Although they are usually a distributor of products, Innex had a few gadgets of their own to show this year at CES.
Retroduo Portable
It seems that handheld retro gameplay devices are getting popular. The maker of the Retro Duo is at it again with the Retroduo Portable. The system, which is similar to the SupaBoy from Hyperkin, has a different form. Instead of feeling bulky in the hands, it felt natural and light. When pressing the buttons however, didn’t have quite the level of click feeling as I would have wanted. The plastic also didn’t seem to be of particular durable quality. If you don’t want to pick the device up with your hands and hold it, included is a plastic stand. The stand makes the system sit at an angle, so it’s also decent for display purposes as well.
Inside the system is a 3.5″ LCD screen that made the games look decent. Although I’m not certain of this, I thought I detected a bit of bluring when there was motion happening on the screen. For those who are picky about screens and blur may want to be aware.
Two player is also possible on the system via dongle that plugs into the side of the device. The ports are standard SNES controller specifications, but in case you don’t own the controllers, Innex has provided two of their own. While the controllers sat in the hand comfortably, they did feel of lesser quality than the build of the actual system.
Perhaps the most interest feature of the Retroduo Portable is the fact it comes with an NES adapter. This allows players to dig those NES cartridges out from the closet and play them on the device. The device itself seems sturdy, even when a game is inserted, however you’ll have to deal with a tower of sorts spouting out of the system. It’s not unmanageable to play, it does look silly however.
I’m not sure at this point which retro portable is doing the better job. The Retroduo Portable does seem to have a slight edge in a few categories, namely size and design. In others however, it has glaring negatives. Still, I’m looking forward to going truly hands-on with this further down the road.
I had the opportunity to film the unit in 3D and it is available on YouTube:
or you can follow the directions in this post and view the video on your Nintendo 3DS by downloading it:
Right-click choose save-as here.
RetroGEN
The RetroGEN allows users to use their SNES as a SEGA Genesis player. Genesis cartridges go into the top while the bottom plugs into a Retro Duo or official SNES. Unfortunately I was unable to test how this worked, however the unit felt solid and games were fairly easy to remove from the device.
