R36S: The New Retro Handheld Budget King?

[Music] hey guys it's will from the game lounge and today I'm taking a look at the r 36s a $40 yes $40 handheld system now taking a look at the box it's pretty generic this is unbranded but you know fairly straightforward in terms of what you get uh obviously you get the console here you can see it's pretty Sleek uh comes with your standard four button configuration uh and importantly it's uh the d-pad feels a little stiff when you first test this one out uh and also the back you can hear this is very very clicky for shoulder buttons uh but more importantly it does for $4 come with duwal analog stick and I think this is one of the most important features that we're going to be talking about with this device aside from that it's pretty standard Affair here you know we've got the volume buttons on one side you got a headphone jack in here uh obviously you've got two uh SD card slots one for the system which it comes with and one for the ROMs which is all very very standard nowadays these are just cheap generic uh but overall I mean the build quality feels for $40 it feels pretty solid let's compare it with what I consider the competition on the market now you can see here we have the ambic RG 35xx and the Mayu mini both of which don't have uh twin analogs it's a fair bit taller but that feels pretty good in the hands to be honest when you have a look at it uh also the chipset that it's the RG 351 MP which it shares the same chipset and the original Miu mini you can see it's a very very s similar size when you pick this up but like I say the slightly longer feel it feels much better in the hands and is a great size when compared to the competition taking a look at the stock firmware and if you've seen my videos in the past you know I'm not a fan of using out of the boox firmware and game configuration it claims to have 15,000 games you're going to spend more time browsing the lists than actually playing them you see actually this is an ark OS build but it's actually a build from April 2022 so there's been a lot more updat so the first thing that I recommend you do with any of these devices is just go and update to the latest version of Ark OS and the great thing about this is it's a very very mature OS so they've really managed to get maximum performance from the chipset an Aros I think you will find is actually pretty configurable and and here it is this has now been updated one of the things I love about these is that sort of console esque experience and Aros is really really simple easy to navigate uh Android systems are great and I think they can be made in you know D show and front ends like that can make it very very console esque but this looks really really good but it does bring me to my first negative on this and this is the lack of Wi-Fi you can see all the artwork here for any updates now with over theair updates becoming so standard having to plug this into your PC to download artwork and updates is a little frustrating that being said though let's take a look at the system actually working and you can see here the first thing that I really want to highlight is the screen uh and you can see it really really pops and for like I said for the money remember this is sub $40 the screen here I think think is really crisp really really excellent in terms of clarity brightness is really good the color depth is really good I'm hugely impressed and I'm playing the mega drive here and you're going to find all 16bit games run extremely well however this is another thing I do find and this has been well documented the d-pad is incredibly stiff uh and so are the buttons and I think you'll find that when you play a lot of these classic games it's perfectly functional it's not awful by any stretch of the imagination but when I compare it with say the Miu Mini's d-pad it is far stiffer and it certainly doesn't feel like as good an experience with 16bit games from a control perspective that being said though the overall experience is perfectly functional for a $40 handheld and if you just want to you know if you're looking at just dipping your toes in for the first time don't necessarily want to spend a huge amount of money then this definitely gets the job done now we talked about Aros being a very very straightforward clean interface but another thing that I really like about this is the fact that if you want to you can access the full retro Arch menu uh which gives you a huge amount of tweaks and customizations to get things looking just the way you want let's use the Game Boy here as example I you can jump into the menu settings uh you can have that classic green Matrix look you can have the clean Game Boy Pocket look as we're going to show here or you can tweak things to have the super Game Boy look and being able to have these different options and functionality in all of the cores you know giving you basically you can it can be out the box or you can take things a little bit further and tweak it and really get things looking the way that you like which I was really impressed with being able to do this on such a and I keep coming back to the price but a $40 handheld it's great to be able to play with this and get comfortable with these settings uh and like I say for a for a first device this is definitely something that people should consider now the next thing that I always like to do with these systems is an input lag test now this is not scientific but the I always find the Sonic 3 uh bonus stages to be something that I know where if you get any input lag you really really struggle with controlling this and I have to say here it's not bad I think the stiffness of that d-pad and that um has not helped um and I don't think it's as bad as perhaps it re it felt for me um it's certainly not as good as devices other devices like the 35xx or the Miu mini um but it's playable I'm sure if you played with the settings and once you get used to the d-pad this is going to be absolutely fine from that perspective now the Sony PlayStation works extremely well most games play in fact all games I tried played absolutely perfectly now again the drawback of that stiff d-pad when you're playing tank games I'm purposely showing Tomb Raider here because when you're using that d-pad the stiffness really did frustrate me a little bit but performance wise this is excellent and actually for the PlayStation that's where this system for me really really starts to shine and again the reason is those jewel analog sticks which have been included if we take a look at say Toy Story 2 here then the whole experience is massively enhanced by having that twin analog stick that the PlayStation supported and in that you know if you're a '90s kid like myself you know it wasn't just about that 16bit era the 32-bit era was and the early 3D was a huge part of that and being able to recapture these games and have them so beautifully playable on a device again I keep going back to it but this cheap is really really fantastic and that's where this device really starts to shine the playability of just including those two twin sticks um is really really excellent again looking at Gran Turismo here the controls really really enhance the experience and it means this really is a portable PlayStation and with the feel and the comfort of it it does feel really good now one frustration I have is the r buttons and the triggers are a little clicky um and that's a little frustrating especially when you start talking about the N64 and the Dreamcast but the N64 really really surprised me I knew that this would run it but I knew that there would be problems now when you look at the emulation yes it's not massively accurate um but these games are playable you know I made sure I actually delayed this review to take a lot of time to play some games like banjo kazui here uh and actually got a few a few levels in and very very much enjoyed it this runs this runs great it's like I say it's missing some of the bells and whistles um that you would have from a modern system uh I mean let's take a look at say frame buffer emulation so if I pause this game here you can see the fuzzy background where frame baffer emulation is not Incorporated by default but that's fine that's that's actually okay it doesn't really detract from the experience and overall I was super impressed by the N64 even potentially some more taxing games I mean this may struggle with say conquer's Bad Fur Day but things like Donkey Kong 64 was really really playable and actually very very enjoyable again this is something that isn't really accessible on systems you know really you're looking at Double the cost um to have this sort of experience you're looking at something like a pow Kitty rgb3 or you know I think the real Next Level Up is the retroid pocket 2s which you know that is a real Step Up you've got whole sensor analog sticks uh analog triggers and a much much faster GPU in there uh the whole thing is a different experience but this is playable this really really does work and like I say if you're new to this you just want to get into it see how much you're going to potentially play some games this could be exactly what you're looking for the Nintendo DS is another system that works great it uses the DraStic emulator which is ex extremely uh Advanced extremely mature uh and by using the trigger buttons you can switch between the dual screens you can have it full screen on one both on the screen uh obviously games like Sonic Rush are going to be difficult but you can see here from playing Mario this runs perfectly well and is a perfectly competent DS system which is surprising to be honest I I wasn't expecting this sort of functionality from this device and even astonishingly the Dreamcast um was pretty playable now something like shenmue or a racing game which uses the trigger buttons you know they are just clicky there's no re it's it's not the best experience but it certainly works and you can see from the footage here it really does look great and again I was so surprised by this I played it a lot more I was like is this really comfortable enough to play your games and if we look at say Rayman 2 here which is one of my favorite Platformers on the Dreamcast you can see it looks great it runs great this is a perfectly playable experience now that you like like the Nintendo 64 it's not an accurate experience and I guess if you're just looking to play these games that's okay and if you're looking for an example as to why I when I say this isn't accurate what I actually mean well if you look at the Sorting now you there's two options there's the purse strip which uses far less uh resource and you can see here that if you do it this way you get graphical errors like on the back of the Hydro Thunder boat here or per triangle which obviously uses a lot more it's a lot more CPU intense but far more accurate but again even high Hydro Thunder you can see here it's playable this works it's possibly not the best way to play this particular game but much of the Dreamcast library is accessible on a $40 device so what's the conclusion here well this device isn't for everyone if like me you're a bit of an Enthusiast I'm probably not going to play this device much more despite being hugely impressed by it but if you are looking to dip your toe in you want you're not sure how much you're going to actually play the device so you don't want to drop a lot of cash this may be a great starter system for people equally if you have one of the more expensive systems and you're thinking you know what I want something that is pocketable that if I'm going to drop or it's going to get damaged I can use this may be right up your street so certainly I am hugely impressed at this price point of what this can do that's the thing about this system really it's it's kind of a jack of all trades master of none um 16bit games and 2D early games are great they run great but it's let down by the stiffness of the d-pad and the buttons uh and similarly early 3D systems like PlayStation N64 and Dreamcast they run and they're perfectly playable but there are concessions there are issues with certain games it's not going to be a perfect experience but for the price I don't think you can look much further um I hope you enjoyed this one uh please like And subscribe as always and have a great day

Channel: The Game Lounge

Views: 21,613

Keywords: R36S, Retro Gaming, Handheld, SEGA, Nintendo, Dreamcast, N64, PS1, ArkOS

Id: ojto8Pc0TmA

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 12 2023