A mega alternative to the original.

A mega alternative to the original.

Having dug out my megadrive to play Sonic 2 with the Mrs, I was appalled to find that the leak in the roof last month had caused water to run along the rafters and onto it's box- the box and system were ruined, I'm not really comfortable plugging in a 20 year old games console that's been soaked in rain water for two weeks as I have an allergy to fire and high voltage.

 

Looking over the listings on eBay for a new console I happened upon this modern little beauty.

It called the plug into TV Megadrive. Basically its a very scaled down Megadrive with 80 roms encoded to it that are played without the need for the cartridges, and also the ability to play original carts as well, add to this the ability to actually plug in the real mega drive controller and you have what could be a viable replacement for a certain waterlogged retro console.

 

 

Well, the first strike against it is the roms included in it. Don't get me wrong there are some great games included, its just that with 80 games included I would expect at least 50% of them to be good- or at least actually be games anyone had ever heard of!!

For every Sonic or Comix Zone there is a Bulls and cow or bottle cap race., basically 40 out of the 80 games included are just crap ports of master system titles and 8 bit rip offs.

 

The second issue is the fact that the included game pads (there are 2) work via infrared so need to be in line of sight of the main unit to work.

However both pads work well and I found no lag in the button inputs.

 

The games run quickly and with negligible lag, but the soundtrack is slightly off, the tone is just slightly flat and a little slow.

This dose not affect the carts you plug into it, they run fast as with no sound issues.

 

All in all the system runs roms fast with few issues and plays original carts with proper control pads as well.

 

It's a little cheap and plasticy and you have to point the pads at the box unless you pick up a real pad off eBay for about a tenner.

 

At some point all the mega drives in the world will die of old age and go to silicon hell, so its good to have new hardware that's not just a poorly coded emulator on my PC.