankly.
Very, very hard to press these buttons, really cheap, nasty feel to them, and you can see in the molding here, it’s not been molded very well at all. So that’s the Player 2 controller.
Anyway, let’s clear all this stuff out of the way, and check out the console itself!
And here it is - and yet again, just like the previous console, this feels very kind of flimsy, very lightweight, evidently not very high quality plastics. It’s got this interesting texture to it - I’m not quite sure how you would describe that? It’s got these kind of lines - I’m not sure if that’s a side effect of the molding process that they’ve used. It’s got these funky graphics, I guess is the word. We have a- I think that’s a reset but-
Oooh…
…now that is chunky, that’s some kind of tact switch, I think.
Yeah, the buttons feel terrible. I think we’re in for some fantastic things with this one. So let’s pop the battery in. It has the same style volume control as that other console as well, which does make me wonder whether this is just going to be the exact same experience.
Oh, that’s horrible. That is so flimsy. Right.
Let’s pop this on.
Ha ha!
The screen is much brighter, I will give it that. Oh, it’s a different list as well - so we’ve got Super Mario Brothers, Giabbit!?, Contra, Super Contra, so yeah, we’ve got Rush ‘n Attack - that seems to be on all of these, Rush ‘n Attack, very popular game.
Oh, and as you can see, I’m kind of scrolling through multiple options at a time here when I press the button because it’s - it’s a horrible button, I’m not quite sure how to describe that. We’ve got Bubble Bobble, Castle Quest, Bucky O’Hare. Ah yes, our old friend Mario 14 making its second appearance in this video - so if you’re itching to play Super Mario 14, you’ve got two options now. But yeah, a really kind of comprehensive selection of games on the menu here, 800 in one, I can’t see too many repeats, but of course 800 games is quite a lot to go through. They are largely in alphabetical order apart from the odd few that aren’t for some reason, which makes finding specific games quite difficult - as you can imagine.
Skill level one I think, knowing my gaming abilities, it’s probably for the best…
Oh, I was in low gear the whole time.
Well that explains that, doesn’t it?
This D-pad is awful, it is really awful.
Yeah, now look, of course, I did previously mention that I’m not very good at games, but that D-pad is awful, that’s genuinely one of the worst D-pads I’ve ever used on any system. It’s quite hard to press and quite unresponsive. Yeah, which is a bit of a shame because the screen actually looks quite nice and the sound is quite nice for what it is.
Decent selection of games and stuff, but yeah, I’m not not quite sure I can recommend this one - and let’s just check out this…
Right, I think the perfect game to test this second controller is going to be Bubble Bobble 2, of course. I can’t seem to find the original Bubble Bobble on here - there is a game called Bubble, but that is not Bubble Bobble. But Bubble Bobble 2 will do. So let’s try that out - and this isn’t two player simultaneous, but that’s fine, that means I can actually play this, so let’s give this a go.
So I guess the way this works is that basically I play until I die. Oh, no! And then it’s player two’s turn.
Button mappings are exactly the same as they are on the actual console controls itself, which I suppose isn’t really all that noteworthy, but…
God, this is awful, it’s so hard to press this D-pad. I’ve seen enough.
And that is the GameBox Power 800-in-1 G3. So the screen on it is actually pretty decent, no real complaints there, it’s a good size as well, much brighter and clearer than the previous console that we tested. The emulation seems to run okay, there’s a decent selection of games on there, and the sound isn’t actually too bad for what it is, certainly compared to some of the others in this little roundup. Apart from that, it’s not good news at all: the controls are pretty completely unworkable - these D-pads in particular are absolutely horrible. The buttons, the buttons may well be worse, actually. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s clunky and it’s hard to use. It feels cheap. Obviously the quality of the moulding isn’t very good at all, but there you go, it is what it is.
And that, as they say, is that - so if you are wondering, the last two that I just covered, these two consoles here, of course they have USB ports on them, so I also tried plugging those into a computer and unfortunately, just like the previous one, it did absolutely nothing. So, not recognised as a mass storage device, no option there to add new ROMs and things that I can see - that may have been a plus point in their favour, but to be honest, I don’t think it would be enough to make up for all of the other shortcomings that I discovered with those two consoles in this video.
Of course, there were also the two Orb consoles, this handheld here, and the lovely TV thing, and alright, the handheld’s actually not too bad for the price, all sorts of weird ROM hacks and homebrew games on there, which are quite fun to explore, although the few that I played on here are actually not all that exciting, but it’s decent enough, it’s a bit squidgy, it’s a bit tacky, it’s a bit light, it’s a bit cheap, but you get what you pay for, and much the same for this, although I would caution against this because of that composite video issue that I mentioned, and you know, perhaps you might have compatibility issues with your TV if you’re considering this as some kind of stocking stuffer or anything like that.
And that, of course, leaves us with one - this one, this orange and yellow thing, the N-101 - and as you saw, I was quite impressed with this, really, particularly for the price. I mean, the controls are nice and responsive and nice and tactile, the screen is actually really, really good. The emulation runs perfectly fine, there’s a decent selection of games on here - of course the menu system is a bit of a mess and quite quite complicated to navigate, but once you’re in a game it all runs fine. The speaker was perhaps the only let down, of course we’ve got no external headphone connector on this and the internal speaker is very, very tinny, and particularly at the highest volume level, quite, quite painful.
But yeah, if you are looking for a stocking stuffer for under £15 - in fact, what was it, around £10 - this is actually surprisingly good, and even if someone’s only going to play with it for a couple of hours on Christmas morning, probably worth the investment. So if you are interested in purchasing any of these things for some bizarre reason, there will of course be links to them down in the description.
But all that’s left for this video is to say a big thank you to my Patrons, my Ko-Ffi supporters and my YouTube channel members - they get videos early and ad and sponsor free - and of course a big thank you to you for watching, and hopefully I’ll see you in the next one.
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