Software developer here with a quick explanation of what seems to be happening with the scrolling: The screen is slightly taller (in pixels) than the games require, but the system tries to use the entire screen anyway. The easiest/fastest/laziest way to do this is to just double the height of every nth row. This distorts the image, which isn't too bad on its own, but when you start scrolling an image vertically (or horizontally if the screen is the wrong width), you get the ripple effect seen here. (If all you wanted was an explanation, feel free to ignore the rest. From here on I'm just getting ranty, because I'm a developer and these things bother me.) The fact that this happens at all is pretty telling of the effort that went into creating this handheld. Generally speaking, every game for any given console is going to have the same exact resolution. Thus, if you're designing a device to only play a single console's games, you should know the exact resolution your screen requires. Placing an off-resolution screen in the device screams "fuck quality, just slap whatever cheap ass components you can find in there and start shoveling that shit out to our customers." Of course at the end of the day, none of us are subscribed to Ashens' channel because we expect quality, are we?
@@garfieldinheat664 I wouldn’t say they fixed it, they made it bearable but didn’t fix it, since to get proper pixel scaling it needed to be a small image in the middle of the screen.
I can understand why they had trouble finding 320x240 screens in 2014 but they could’ve found 640x480 or something at least I’m sure, putting in a wrongly sized screen is just lazy, as is the fact that they didn’t include any kind of scaling options or some kind of interpolation.
I'm _many_ years late here, but I wish to point out that this also happens with pretty much any kind of display that isn't the same resolution as the game, if the game video isn't filtered or properly scaled. You reader may have seen this when emulating games on your fancy PC, or on your big screen television! The only solutions are to use integer scaling; i.e. scale the video up by an exact multiple of the original resolution (which can lead to letterboxing or the game being reduced to a small window depending on the display's resolution, and doesn't fully resolve the problem if the game needs aspect ratio correction), or to use a filter to blend the pixels together (which has varying results from looking awful to almost as good as an unfiltered display, depending on the filter used).
Huh, that's actually something I'd like to own, although I have a PSP smashed with Genesis games already. This just seems like a little novelty Genesis-only, lovely little emulator thing. And for 20 quid, you say? Edit: holy fuck, the sound on Sonic 1 was terrifying, abort, sticking with the PSP
The SektorZ The PSP is the best portable emulator I've found. Nothing beats a console that was actually meant to be held for hours of play (and actual buttons, instead of a touch screen). All my favorites from the GB(C/A) and PlayStation are on there. If I add any more, though, I'll have to shell out for another one of those crap memory sticks...
Yeah Sony did a damn good job on the PSP, but they keep fucking up when it comes to cables, disks and memory cards. I only have 2 PS1 games - MK4 and Castlevania:SOTN to fit all the Sega, NES, SNES and DOS games I need :>
Isn't the pandora poorly constructed and easy to break? I was thinking about getting one, but the reviews turned me off. Now I'm looking into smartphones with physical keyboards or a keyboard case to fit on my 5-inch smartphone, that'd be good enough... I am actually super interested in pocket computers but like you said, simply giving my phone a keyboard makes it one.. we live in good times.
Stavekoff I mainly use Picodrive, it can do Mega CD games too. Some games require a little playing with settings but it works pretty well overall. The psp is my go to games machine these days with all its emulators and portability.
agreed. on actual hardware or a really good emulator it has some of the best music to offer in the history of gaming. messing that up is the same as drawing over a historical painting with crayons.
@106699738938306798058 That's especially insulting considering some newer models come with Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which has save files, so if you got to Yellow Devil on MM1 and turned off the system, tough fucking shit, you have to do all the bosses all over again!
If I remember correctly, the reason of the totally off pitch sound is a license issue with Yamaha, the one that produced the sound chip used into the megadrive, so they did this on purpose. By the way AT@ames has a lot of megadrive hardware clone, all with the same sound issue, even one used into south korean school buses and a traditional tv console with 20 pre-loaded games and a slot cart
MasterControl90 I wouldn't think there was a license issue, as I don't think Yamaha 'licensed' anything to Sega or anybody; they produced the components and anybody could buy and use them in their products. The YM2612 was used in many devices. I would guess in this case they used a cheaper clone chip for price reasons.
"Man, Megadrive music was pretty good, wasn't it?" Yeah, when they did it right and it didn't sound like an electric guitar being put through a chipper-shredder while still attached to a wall of Marshall stacks.
My only guess would be that the shimmer is because the Genesis/Megadrive ran at various resolutions (256x224, 320x224, 256x240, 320x240) that don't all scale nicely to the LCD which is probably 320x480 or 320x240. For shits and giggles try putting the PAL and NTSC versions of the same game on the SD card and see if you notice any difference in the shimmering. I THINK the resolution for NTSC is 320×448 and PAL is 320x480 not exactly sure. One version may scale better and not shimmer.. worth a try if you are bored. lol
Yes, I would imagine so. If you were designing these things with perfection in mind, and cost was no object, the screen should have been 1280x960, since that covers all possible resolutions, though you would have to use black bars to deal with NTSC resolutions without odd multiples. 1280x960 is the perfect resolution for 16 bit consoles in general, within reason. 320x240 multiplied by 4 in each direction. 256x240 multiplied by 5 in the horizontal direction, 4 in the vertical 320x480 multiplied by 4 in the horizontal, 2 in the vertical The only problem would be for snes if anything tried to use the high resolution modes 512x240 or 512x480 Because that's 2.5 Almost nothing on the snes uses high resolution mode, but it's still a problem. You'll notice the multiplier is 2.5 though. Which means if you absolutely MUST have perfect scaling even then, the simple solution is to go to a 2560x1920 display (4:3 aspect ratio) Of course, who even makes displays like that is an open question, so you're going to end up with a VERY expensive system at that point. (near 4k resolutions but in a 4:3 aspect ratio!? Kinda insane huh.)
When you showed the games on the back i was like 'oh, no streets of rage?' lol i loved that game!!! i actually had the mega drive that worked. it was kept at one of my relatives from when i went round there when i was younger to play on when i went, i went to reclaim it recently but said that she'd thrown it away a couple of months before :/ And i agree about the sound thing, things like that put me off!! if something doesn't sound the same i find it really difficult to get my head around it :(
I noticed that. My guess is either the graphics designer for the box did a Google Image search and didn't know the difference, or they somehow found the beta build and put it on the device, but decided not to tell anyone.
PixelBro64 Seeing how AtGames is a chinese company and how the "Simon Wai" build was pirated so commonly there it was probably the first Sonic 2 Rom they could find. Just a guess.
The rippling is probably caused by the native resolution of the LCD not matching the system's resolution. The blue unit specifically is likely because the games output at 320x224 whereas the screen is most likely a 320x240 screen, so it's slightly stretched vertically and doesn't quite line up right with the screen.
Regrettably, it sounds like SEGA's been selling off IPs left and right, so if these devices were recently made, this may be the last we see so many of SEGA's franchises together. "Amid" is more of an American term, whereas "amidst" has more British usage. I see this for "among" and "amongst," as well as "while" and "whilst." We Americans just don't like our prepositions and conjunctions ending in "st." Saturday Night Slam Master's first shot is of a burly man's crotch. Good way to introduce people to the game.
the reason for the vertical scrolling problem is just cause by the hamster inside getting tired and hungry. upload some food to your SD card and it should solve it right away.
If I were to put an SD card inside, I'd fit it with EVERY single Mega Drive rom in existance (or what I can find anyway) Also, even though the sound is a load of tripe, I'm the kind of man that can put up with crappy sound. =P
***** I have one of these and some Genesis games like Ms. Pac-Man, Revolution X, and Contra (and probably many others) don't work on it. But there's a patched version of Contra that works.
MrAdrenaline1982 SEGA Retro says this about using ROMs on the device: "To boot games from an SD card, Sega Mega Drive ROMs should be placed inside a folder called "GAME" at the root of the card. ROMs can be either .bin or .smd and all regions are compatible. There is not full compatibility with all games, if you find that a particular ROM doesn't work; try to use verified dumps [!] and if a certain region doesn't work, try another. The games will be listed in the order they were added to the card, you can use a tool called folder_sort to force this order into alphabetical order." So I'm assuming that the roms with [!] at the end (like the ones you'd find in huge Mega Drive rom packs, because as you might know, they usually repeat roms with different names like [E] [U] [J] [!] etc.) would be the ones that work. But since I don't have one of these portable Mega Drives (nor do I know if I'm getting one) I guess we'll assume it's true.
@@worldofjake2012 the ones with [!] mean that that's a clean dump. Other ones, you'd think they'd just get rid of them, right? But they hold onto them in ROMsets because it shows the progress of the different time periods of dumping ROMs; the most buggy one typically being the first, and again the one with [!] being the clean dump
Awesome video Ashens, I couldent comment on your 500th video because comments are disabled. But I would like to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed about 99%of your videos, Please keep up the great work, I love logging into youtube and seeing that there is a new video from you.
I totally agree with you. It was like SEGA and the Sonic Team were like, "Okay, okay. We have the idea for a new Sonic game. Looks pretty good so far. Anyone have any other ideas? I know, how about we fuck up the character designs! PERFECT! THAT WILL DEFINITELY MAKE THIS GAME BETTER! WE MAKE A GREAT TEAM!" I mean, what the fuck? Why did they do that shit? Making the characters look different doesn't make the game any better! There's no goddamn point to it! Sonic Boom is not very different from any other Sonic game, except for the useless change to the characters! Making a Sonic game where he turns into a werewolf is pretty damn strange, but at least it made the gameplay different and unique. Changing the characters does nothing!
Oh man. I hear him say that I will weep for Sonic's sound quality. I'm thinking to myself that I wouldn't. As soon as it hits the high notes I'm crying with an awkward mixture of sadness and laughter. It's the sort of butchering of music that physically hurts to listen to.
The vertical scrolling rippling effect must have to do with the image being slightly upscaled vertically but not horizontally, this screen must be 320 x 240, the Genesis/Megadrive runs at 320 x 224...
As Ashens and others have speculated/pointed out, the 'shimmering' is almost certainly caused by very basic (and unnecessary) scaling. The biggest problem with every unit he tested is that all the tones generated by the emulated(?) sound chip are at considerably lower frequencies than they should be, effectively transposing the music/most sound effects down a number of semitones. Samples appear to be unaffected. Some games only sound wrong as in 'not like they sounded on the real console', but for others (Sonic 1 included) it really makes some tunes sound totally discordant. A really blatant flaw that could have been fixed so easily!
Just bought one of these at a boot sale for a fiver. To think years back I paid up to £40 for a single title.... Now I have a handheld console with 12 games wow!
+no hassle Yeah, and the quality is garbage. Sorry but these games look, sound, and play better than any crappy clone allows. There has yet to be a clone console that compares to the quality of original hardware. Whether it's the controls, lag, v-sync, poor sound emulation, compatibility/limited selection of games, speed/timing, or off-color graphics, they all fail. I could see getting one of these for a young kid as a birthday present. But since what I care most about is playing the games, I would never want one for myself.
leadbones The Retron 3 is a really good clone console. NES, SNES, and SEGA. It can even run Master system games and Japanese titles. It's not 100% perfect but its the best clone I've ever had. Got it back in 2013 for Christmas.
If you want to play these games on the go legally I recommend that you just get the Mega Drive/Genesis collection on PSP or Nintendo Switch. They're cheaper, you can save and the emulation is better too.
Picked it up for such a low price. The sound is very strange but not outright terrible, just too low pitched. Beat Streets of Rage 2 last night, picking up an SD card to throw my massive collection onto. Thanks Ashens!
The Genesis ran at a screen resolution of 320x224, which is slightly less vertical resolution than 320x240, which (alongside 640x480) is a common resolution for small budget LCD screens, so yeah, they're probably just scaling the vertical from 224 to 240 without any sort of filtering, thus producing that ripple effect. (MegaDrive ran at 320x240 due to PAL... might want to see if PAL-format ROMs have the same effect...) And yeah, if my ears could bleed, I would be dead from blood loss from that sound emulation... x_x;
I've got two of these AtGames Handelds. One is the presented on the video blue model with SD card slot and most of Sonic games... And well, despite problems with sound and lack of save-game it's quite nice device. It's working quite well even with rom-hacks (which is really good thing, especially since there are plenty of good rom-hacks made by community of Sonic Retro). The latest model, with 80 games, (in fact with 40, because other 40 are some simple homebrew games, like tick-tack-toe or chess) is probably the best option to avoid these strange lacks of titles (what is more, there is even Street Fighter II, usually there are only games made by Sega). Probably that's one of the biggest issues for someone who is interested in this device, a lot of shops is selling older models (for lower price). I've got also quite interesting model, with games for Master System & Game Gear. It's working on normal batteries, but it's really nice thing - very comfortable D-pad, sound is quite good, and everything else is working fine. If only it would have this SD-slot, it would be really nice substitute of Game Gear.
I used to have a plug 'n' play game that had basically all the same things on it. Sega Megadrive stuff. I only played it for a shortish amount of time, but it managed to ingrain the "Sega" jingle into my brain in that short amount of time.Goddamit I wasn't even sentient in the Sega era!
@@christianschmidt-ljmg2249 fan made BIOSes for these things weren't even a thought back in the days they started shipping. But yeah, now one can softmod these.
I was so happy when I saw this video so I searched around and found it! But my little heart was crushed when those soul shattering red letters popped up... "Can't deliver to Canada." This is truly a sad day for me :'-(
sonic the hedgehog and knuckles sonic the hedgehog 2 and knuckles Dr robotniks mean bean machine and knuckles sonic and knuckles Knuckles and knuckles ristar and knuckles echo and knuckles sonic spin ball and knuckles streets of rage and knuckles streets of rage 2 and knuckles comix zone and knuckles Alex kid and knuckles altered beast and Bruce golden axe and knuckles flicky and knuckles and those snes kids think there so cool. us Genesis kids have *knuckles processing*!!!
Poundland now has an amusement park. The roller coasters only go 2 feet in the air, and the carts are too small so you kind of have to sit on top of them. The boat ride goes at a speed of 3 knots per hours, and breaks down within 20 minutes. The horses on the carousal are terribly deformed and you get to enjoy a loop of 3 piano chords while on it.
The idea of playing old games like this on anything but a CRT is just something I can't get to appeal to me. Gotta love that Sega music though. I had an SNES, but my friend had a Genesis. For my money, in games of that era, nothing beats that sweet, crunchy FM Synth sound.
Who would play Sonic & Knuckles without Sonic 3? Ew. I always used Adam when I played SoR. His jump kick was top-tier. Dunno why he never came back. ?!! Wow, all that audio was in minor key or something.
They have been selling these handhelds (with SD slot) and a console (that accepts cartridges) with two wireless controllers at our local Dollar General... My sister picked up the console for $27 and I got the handheld for like $20. They're actually really cool!
That megadrive looks awesome actually. o.o and I play without sound, so it wouldn't bother me. I need to get me one if it's cheap enough/can import cheap enough
Adam was actually my favorite character because his kick knocks enemies flying. And using the special in the first 5 seconds always happens when trying to figure out what button does what lol
The vertical scrolling issue is probably due to the fact that the game is being played on a screen which has a finite vertical resolution. A CRT television has a theoretically infinite vertical resolution - the individual red, green and blue phosphor strips are discrete horizontally (red-green-blue-red-green-blue-etc), but continuous vertically. And a matrix display (one made up of pixels - LCD/LED/plasma/etc) with a high enough vertical resolution (720 or 1080 lines for an HDTV) can mask the issue adequately. But played on a low resolution matrix display, probably no more than 300 or 400 lines for these handhelds, the problem becomes evident.
Streets Of Rage 2 does indeed have one of the best soundtracks ever. It was the one Megadrive game that made my SNES-having ass jealous of the rival console, and let me tell you that was serious business back in the day! Edit after watching rest of video: Good grief, that does sound horrible. Am I imagining things or is the music actually out of tune? That's a dreadful shame, totally ruins an otherwise perfectly lovely system. Boo!
***** It's not hard at all, it's just that portable baked-in emulators can't handle it. Play it on decent PC with KEGA Fusion and it sounds pretty good.
Oh there's that Sonic 2 Beta Title Screen. :V I don't get why they added that. The sound emulation in these are shit. You're better off getting a PSP and getting emulators. They really need to fix the sound issues in their emulator, there's no reason why their emulation is off when there are better emulators on the internet. Hell they should have asked Steve Snake if they could use Kega Fusion on these!
Unfortunately it's a emulation problem. I mean at least there's a fix for the Radica, but that's because it's the actual hardware just compacted into a tiny shell if I'm not mistaken. Atgames uses their own emulator, and it's not accurate. It all comes down to their sound chip emulation code, which something isn't adding up at all.
Well it's a system on a chip, but removing a transistor and making a few connections sorts it out. I doubt the audio is entirely emulation as it still needs some pre amp.
eLJaybud I suppose someone needs to open one of these things up and see if there really is a fix for the shitty sound. :P I don't have one, and I don't even touch hardware. I'm more of a ROM hacker so I just stick to that and let the other guys who are good with using a soldering iron do the hardware mods.
*sighs* I remember having a Genisis when I was little. Didn't have many games for it, but we had Sonic 2, and played that quite a lot. I miss that thing, though I did find a website to play all sorts of old games on.
This exact "shimmering effect" on streets of rage happens on my android testing devices as well. My theory is its got to do with High res screens, if you emulate streets of rage on a 3ds xl there is no shimmering effect due to the extremely low resolution. Older games were built for low res tube tvs or arcade screens with scan lines. To fix this issue you can apply old lcd, scanline filters as they are meant to replicate older televisions on high res screens. That being said some things are impossible to emulate like the shimmering background from mega man (it was designed with the pal tv signal in mind) hope this helps someone. Love you videos I just started watching:D
+Corey Venice Hassle? LOL! Yeah, Sega Genesis is so complicated to emulate. Any resolution beyond the system's native resolution is a complete waste. These games look best on a CRT, and play best on original hardware. If you aren't going to do it that way, then emulation is the next best way. It's more accurate than any clone, and plays all of the games with resolution as high as you want. I play on my HD TV with emulators and original hardware, no trouble at all. The Retron 5 is garbage.
+Corey Venice Playing a MD game on an HDTV is going to be shit. It just will. Upscaling will destroy the picture and the end result will end up looking artificial. CRT is the way to go. Just get a good CRT like a Trinitron.
Yup I got one of these and what killed it for me was the lack of save feature, and I could never get more games on it even though it is the blue version. Thanks for the video sir! ^_^
Ah, the handheld Mega Drive, a mainstay of Argos catalogues for the last decade or so. I got one about seven years ago, and would say I've probably played it for a grand total of seven minutes
I'm actually glad i watched this because i was thinking on buying one of these for me actually, i know i can just pick up my phone, download a emulator and bingo but you know, sometimes a object that was built specifically for that purpose is something that i find very handy to have. But the fact that it has no save feature and the audio quality is... Well... Crap. Really turns me off from buying this product. Thanks again Ashens, you spared the life of my pennies once again :3
In spite of the ear-bleeding sound, those actually look like damn nice portable Genesis units (and more practical than the well-intentioned yet ill-fated Nomad). Not even the 3DS Virtual Console supports Genesis games, just the GameGear (though it has its own enhanced versions of a few Genesis classics like Sonic and Streets of Rage that utilize the stereoscopic 3D of the console).
I own the blue console and I have to say, I do enjoy it very much. Yes I realize the sound is terrible, however it is not enough to take away from the amazingly smooth game play! I have also loaded roms on it and they work wonderfully. Strangely my console had 80 games, 40 licensed and 40 not.
Software developer here with a quick explanation of what seems to be happening with the scrolling:
The screen is slightly taller (in pixels) than the games require, but the system tries to use the entire screen anyway. The easiest/fastest/laziest way to do this is to just double the height of every nth row.
This distorts the image, which isn't too bad on its own, but when you start scrolling an image vertically (or horizontally if the screen is the wrong width), you get the ripple effect seen here.
(If all you wanted was an explanation, feel free to ignore the rest. From here on I'm just getting ranty, because I'm a developer and these things bother me.)
The fact that this happens at all is pretty telling of the effort that went into creating this handheld. Generally speaking, every game for any given console is going to have the same exact resolution. Thus, if you're designing a device to only play a single console's games, you should know the exact resolution your screen requires. Placing an off-resolution screen in the device screams "fuck quality, just slap whatever cheap ass components you can find in there and start shoveling that shit out to our customers."
Of course at the end of the day, none of us are subscribed to Ashens' channel because we expect quality, are we?
The Revo K101 had an improperly sized screen, but they fixed that with multiple screen ratio options.
@@garfieldinheat664 I wouldn’t say they fixed it, they made it bearable but didn’t fix it, since to get proper pixel scaling it needed to be a small image in the middle of the screen.
I can understand why they had trouble finding 320x240 screens in 2014 but they could’ve found 640x480 or something at least I’m sure, putting in a wrongly sized screen is just lazy, as is the fact that they didn’t include any kind of scaling options or some kind of interpolation.
Quality what is that strange word?
I'm _many_ years late here, but I wish to point out that this also happens with pretty much any kind of display that isn't the same resolution as the game, if the game video isn't filtered or properly scaled. You reader may have seen this when emulating games on your fancy PC, or on your big screen television!
The only solutions are to use integer scaling; i.e. scale the video up by an exact multiple of the original resolution (which can lead to letterboxing or the game being reduced to a small window depending on the display's resolution, and doesn't fully resolve the problem if the game needs aspect ratio correction), or to use a filter to blend the pixels together (which has varying results from looking awful to almost as good as an unfiltered display, depending on the filter used).
As soon as you said "AtGames" I knew it was going to be a disaster.
But you will know that there will be an emulation problem with audio or video.
@Old Liquid Playable yes, but the sound would ruin the experience for me.
Yes
SHATGAMES
Huh, that's actually something I'd like to own, although I have a PSP smashed with Genesis games already. This just seems like a little novelty Genesis-only, lovely little emulator thing. And for 20 quid, you say?
Edit: holy fuck, the sound on Sonic 1 was terrifying, abort, sticking with the PSP
The SektorZ The PSP is the best portable emulator I've found. Nothing beats a console that was actually meant to be held for hours of play (and actual buttons, instead of a touch screen). All my favorites from the GB(C/A) and PlayStation are on there. If I add any more, though, I'll have to shell out for another one of those crap memory sticks...
Yeah Sony did a damn good job on the PSP, but they keep fucking up when it comes to cables, disks and memory cards. I only have 2 PS1 games - MK4 and Castlevania:SOTN to fit all the Sega, NES, SNES and DOS games I need :>
Isn't the pandora poorly constructed and easy to break? I was thinking about getting one, but the reviews turned me off. Now I'm looking into smartphones with physical keyboards or a keyboard case to fit on my 5-inch smartphone, that'd be good enough... I am actually super interested in pocket computers but like you said, simply giving my phone a keyboard makes it one.. we live in good times.
what do you emulate genesis games with on PSP? I tried MD something but I always got a black screen
Stavekoff I mainly use Picodrive, it can do Mega CD games too. Some games require a little playing with settings but it works pretty well overall.
The psp is my go to games machine these days with all its emulators and portability.
There must be legal punishment for screwing up Mega Drive sound emulation...
Cool but I already replaced theyr emulation in my console for my own, more accurate, plus it now runs also Master System games.
Bath in hot oil??
Being forced to listen to the Sonic Spinball options menu music on repeat.
yes....death
agreed. on actual hardware or a really good emulator it has some of the best music to offer in the history of gaming. messing that up is the same as drawing over a historical painting with crayons.
The sound and screen ripple wouldn't be deal breakers for me, but the no saving would be.
@106699738938306798058
That's especially insulting considering some newer models come with Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which has save files, so if you got to Yellow Devil on MM1 and turned off the system, tough fucking shit, you have to do all the bosses all over again!
Jimalcoatl IKR i mean how hard would it be to add a small program to allow you to saev to the SD card, it wouldnt be difficult
TJ F China m8
I’d rather play the original, couldn’t deal with the sound.
Sonic sounds like Sanic on this thing.
If I remember correctly, the reason of the totally off pitch sound is a license issue with Yamaha, the one that produced the sound chip used into the megadrive, so they did this on purpose. By the way AT@ames has a lot of megadrive hardware clone, all with the same sound issue, even one used into south korean school buses and a traditional tv console with 20 pre-loaded games and a slot cart
MasterControl90 But he said the sound was better on the red unit?
MasterControl90 It's due to using software emulation instead of hardware emulation of a Genesis/Megadrive. Software's cheaper but it's shit.
armena torvan the license issue must have risen some time between the release of the two
MasterControl90 I wouldn't think there was a license issue, as I don't think Yamaha 'licensed' anything to Sega or anybody; they produced the components and anybody could buy and use them in their products. The YM2612 was used in many devices. I would guess in this case they used a cheaper clone chip for price reasons.
Michael Burgwin These units use emulation on an 32 bit ARM proccessor so its really a bad Emu.
I’m upset he didn’t play Outrun, I just wanted to hear some of that *Sound Shower.*
On this thing it would be more like Golden Sound Shower
"Man, Megadrive music was pretty good, wasn't it?" Yeah, when they did it right and it didn't sound like an electric guitar being put through a chipper-shredder while still attached to a wall of Marshall stacks.
I..... really wish I'd seen this video before I started my KO console series, cause this explains so much about a weird system I looked at!
My only guess would be that the shimmer is because the Genesis/Megadrive ran at various resolutions (256x224, 320x224, 256x240, 320x240) that don't all scale nicely to the LCD which is probably 320x480 or 320x240. For shits and giggles try putting the PAL and NTSC versions of the same game on the SD card and see if you notice any difference in the shimmering. I THINK the resolution for NTSC is 320×448 and PAL is 320x480 not exactly sure. One version may scale better and not shimmer.. worth a try if you are bored. lol
Yes, I would imagine so.
If you were designing these things with perfection in mind, and cost was no object, the screen should have been 1280x960, since that covers all possible resolutions, though you would have to use black bars to deal with NTSC resolutions without odd multiples.
1280x960 is the perfect resolution for 16 bit consoles in general, within reason.
320x240 multiplied by 4 in each direction.
256x240 multiplied by 5 in the horizontal direction, 4 in the vertical
320x480 multiplied by 4 in the horizontal, 2 in the vertical
The only problem would be for snes if anything tried to use the high resolution modes 512x240 or 512x480
Because that's 2.5
Almost nothing on the snes uses high resolution mode, but it's still a problem.
You'll notice the multiplier is 2.5 though.
Which means if you absolutely MUST have perfect scaling even then, the simple solution is to go to a 2560x1920 display (4:3 aspect ratio)
Of course, who even makes displays like that is an open question, so you're going to end up with a VERY expensive system at that point. (near 4k resolutions but in a 4:3 aspect ratio!? Kinda insane huh.)
@@KuraIthysI would buy one
When you showed the games on the back i was like 'oh, no streets of rage?' lol i loved that game!!! i actually had the mega drive that worked. it was kept at one of my relatives from when i went round there when i was younger to play on when i went, i went to reclaim it recently but said that she'd thrown it away a couple of months before :/
And i agree about the sound thing, things like that put me off!! if something doesn't sound the same i find it really difficult to get my head around it :(
That's the sonic 2 logo from the beta version of the game. Wonder why they used that. Strange.
I noticed that. My guess is either the graphics designer for the box did a Google Image search and didn't know the difference, or they somehow found the beta build and put it on the device, but decided not to tell anyone.
PixelBro64 Seeing how AtGames is a chinese company and how the "Simon Wai" build was pirated so commonly there it was probably the first Sonic 2 Rom they could find. Just a guess.
Gotta know fast
'Strange, isn't it?'
+PixelBro64 pingas
The rippling is probably caused by the native resolution of the LCD not matching the system's resolution. The blue unit specifically is likely because the games output at 320x224 whereas the screen is most likely a 320x240 screen, so it's slightly stretched vertically and doesn't quite line up right with the screen.
Regrettably, it sounds like SEGA's been selling off IPs left and right, so if these devices were recently made, this may be the last we see so many of SEGA's franchises together.
"Amid" is more of an American term, whereas "amidst" has more British usage. I see this for "among" and "amongst," as well as "while" and "whilst." We Americans just don't like our prepositions and conjunctions ending in "st."
Saturday Night Slam Master's first shot is of a burly man's crotch. Good way to introduce people to the game.
What I've learned from Mr. Ashens today:
1) I need one of these tiny Sega handhelds. Now.
2) "Sod it!" means, in English slang, "Fuck it!"
the reason for the vertical scrolling problem is just cause by the hamster inside getting tired and hungry. upload some food to your SD card and it should solve it right away.
Man I loved my Megadrive, I had 3 main games, streets of rage 2, Sonic (the first one) and Rock and Roll racing, damn I played those a lot
If I were to put an SD card inside, I'd fit it with EVERY single Mega Drive rom in existance (or what I can find anyway)
Also, even though the sound is a load of tripe, I'm the kind of man that can put up with crappy sound. =P
***** I have one of these and some Genesis games like Ms. Pac-Man, Revolution X, and Contra (and probably many others) don't work on it. But there's a patched version of Contra that works.
MrAdrenaline1982 SEGA Retro says this about using ROMs on the device:
"To boot games from an SD card, Sega Mega Drive ROMs should be placed inside a folder called "GAME" at the root of the card. ROMs can be either .bin or .smd and all regions are compatible. There is not full compatibility with all games, if you find that a particular ROM doesn't work; try to use verified dumps [!] and if a certain region doesn't work, try another. The games will be listed in the order they were added to the card, you can use a tool called folder_sort to force this order into alphabetical order."
So I'm assuming that the roms with [!] at the end (like the ones you'd find in huge Mega Drive rom packs, because as you might know, they usually repeat roms with different names like [E] [U] [J] [!] etc.) would be the ones that work. But since I don't have one of these portable Mega Drives (nor do I know if I'm getting one) I guess we'll assume it's true.
Jake Sharratt That's exactly what I did. Don't do it. It's hard to find what you want to play.
MrAdrenaline1982 Contra Hard Corps worked just fine on mine.
@@worldofjake2012 the ones with [!] mean that that's a clean dump. Other ones, you'd think they'd just get rid of them, right? But they hold onto them in ROMsets because it shows the progress of the different time periods of dumping ROMs; the most buggy one typically being the first, and again the one with [!] being the clean dump
Awesome video Ashens, I couldent comment on your 500th video because comments are disabled. But I would like to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed about 99%of your videos, Please keep up the great work, I love logging into youtube and seeing that there is a new video from you.
Why atgames still isn't fixing the sound with new alterations is beyond me. It's an easy fix on the circuitry as mod-fixes show.
Portable mega drive
and knuckles
ant dude reference or no?
s t o p also antduuuuuuuuuude is good
I use to love Knuckles, then I saw him Sonic Boom and can't recover from that.
Sivos okay...
I totally agree with you. It was like SEGA and the Sonic Team were like, "Okay, okay. We have the idea for a new Sonic game. Looks pretty good so far. Anyone have any other ideas? I know, how about we fuck up the character designs! PERFECT! THAT WILL DEFINITELY MAKE THIS GAME BETTER! WE MAKE A GREAT TEAM!" I mean, what the fuck? Why did they do that shit? Making the characters look different doesn't make the game any better! There's no goddamn point to it! Sonic Boom is not very different from any other Sonic game, except for the useless change to the characters! Making a Sonic game where he turns into a werewolf is pretty damn strange, but at least it made the gameplay different and unique. Changing the characters does nothing!
Knuckles is still a great character. Sonic boom is a utter disgrace and, quite frankly that version of knuckles can burn in the netherworld.
Bloody hell, they slapped the BETA title screen for Sonic 2 on there and not the final version.
8:43 isn't Zero Wing the game the "all your base are belong to us" originated from?
Yes, it was.
Holy fuck that Sonic music! It sounds like you made a Sonic.EXE variation of Green Hill! That was hard to listen too...
I never owned a Mega Drive / Genesis, and only ever played it at friend's houses. That Sonic 1 "music" still caused me to die a little inside.
"Ahhh, the Capcom wibble."
-Ash Ens 2015
Sonic the Hedgehog's music sounds like shitty creepy pasta music if you slow it down.
Blazi Ken most things do
Blazi Ken Please pm me your profile pic.
Explosive SantaBurger You'd be surprised at how many people did
BaronNedTheFirst I am sure... Don't ask how I could avoid it for so long.
Oh man. I hear him say that I will weep for Sonic's sound quality. I'm thinking to myself that I wouldn't.
As soon as it hits the high notes I'm crying with an awkward mixture of sadness and laughter. It's the sort of butchering of music that physically hurts to listen to.
4:42 Sounds like an exact history of Detroit.
When I heard the Sonic intro... my fingers involuntarily did up, down, left, right, A-START..
"Dat music doe."
- Ashens 2015
lol
lol Ashens ftw
PeaNutter505™
PeaNut
@@foxydeadboy18565:00 he says amid this turmoil on beat :')
There are so many variations of the megadrive now,i can't get over the popularity of it still, Thanks for sharing!
I could hear Yuzo Koshiro crying from my house in Leeds...
That Streets of Rage 1 playthrough brought back some great memories! And I always chose Adam - his dropkick was great.
HARIBO
EVERY
SINGLE
TIME
At least it's something nice. I get adverts about nivea face cream. Which I don't need nor want
Badass Bowser Melon
AccidentalBassDrop dude, I'm not trip. I'm badass bowser. That's what I look like IRL.
Badass Bowser Oh, how unfortunate.
Wanna talk about decorating?
Sulthan14 oh, you have to see my photo of our recent trip to Italy! Do you know what this photo says? Say it. Go on.
I have one of the funky blue ones with the memory card and I absolutely love it to pieces. Sensible Soccer is perfect for a commute!
The vertical scrolling rippling effect must have to do with the image being slightly upscaled vertically but not horizontally, this screen must be 320 x 240, the Genesis/Megadrive runs at 320 x 224...
As Ashens and others have speculated/pointed out, the 'shimmering' is almost certainly caused by very basic (and unnecessary) scaling. The biggest problem with every unit he tested is that all the tones generated by the emulated(?) sound chip are at considerably lower frequencies than they should be, effectively transposing the music/most sound effects down a number of semitones. Samples appear to be unaffected. Some games only sound wrong as in 'not like they sounded on the real console', but for others (Sonic 1 included) it really makes some tunes sound totally discordant. A really blatant flaw that could have been fixed so easily!
Just bought one of these at a boot sale for a fiver. To think years back I paid up to £40 for a single title.... Now I have a handheld console with 12 games wow!
well I have a PXP3 with 150 games for less than a tenner.
You got ripped off. These things are trash.
leadbones How so? Looks similar quality to this and bags more games.
+no hassle Yeah, and the quality is garbage. Sorry but these games look, sound, and play better than any crappy clone allows. There has yet to be a clone console that compares to the quality of original hardware. Whether it's the controls, lag, v-sync, poor sound emulation, compatibility/limited selection of games, speed/timing, or off-color graphics, they all fail. I could see getting one of these for a young kid as a birthday present. But since what I care most about is playing the games, I would never want one for myself.
leadbones The Retron 3 is a really good clone console. NES, SNES, and SEGA. It can even run Master system games and Japanese titles. It's not 100% perfect but its the best clone I've ever had. Got it back in 2013 for Christmas.
Doom and Clash at Demonhead are my favorite retro soundtracks. Bio Ape Force is pretty good also.
If you want to play these games on the go legally I recommend that you just get the Mega Drive/Genesis collection on PSP or Nintendo Switch. They're cheaper, you can save and the emulation is better too.
"Nintendo Switch cheaper"
uhhhhh
@@waltercomunello121 I meant that the collection is cheaper, not the Switch itself.
Gain Ground, Shinobi 3,Strider, and Sonic (3) and Knuckles were (and still are) my favourite games on the Genesis.
I have that same toy. The blue one anyway. cost me about $2.30 at my local dollar store.
Picked it up for such a low price. The sound is very strange but not outright terrible, just too low pitched. Beat Streets of Rage 2 last night, picking up an SD card to throw my massive collection onto. Thanks Ashens!
Featuring Knuckles From The Knuckles May Chuckle Series
that sonic music down pitched. Thats how I felt when i played Mortal Kombat Trilogy on ps1.
The Genesis ran at a screen resolution of 320x224, which is slightly less vertical resolution than 320x240, which (alongside 640x480) is a common resolution for small budget LCD screens, so yeah, they're probably just scaling the vertical from 224 to 240 without any sort of filtering, thus producing that ripple effect.
(MegaDrive ran at 320x240 due to PAL... might want to see if PAL-format ROMs have the same effect...)
And yeah, if my ears could bleed, I would be dead from blood loss from that sound emulation... x_x;
I've got two of these AtGames Handelds. One is the presented on the video blue model with SD card slot and most of Sonic games... And well, despite problems with sound and lack of save-game it's quite nice device. It's working quite well even with rom-hacks (which is really good thing, especially since there are plenty of good rom-hacks made by community of Sonic Retro). The latest model, with 80 games, (in fact with 40, because other 40 are some simple homebrew games, like tick-tack-toe or chess) is probably the best option to avoid these strange lacks of titles (what is more, there is even Street Fighter II, usually there are only games made by Sega). Probably that's one of the biggest issues for someone who is interested in this device, a lot of shops is selling older models (for lower price). I've got also quite interesting model, with games for Master System & Game Gear. It's working on normal batteries, but it's really nice thing - very comfortable D-pad, sound is quite good, and everything else is working fine. If only it would have this SD-slot, it would be really nice substitute of Game Gear.
This Guy Is Pretty Good At Reviewing Games And Other Things..., I Really Like This Channell !
Rupert Cornholio Yeah, ive been watching for years. Good stuff.
+Rupert Cornholio Watch his film about the Gamechild.
So I'm guessing it didn't bother anyone that I wrote every single word with a capital first letter lol
I used to have a plug 'n' play game that had basically all the same things on it. Sega Megadrive stuff. I only played it for a shortish amount of time, but it managed to ingrain the "Sega" jingle into my brain in that short amount of time.Goddamit I wasn't even sentient in the Sega era!
I work at Argos and i'm always baffled when someone buys one of them things. Download an Emulator or get the original! They're being ripped off!
download a fan made bios that fixes the sound and adds SRAM and it is one of the finest consoles I've ever owned.
@@christianschmidt-ljmg2249 fan made BIOSes for these things weren't even a thought back in the days they started shipping. But yeah, now one can softmod these.
Like all ways ... a great and wicked video !!!
Why comments blocked on new vid?
My God...I never thought it possible.
Ashens reviews something that ACTUALLY. WORKS.
why has ashens disabled likes and comments on his most recent video?
I was so happy when I saw this video so I searched around and found it! But my little heart was crushed when those soul shattering red letters popped up... "Can't deliver to Canada."
This is truly a sad day for me :'-(
5:03 Amid is correct in American English ;D
The Ribina advert is pretty terrifying, excellent.
sonic the hedgehog and knuckles
sonic the hedgehog 2 and knuckles
Dr robotniks mean bean machine and knuckles
sonic and knuckles
Knuckles and knuckles
ristar and knuckles
echo and knuckles
sonic spin ball and knuckles
streets of rage and knuckles
streets of rage 2 and knuckles
comix zone and knuckles
Alex kid and knuckles
altered beast and Bruce
golden axe and knuckles
flicky and knuckles
and those snes kids think there so cool. us Genesis kids have *knuckles processing*!!!
You forgot Knuckles Chaotix and Knuckles
you forgot vector man and knuckles
Everyone loves Knuckles!
+Adam Dixon Even Knuckles loves Knuckles
Knuckles and Knuckles?
Poundland now has an amusement park. The roller coasters only go 2 feet in the air, and the carts are too small so you kind of have to sit on top of them. The boat ride goes at a speed of 3 knots per hours, and breaks down within 20 minutes. The horses on the carousal are terribly deformed and you get to enjoy a loop of 3 piano chords while on it.
Bloody ell that din't sound right.
The idea of playing old games like this on anything but a CRT is just something I can't get to appeal to me.
Gotta love that Sega music though. I had an SNES, but my friend had a Genesis. For my money, in games of that era, nothing beats that sweet, crunchy FM Synth sound.
Who would play Sonic & Knuckles without Sonic 3? Ew.
I always used Adam when I played SoR. His jump kick was top-tier. Dunno why he never came back.
?!! Wow, all that audio was in minor key or something.
Idk why but I couldn't stop laughing when he said "Dat music Doe."
Amid is perfectly fine.
They have been selling these handhelds (with SD slot) and a console (that accepts cartridges) with two wireless controllers at our local Dollar General... My sister picked up the console for $27 and I got the handheld for like $20. They're actually really cool!
No Comix Zone? No Eternal Champions? pff
There is one that has 80 games, I think it has comix zone but if not just get a sd card and put the rom in it and put it in the sd slot on top.
I have a custom firmware PSP :) emulation for days
Wulfsmasher imagine how bad it would sound
Wulfsmasher No Phantasy Star. :(
Wulfsmasher Freaking courage...
That megadrive looks awesome actually. o.o and I play without sound, so it wouldn't bother me. I need to get me one if it's cheap enough/can import cheap enough
This is like a genesis 2DS
What a... Completely unnecessary comparison
Adam was actually my favorite character because his kick knocks enemies flying. And using the special in the first 5 seconds always happens when trying to figure out what button does what lol
Sonic 2 Prototype title screen LOL
The vertical scrolling issue is probably due to the fact that the game is being played on a screen which has a finite vertical resolution. A CRT television has a theoretically infinite vertical resolution - the individual red, green and blue phosphor strips are discrete horizontally (red-green-blue-red-green-blue-etc), but continuous vertically. And a matrix display (one made up of pixels - LCD/LED/plasma/etc) with a high enough vertical resolution (720 or 1080 lines for an HDTV) can mask the issue adequately. But played on a low resolution matrix display, probably no more than 300 or 400 lines for these handhelds, the problem becomes evident.
The thing that killed me listening to Sonic the Hedgehog was being American and listening to the PAL's slowed down music.
As a man who loves kunckles, this looks like the product for me.
Streets Of Rage 2 does indeed have one of the best soundtracks ever. It was the one Megadrive game that made my SNES-having ass jealous of the rival console, and let me tell you that was serious business back in the day!
Edit after watching rest of video: Good grief, that does sound horrible. Am I imagining things or is the music actually out of tune? That's a dreadful shame, totally ruins an otherwise perfectly lovely system. Boo!
Adam Power the music is totally out of tune. thats the point
Okay. I wasn't sure if it was that or if it was just shit quality. Seems bizarre that they would fuck it up that badly.
Adam Power how ashens said its hard to emulate.
Yes, I understand that, thanks.
***** It's not hard at all, it's just that portable baked-in emulators can't handle it. Play it on decent PC with KEGA Fusion and it sounds pretty good.
Congratulations on 800k on your Quest for the Game Child!!
Why can't we get a dream cast one?
+Homer sams Cause that'd require a budget higher than a shoe-string.
There was nothing wrong with that Green Hill Zone music. That was just the Bad Future remix.
Oh there's that Sonic 2 Beta Title Screen. :V I don't get why they added that. The sound emulation in these are shit. You're better off getting a PSP and getting emulators. They really need to fix the sound issues in their emulator, there's no reason why their emulation is off when there are better emulators on the internet. Hell they should have asked Steve Snake if they could use Kega Fusion on these!
Yamaha owns the sound processor in the Genesis. that's why clones never sound good.
+John 2 if it's like the Radica then it's over boosting the signal and can be sorted with a mod on the circuit, possibly.
Unfortunately it's a emulation problem. I mean at least there's a fix for the Radica, but that's because it's the actual hardware just compacted into a tiny shell if I'm not mistaken. Atgames uses their own emulator, and it's not accurate. It all comes down to their sound chip emulation code, which something isn't adding up at all.
Well it's a system on a chip, but removing a transistor and making a few connections sorts it out. I doubt the audio is entirely emulation as it still needs some pre amp.
eLJaybud I suppose someone needs to open one of these things up and see if there really is a fix for the shitty sound. :P I don't have one, and I don't even touch hardware. I'm more of a ROM hacker so I just stick to that and let the other guys who are good with using a soldering iron do the hardware mods.
*sighs*
I remember having a Genisis when I was little. Didn't have many games for it, but we had Sonic 2, and played that quite a lot.
I miss that thing, though I did find a website to play all sorts of old games on.
Remember Phantom 2040? Anyone? That game was the tits.
YouSoSpice Is your pic Toothless with glasses?
The Furry Nazurah Yes?
YouSoSpice I love it
***** Why, of course.
Wasn't it also a TV show?
This exact "shimmering effect" on streets of rage happens on my android testing devices as well. My theory is its got to do with High res screens, if you emulate streets of rage on a 3ds xl there is no shimmering effect due to the extremely low resolution. Older games were built for low res tube tvs or arcade screens with scan lines. To fix this issue you can apply old lcd, scanline filters as they are meant to replicate older televisions on high res screens. That being said some things are impossible to emulate like the shimmering background from mega man (it was designed with the pal tv signal in mind) hope this helps someone. Love you videos I just started watching:D
Do what I did save up and buy a retron5
Or don't bother and just use an emulator, since Fusion works better and is more accurate than any crappy clone.
+leadbones if you want to play games on an HD TV and not hasle with emulators then get a retron5
+Corey Venice Hassle? LOL! Yeah, Sega Genesis is so complicated to emulate. Any resolution beyond the system's native resolution is a complete waste. These games look best on a CRT, and play best on original hardware. If you aren't going to do it that way, then emulation is the next best way. It's more accurate than any clone, and plays all of the games with resolution as high as you want. I play on my HD TV with emulators and original hardware, no trouble at all. The Retron 5 is garbage.
+Corey Venice Playing a MD game on an HDTV is going to be shit. It just will. Upscaling will destroy the picture and the end result will end up looking artificial. CRT is the way to go. Just get a good CRT like a Trinitron.
Get an emulator. You can connect your computer to your tv with a HDMI cable.
the audio pitch is off on all atgames sega genesis products but the flashback 2017 and 18
Yup I got one of these and what killed it for me was the lack of save feature, and I could never get more games on it even though it is the blue version. Thanks for the video sir! ^_^
Ah, the handheld Mega Drive, a mainstay of Argos catalogues for the last decade or so. I got one about seven years ago, and would say I've probably played it for a grand total of seven minutes
Good to see E-Swat on the bunch, my very first video game.
I just picked one of these up today as a prop for a video shoot. Great little gizmo here. I just wish you could save games...
Ashens should TOTALLY review the new game "Rare Replay" for Xbox One. It would be right up his alley.
I'm actually glad i watched this because i was thinking on buying one of these for me actually, i know i can just pick up my phone, download a emulator and bingo but you know, sometimes a object that was built specifically for that purpose is something that i find very handy to have. But the fact that it has no save feature and the audio quality is... Well... Crap. Really turns me off from buying this product. Thanks again Ashens, you spared the life of my pennies once again :3
Finally, Ashens is going to talk about these sound-corruptions!
Hell yeah, Golden Axe was my jam. Played for hours with my brother
In spite of the ear-bleeding sound, those actually look like damn nice portable Genesis units (and more practical than the well-intentioned yet ill-fated Nomad). Not even the 3DS Virtual Console supports Genesis games, just the GameGear (though it has its own enhanced versions of a few Genesis classics like Sonic and Streets of Rage that utilize the stereoscopic 3D of the console).
SATURDAY NIGHT SLAM MASTERS!!!!!!!!! I used to play the shit out of that on the SNES. It is truly an amazing game.
I own the blue console and I have to say, I do enjoy it very much. Yes I realize the sound is terrible, however it is not enough to take away from the amazingly smooth game play! I have also loaded roms on it and they work wonderfully. Strangely my console had 80 games, 40 licensed and 40 not.
Thanks a lot, now Zero Wing music plays on my head.
This brings me waaaaaaay back...
Hearing the Streets of Rage soundtrack gave me goosebumps. The memories...