These days, Nostalgia is strong. As is natural when people grow older, they long to experience their childhood again. For the generations that are in 20’s and 30’s, they likely grew up with video games. Everything from Mario to Sonic , to even Bubsy the squirrel. People are longing to re-experience their childhood gaming memories.
This has led a few companies such as Nintendo and Sony, releasing mini versions of their old consoles. These consoles sold like hotcakes, demand heavily outweighed supply and these new plug and play consoles flew off the shelves.
With the increase of these plug and play consoles, copies have inevitably arrived.
Cheap knock-off consoles have always been a thing, as far back as the early 90’s, companies have been trying to lure un-knowledgable parents and grandparents into buying these consoles for their children.
In this modern era, it seems fitting that knock-off consoles would attempt to copy the retro plug and play consoles. Chinese companies have done this and more. They have attempted to cash in on the sparked interest in retro games and released tons of “retro game emulators” varying in price and size. Take a look at Alibaba on any given day and you’ll see tons of them.
The problem is, they don’t work. Its not that the small mini consoles aren’t able to emulate retro consoles well. Its just that they don’t care to put any effort into them. Chinese manufacturers spend maybe a dollar or two to produce these consoles and sell them for as low as $10 a piece. There is no absolutely no quality control on these products and the emulation is often bad at best.
What gets me is that it wouldn’t be expensive to actually create a proper emulation console that works and works well. Mobile chip sets are more powerful than ever and more affordable than ever before. Companies like GPD have cashed in on this trend by making emulation consoles that work, and work really well.
If companies didn’t want to spend as much money they could just as well throw something comparable to a raspberry pi into a Gameboy shell and put some open source 8 and 16-bit emulators on it and call it a day. It would work and work decently without having to create almost any custom firmware or software. Are Chinese companies so committed to providing poor products or is there something else at play?
I’m really not sure either way. These consoles have become almost invasive on sites like eBay, and often are bought for more than they are worth.
As the next couple of years will inevitably bring us a new generation of plug and play consoles, we’ll continue to see more and more of these cheap knock off plug and play consoles. I personally hope that eventually we’ll see at least a slight increase in the quality of these machines. So that those who get scammed by buying these consoles, at least can get some use from them.
