Clone Consoles Ranked BEST & WORST

hey guys metal jesus here and today i want to do a video where i rank all of my clone consoles now a couple things here first of all i don't own all of them that are on the market but i do have a lot of the heavy hitters like the systems from analog as well as hyperkin and a few others the other thing i want to mention is that i'm not going to include the first party mini consoles that came out a couple years ago i'm primarily focusing on the third-party systems that take actual physical media and then the final thing i want to mention is that a couple of these are prototypes kind of unreleased systems so far it's because i got a couple of them for review and i use them all the time in my game room and so i feel like they need to be included all right guys this is going to be awesome let's take a look [Music] [Music] i'm gonna start with my least favorite clone console one that just almost got there that of course is the hyperkin retron sq and this is an all-in-one clone system that is designed to play all of your game boy game boy color in game boy advanced games and output them to your hdtv and i have to say i do really like the idea and also the design of this console i was looking forward to it when it was announced and when i got a review unit i was i was very pleasantly surprised by just how good it looks i actually think this is a pretty nice looking hyperkin console now the problem with this one is is that initially when i reviewed it there were there were some things about it that i didn't necessarily like one of them is that the the video quality wasn't very good it was a little bit softer than i expected to be also there was issues with the aspect ratio and then finally the support for the game boy advance was just not there it was very poor now since those reviews have come out hyperkin has released a day one firmware update that addresses the sharpness so now the pixels are much cleaner as well as the aspect ratio looks a lot better however the game boy advance support was still being worked on and this is where it gets a little bit interesting because as of the making of this video i got an email from hyperkin saying that there is a new firmware coming that i could beta test and basically see what the the game boy advance support would be because when this thing shipped it was terrible and actually they're getting much closer so uh you'll see here that iridium 3d actually runs really well as does tony hawk pro skater 3. i was playing this for a while and yeah it's it's looking and running a lot better although it does take forever for this game to load some of these gameboy advance games can take over a minute to load which is not great and then i popped in a copy of motor racer advance which was a game that just ran terribly on the system when it first launched and it gets into the game and it tries to start but then it reboots so clearly this firmware is a work in progress there's still some testing to be done but they've told me that it should be out in a couple weeks as well as they're going to release the source code and probably lean on the gaming community to maybe polish it up or add features and so it's great that they continue to work and support this console but because it was released in such a unfinished state well that's why it's the lowest on my list next up is another hyperkin product this one is the retron 77 which is designed to play all of your classic atari 2600 games and so this console fares much better in my list because right out of the gate it supports 99 of all the atari 2600 cartridges that you would want to play right out of the box and it has a bunch of switches and options built onto the device itself to emulate what you would get with a real atari 2600 because remember this was a really early you know gaming console and so most of the menu options that you would use on a real atari are actually done with physical switches so they emulated a lot of those here really well plus you have the ability to do save states you can do glitching things like that and i love the way it looks they captured that 1970s wood grain look of the original so well without actually copying it they made it their own and i mentioned how the community sometimes comes together and can make custom firmware to make these even better well the community has done that with the retron 77 so initially when this came out there was a limitation of how many roms that you could have built into it the community has come together and actually opened that up and so now you can install hundreds if not thousands of roms on here which is very convenient and it works really well and there's been some firmware updates to support more of the atari peripherals and accessories so this is actually a really rock solid atari 2600 clone system i think the only thing that i'm not crazy about is the joystick it's fine but it's a little creaky for my taste and so i still like to use the original but other than that it's a nice system and now we're going to get to something controversial because people are going to be pissed that this clone system is so low on my list but i feel like i'm justified so this is the analog nt mini this is a system that is designed to be a clone system of your original nes or famicom so first let's talk about what's good about this so right off the bat i love the way it looks i love its design also it's a solid piece of aluminum it feels really substantial in your hand and that's good because this is not a cheap clone system it's very expensive to buy even new and even on the secondary market and this thing does an awful lot i mean more than most clone systems especially if you look at the back there because not only will it do hdmi up to 1080p but it also has an analog video out so it'll do rgb component s video and composite so yes you can use this on a modern hd television or you can get all the benefits and the power of it and you can connect it to an old school crt if you wish it's also region free so you can play games from around the world and more importantly it supports 60 hertz and also pals 50 hertz and the audio is impressive as well because you can get digital audio over the hdmi or if you prefer analog well you can do that too and it's even got a plug-in right there to use the famicom microphone and because it's using fpga to do all this emulation or recreation of the original hardware it's basically lag free so you're probably wondering why is it so low on the list because in many ways it fails at the one task that it's supposed to do and that is play your physical cartridges and so you see the problem here i have my super mario brothers 3 cartridge in there and there's just a ton of give back and forth it sways and it has a hard time reading the cartridges not just this cartridge but a lot of my cartridges and it's not the cartridge's problem i can put this in a real nes i can put it in other systems and it reads just fine but there's so much play here with the the slot that you put the cartridges in and the way the pins grab onto it it's just bad design and so this is just a real shame and disappointment i posted about it in the analog facebook group where a lot of people said yeah this is kind of a known issue with these first ones that came out supposedly it's a little bit better with the nt noir the newer revision of this but still again this thing is a high quality product in every single way except this and as far as i know analog was not able to fix it with the firmware they never did a recall there isn't a little spacer or something that they put out that would fix this problem it's just incredibly disappointing because again in every other way this product is awesome and i should be clear it's not every time it's just enough to be annoying and so for that reason alone it breaks my heart but that's why it's down this far on my list next up is the hyperkin retron 5 and for years this was my go-to system for doing any kind of emulation especially here on youtube as a matter of fact this system right here is what really allowed me years ago to step up the quality of gameplay i did for my youtube channel because this thing is it's rock solid and it supports a ton of systems so get this it supports the original nintendo the famicom the super nintendo super famicom it supports genesis and also mega drive games as well as game boy game boy color and game boy advance games it does a lot and for the most part it does it really well in addition to outputting those games via hdmi it also has a bunch of options including the ability to do save states you can do cheats you also can do fan made patches like translation patches however there are two things that kind of bring this console down the list a bit the first one is the controller now it's great that they include a controller with this because you know this is your only system you're gonna obviously need a controller and here's one that will work in a pinch but it's not great it's not very comfortable it works okay the buttons at least work but my original one died after about a year year and a half something like that so not very reliable when it comes to the battery however it doesn't matter in most cases because what's nice about this system is that you can also use the original controllers with the super nintendo or the genesis and those work across systems so you can use a genesis controller playing game boy games if you want or a super nintendo controller playing genesis games if you want so the controller issue is kind of annoying but again you're probably going to want to use real controllers and the second issue i want to mention briefly is that there is a bit of controversy and drama around the creation of this device because and i'm not a lawyer and i don't play one on television so i don't claim to know all the details of it but basically some of the software that is included on the retron 5 was not properly licensed or implemented in a way that goes with the industry requirements of the people who originally created it does that make sense so in other words they're using third-party software to do some of the emulation and they didn't supposedly necessarily follow the rules correctly for that again i'm not a lawyer i don't play one on television i don't claim to know all the details but when it comes to the retron 5 some people are very passionate about that issue and that may stop some people from using this i just want to mention it because it may be important to you and so i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that might be the reason why the game boy advance support in their newer sq console isn't quite as good as this one because this console actually came out first and the sq came out later and in this one game boy advance support is just fine so anyways just want to mention it in case you care about that stuff but overall i really do like the retron 5. it's a workhorse it plays literally thousands of games and it's great now i mentioned i was going to talk about some prototype devices that i use all the time in my game room and the first one is this thing called the atari man this is an atari 2600 clone system that was created by a user over at atari age his name is chris he goes by crispy and this thing this thing is awesome so basically what you're seeing here is a homemade fpga based atari 2600 clone system that is housed in this casing that's designed to look like a classic sony walkman and it functions like one too so what i mean by that is when you put the cartridge in the end of it there you actually hit the play button to start the emulation and it's outputting via hdmi it supports the classic atari joysticks plus uh the functions that you would use on a real atari are the other buttons on the the walkman and then to finish the look a friend of mine did that custom sticker on the top again kind of a throwback to atari as well as the the original walkman and this thing works really well so obviously i have two devices here the retron 77 and this atari man walkman style thing and i can tell the difference between them because this uses fpga to recreate the 2600 hardware and so there is zero lag with this where with the retron 77 because it's using emulation there's a tiny bit and you know you might not notice it but when you go back and forth this is the device that i prefer to use because especially in arcade games which is what all the atari games are you can definitely tell the difference this thing just runs them that much better and so it's my understanding that this is kind of a one-off passion project that chris did just to kind of see if he could pull it off and then he sent me one for review and i got to keep it and i guess at the time this is a couple years ago he didn't really think that people would pay the amount of money it would cost to manufacture something like this and so it's my understanding that he never really went into production with it part of me thinks that now today in 2021 that you know hardcore atari fans might pay for something like this i think it's actually pretty cool so yeah as of right now i think i am one of the few people that actually has the prototype but i love it because i'm an atari 2600 kid and i use it every chance i get in my game room moving on to a fan favorite that is the analog super nt which is a clone system of the super nintendo so this is where i really don't have that much bad to say about this device i mean analog just did a fantastic job recreating that classic nintendo hardware and for a lot of people this really is kind of the ultimate super nintendo super famicom device because well first of all it's using fpga to do its recreation of that hardware which means that the compatibility is pretty much a hundred percent and it outputs it in glorious 1080p with zero lag and like all the other analog devices there are tons of options that you can play with to your heart's content if you go into the settings and also as a nice little bonus they include super turrican the director's cut with every device so even if you don't have any games you do have this one which is a kind of unreleased version of that game kind of as a showcase as to what it can do and i also think it looks beautiful obviously you see here that i have the the the crystal clear one which i'm always a sucker for those transparent ones but uh they also had i believe four colors total so they had one that kind of looked more like uh you know the u.s version of the super nintendo they also had a black one and then they had one that was a gray and black but yeah it's just a really nice compact well thought out just i don't know flawless device the other clone system and prototype that i want to mention in this list and it's not quite my number one and could be a little bit controversial is the polymega first i'm going to describe what this is then we'll get into a little bit of the critique and the the drama surrounding the paul omega uh but basically what this is it's a clone system that is primarily at this point focused on cd based emulation right now i can play my physical playstation 1 games my sega saturn games sega cd games turbografx cd as well as neo geocd games and it's region free and it also has support for nes super nes sega genesis 32x and other systems that are more cartridge based although the review unit that i got right here uh it has some of those pre-installed games on it but it doesn't have the module to use those cartridges so as it sits right here i primarily just use it again for disk based games and it plays them extremely well especially sega saturn which is a system that has been fairly difficult to emulate in the past you see all the sega saturn games that i've physically put onto the system here and it works really well same with sega cd and playstation 1 games and everything else that i want to get out of it plus i love its interface it looks cool it's really easy to navigate it's fun to explore i believe there is like 11 000 games in its database so it knows a lot of games that it supports and give you more information on it recommendations things like that however there is a bit of confusion and drama surrounding this device unfortunately so you know like i said i was sent a review unit back in august along with several other youtubers and we were under the impression that these were going to come out in the fall but sadly that did not happen uh things got pushed back and pushed back and then there was refunds and basically there's just a lot of confusion and like i said drama out there i mean the truth is i wish i knew when this was going to come out i assume it's going to eventually come out but i reached out to the company to get clarification on that i told them i was going to be doing this update video and was there any additional comment or information that they wanted me to give to you the viewers and they did not respond by the time i was making this so uh i don't know what's going on with this i know just as much as you guys and so for now this continues to be a really cool prototype in my game room that i do use all the time when i play the systems that it supports or i'm capturing gameplay footage for my youtube channel but i do hope that one day this does come out for the people who pre-ordered it because like i said it's almost my favorite clone system in my game room almost which brings us to my favorite clone system in my game room and that of course is the analog mega sg and in many ways i think this is the perfect companion piece to their super nintendo version that they made the super nt both of these systems are very similar they're they're very similar in size as well as performance they're both excellent systems but what makes this one that much better well it's these adapters i love what analog did here because they have these crystal clear cartridge adapters that you put into the cartridge slot that lets you play a bunch of different sega systems so for instance you can play your master system games on it as well as the game gear games you also have support for the sega my cards those are those like credit card shaped games that primarily you played on the master system but i think they used them on other systems as well you have support for the sg 1000 which i believe is sega's first gaming console as well as the sc3000 which was their computer so when you factor in the support for obviously the sega genesis as well as the master system this one console will play probably what 1500 to maybe 2 000 physical games it's incredible and like other analog products this is fpga based which means you're going to get the best accuracy with zero lag and like with the super nt they threw in an extra game this one includes the unreleased sega genesis game ultra core so yeah i don't really have anything negative to say about the mega sg i mean honestly i went back and forth between this one and the super nt it really just depends on if you want genesis support or super nintendo support you know depends on what games you want to play but for me it was all about those adapters that's such a cool touch so anyways guys this is my ranking of the clone consoles that are in my game room now i know this is not all of them that are available on the market these are just the ones that i've either picked up or have been sent for review over the last couple years and i've heard some good things about other companies products as well for instance i think a lot of people have the retro bit clone consoles and i even think some of those are fpga based so you know just be aware that there are other solutions out there these are just the ones that i happen to have and i also have to say that i'm very excited for the analog pocket i was able to pre-order one of those when that came up it's a bummer that we don't have that yet in our hands but i guess we're gonna be getting that this fall and i can't wait and i'd love to know which clone consoles you are rocking in your game room which ones you like and which ones you think people should probably stay away from alright guys thank you very much for watching thank you for subscribing and take care

Channel: MetalJesusRocks

Views: 323,813

Keywords: metal jesus rocks, metaljesusrocks, metal, jesus, console, system, review, gameplay, video, game, reviews, history, retro, retrospective, gaming, collection, collector, clone consoles, clone systems, retro systems, FPGA, analogue super nt, Hyperkin Retron 5, ranking game consoles, Super Nintendo, NES, GameBoy, Game Boy, GBA, Polymega, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, Atari 2600, Retron 77, Retron SQ, Mega SG, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive

Id: s1_U3b3_56A

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021