Probably seems like a good idea, but it'll just be a £40 paperweight next week.

​Man.... this sounds like bad advice. Sorry mate. £200? I'd still go for a £30 pi with a couple of extras every day. Are you on retrofreaks payroll?

These are completly horrible, it came out YEARS ago its exactly the same rubbish they tried to sell and it didn't work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj81FZTv5Uk

My dad bought one a few months back, I told him not to do it, but he did it anyway.
When he got it, I opened it plugged it in and showed him what a load of rubbish it was.
The controllers have to be POINTED AT THE FRONT OF THE CONSOLE exactly, anything less than direct pointing and it wont work. The sound is awful and the picture quality is rubbish.

SAVE your money and buy a Raspberry Pi 3 and slap RetroPi on it.

Nice one! Been looking for one of these and had my £10 voucher to spend so got it for £29.99!

Probably seems like a good idea, but it'll just be a £40 paperweight next week.

its better value than the nes classic mini & has wireless pads.. However The lead supplied with the Mega Drive console is a composite lead RCA audio / video.. so no hdmi support!

These aren't great. Remember that if you plan on using cartridges that were able to save via battery backup, you will be unable to do so on this device.

enjoy that terrible picture quality!

this is not a sega product. bit misleading.

These are rubbish. If you want a true all in one retro console buy a Retrofreak from playasia. It's about £200 but you will thank me later when you realise what you get for the money.

AtGames worst emulation ever...

Sadly still has the poor sound emulation of previous products that emulate megadrive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj81FZTv5Uk

I can't find a list of games, anyone able to help? I'm really hoping micro machines is on this!

As others have said, poor sound emulation. Spend a bit more on a Pi and enjoy an awful lot more.

They're £170 on funstock, pretty decent option if you like collecting physical games. Still too expensive imo.

Am I right in thinking that it's still an android box, albeit one that plays physical carts?
If you're seriously interested in playing original carts then surely the original hardware is the way to go?....I dunno, it seems like an expensive halfway house to me....

Not bad but I highly recommend getting a Raspberry Pi 3 or a Wii and slap homebrew on it. But these are ok if you want to play your old cartridge games I suppose.

These are completly horrible, it came out YEARS ago its exactly the same rubbish they tried to sell and it didn't work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj81FZTv5Uk

My dad bought one a few months back, I told him not to do it, but he did it anyway.
When he got it, I opened it plugged it in and showed him what a load of rubbish it was.
The controllers have to be POINTED AT THE FRONT OF THE CONSOLE exactly, anything less than direct pointing and it wont work. The sound is awful and the picture quality is rubbish.

SAVE your money and buy a Raspberry Pi 3 and slap RetroPi on it.

Yeah. Not sure why everyone is giving such terrible advice. Pi and all other options... all which need tweaking and extras and setting up... buy a mega drive and play it EXACTLY like it was meant to be Played.

Nothing is better than playing a console in its original form

Another option is using a amazon fire stick and download Kodi. It automatically installs the emulators and downloads all the roms and works great with an Xbox one Bluetooth controller.

Wired controllers only, IMO

RetroPie, RaspberryPi, homebrew etc!!..... I wish I had some idea what these mean!!! LOL

I don't know the details to be honest. I like collecting games, don't really care for original hardware though. I've used a Retron 5, it's ideal really, upscales and has HDMI out for modern TVs, has language patches through SD cards so you can play imports no problem, saves space and don't need a million plugs for all the different consoles etc.

got one of these and it's good but the controllers are poor unless your pointing right at it and I've tried 4 different carts and had no luck getting any to work. there's no list of tried and tested carts so seems a bit hit and miss, was really disappointed with that.

My missus brought me one for Xmas, it was a nice thoughtful gift in truth and I was chuffed.....then I plugged it in! This would be a deal if it cost £10 as a throw away 1week wonder. Not worth the price. The nes classic is much better.... yet still massively over priced!

These are utter trash, I own one and several genuine MD & MD 2's. Buy a real MD, an RGB SCART, and an everdrive. It'll cost a little more but is infinitely better. The sound is awful on these, emulation is better on a low end PC / Raspberry pi, and it played about 7 of the 20 randomly selected cartridges I tried in it. Trust me, save your money. The NES mini shows how this should have been done, especially when you 'add' some extra games to it :wink:

I find any old windows based computer/laptop from the last 10 years to be the best hardware for emulation, I'd love to own all the original hardware but IMO all these recent retro gaming gadgets are inferior to windows based emulation (with a good controller), which is second only to the real thing.

Nice!!!!

The controller on this are crap. They are U
IR so can't register multi touch or two controllers at the same time. Do yourself a favour and if you purchase one also buy a couple of wired ones off ebay

They play anything from the sdcard and you can use the original controllers hence why better than a pi. Pis are great don't get me wrong but retrofreaks are fantastic bits of kit. If £170 is too expensive than give up any form of retro gaming as loose carts can easily go for more.

£170 is expensive for something that offers me no benefit over my current set up. Most of my games come from carboots or reselling profits. Good luck finding one of these at a boot fair. lol

Great find I've been looking for one of these since the 80s will be lovely going back to the 10mil pixels.heat just for the find

I really don't get the point in these emulators.. Just do the right thing and do it illegally like the rest of the world and download whatever ROM you like. Hate me, slate me, but I bet anyone who replies to this has done it.

​It's a shame.

The build quality is low.

80 games misleading too. Half of them aren't even Mega Drive games.

If they done 40 top games, and built it with the quality and thoughtfulness of the NES Mini, then it would have a perfect little nostalgic edition to anyone's setup.

As it is...missed opportunity. And a disappointing one at that.

£170 for a bunch of hardware emulators - emulators that have been stolen from open source projects.
If you're going to spend hundreds on games, why would you not spend £50 to play it on the original hardware as intended?

How much would you give me for my mint in box Firemen?

Recent ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121908834854?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I don't care if it was stolen or not. Not my loss. Original hardware tends to take up a lot of space when you collect for pretty much every system. There isn't enough plugs, nor space for CRTs in this house. I'd rather have my favourites on original hardware and the rest through stuff like this. I paid just over £100 for my retron, good luck finding a nes, snes, md, gba, genesis etc for under £100.

Older systems look gash on modern tvs so i'd rather just have it upscaled, and i also can't be arsed faffing about switching AV cables on the Trinitron all the time. I know i could get a switch box but that's still and addition cost that doesn't provide me with the same amount of benefit as these "all in one" type emu boxes.

I've got a huge collection from bootfairs but they are full of resellers now unfortunately :disappointed:. My collection is tucked away so it is nice to have a retrofreak for when I fancy some Shinobi.

Fair point. But if legality isn't an issue then the Retro Freaks sounds like the better value of the two for someone who is new to the all-in-one market.

Sorry mate not interested, I collect games I like but am no completionist. Firemen is an OK game but not worth that kind of money.

It's an awesome machine as it plays roms from the sd card when others don't bringing limitless pros and no cons. You can even apply translation patches or rip your own carts.

You're probably right, i just have the retron because i got a proper killer deal on it. Paid just over £100 for it and it came with a bunch of snes games, sold all the snes games and it worked out pretty much free. The Retrofreaks ability to play Turbografx games is rad to be honest, i might get one some day but currently the retron does me fine. Too many games still unplayed haha

I don't think a Raspberry Pi is "terrible advice" it's a great alternative. If you can watch youtube then you can set one up running RetroPie. Granted there is more to it than just plugging it in, but what you end up with is worth the additional effort.

It's certainly worth mentioning in the context of a retro gaming deal in case people hadn't heard about it and wanted something more than this deal offers.

Further proof that just about anything can go Hot or Cold at will.

There was a laptop here the other day at -149 (at the time) which was better specced and priced than the same model a week earlier which went to over 200 degrees.

This is a perfect example of people voting Hot willy nilly because it seems like a fun, product, a good buy, a nice item to have but reality is it's a bit tatty and indeed will end up gathering dust to most people.
314 degrees? Gotta be having a bubble.

Yeah that too if you fancy.

Already listed http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sega-megadrive-with-80-built-games-was-49-99-now-39-99-argos-2544278

Seriously, the power port is at the top?

I'd like to share my own experience with this item...
I had a long debate with my friend over whether the item i'd ordered (this) would be better when it arrived than his NES Mini. (The foundation of my argument was that I could play my own old Mega Drive cart's on this, instead of being restricted to the NES pre-loaded selection).
They're not even comparable. As soon as I opened the box and picked up the flimsy plastic controller of this thing, I just knew it'd be junk. The wireless connection from pad to device is awful. The picture quality is shocking. The sound is even worse. It's complete turd. These were going on eBay for £80+ before Xmas. It's worth about £8.00

you know what, for that price i'll take a gamble!

​i also have heard that this is the case

Bought one before Christmas, used it once for less than 5 minutes, boxed it back up and it will never see the light of day again.

Please save yourself £40

Just get an rgh or jtagged xbox 360 console then you can play all roms from any console

Well you are better off getting a raspberry pi and running the games via emulation. At least you can have it connected to HDMI.

I heard the quality of this was very poor, so I looked into buying other hardware that might suit my needs and settled with the Super Retro Trio by Retro-Bit, which was about £69.99. It's a 3 in 1 clone hardware: plays Mega Drive, NES and SNES games, and you can get an adapter to play GBA games through it too. Apart from the very occasional issues with the sound, I think it's pretty good for what it does, looks nice, and the controllers are great too, though you can use original controllers with it. I wanted to play NTSC cartridges through mine so I imported the American version: it loses some colour but the games play at 60Hz, however you can buy a cheap AV to HDMI adapter to correct the colour and sharpen the image a bit. It might be worth waiting until the Super Retro Trio HDMI is released this summer though if you're interested in it.

One thing, if you only want to play UK games on it, there is a PAL version of the Super Retro Trio that will play 50Hz optimised games (e.g. Donkey Kong Country SNES) at their correct speed. Playing US games on the PAL version may cause US 60Hz games to run too fast, same with playing UK 50Hz optimised games on the US version, so keep that in mind.

Agreed or if you want to save the pennies. Have a look in your local Cash Generator or Cash Converters and buy a Wii for £15-£20. Then buy a 3rd party Wii gamecube controller/Classic controller. So far I have installed the Gamecube USB loader (so I can run them via a hard drive or USB stick). As well as a Mega Drive emulator. So far all Mega Drive games I have tried have worked fine.

Oh, lord, how many times? No. No. No.
1. The wireless pads are rubbish- they need to have direct line of sight to work- if you move an inch in any direction they stop working. They also only allow one button press at a time, so good luck moving Sonic and making him jump at the same time.
2. Lots of games, but half of them are just random cheap shovelware, not original megadrive games.
3. Poor emulation means most games don't look, sound, or play right- either via external cart or internal ROM.
4. These have been known to damage original carts when inserting them into the machine due to an overly tight cartridge slot. Please don't put any valuable games in it.
5. Picture is via AV out socket. The image will be incredibly poor on an LCD TV- particularly when you consider the NES mini is HDMI.
6. A real 2nd hand Megadrive is still cheaper.

This item has been available for years, and was only hastily reissued to cash in on the NES mini. It may be a licenced product, but SEGA will slap their name on any old junk nowadays.
This must be the fourth or fifth time I've seen these come up as a deal, but you know what? If you want one, just go for it, but don't say you weren't warned.

By the way, here's your games list. Have fun playing "Dominant Amber" and "Meatloaf Rotation"

Good idea. shame about the IR controller implementation