Hyperkin RetroN 5 Retro Video Game Console
, by Av Kandola, 3 min reading time
If you’re a huge retro video games buff like me, chances are you have a bunch of classic video game consoles gathering dust and cluttering up your living room or den around an old tube TV.Add to that all the additional hardware, wires, and cartridges that go along with reliving the past and you have a mess of epic proportions. Perhaps you’re looking to get started with retro video gaming but can’t decide which console to get or maybe you’re on a tight budget? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have one console that could play all of your old favorite console cartridges?
If you’re a huge retro video games buff like me, chances are you have a bunch of classic video game consoles gathering dust and cluttering up your living room or den around an old tube TV.Add to that all the additional hardware, wires, and cartridges that go along with reliving the past and you have a mess of epic proportions. Perhaps you’re looking to get started with retro video gaming but can’t decide which console to get or maybe you’re on a tight budget? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have one console that could play all of your old favorite console cartridges?
Enter the RetroN 5 retro video game console from Hyperkin. The RetroN 5 has five cartridge ports supporting NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance making this a powerhouse of retro video gaming and living room organization goodness! The RetroN 5 has an HDMI port with a maximum output resolution of 720p and supports up to 60 frames per second. PAL and NTSC versions of games are supported for HD up-conversion even on NTSC televisions. Region locks and compatibility are no longer an issue as the RetroN5 console will play both PAL and NTSC cartridges eliminating any issues with CIC lockout chips and FX chips. The real magic of this console comes from its ability to up-convert the video signal to show crisp clean images in vibrant colors on an HDTV with a resolution output up to 720p. Classic games on an HDTV with the scanline filter added to give it that old TV feel look fantastic! You’ll never want to go back to that old tube TV again!
The RetroN 5 comes with a Bluetooth wireless controller equipped with a micro-switch Directional Pad and six face buttons, two shoulder buttons, Start and Select buttons, four LED light indicators to display the player number, a Home button, and two programmable macro buttons. The controller has an internal rechargeable Li-Ion battery than can be charged through any USB port. Still want that “original” console experience? The RetroN5 has six controller ports for the SNES, Genesis, and NES, so you can use your original console controller such as a Genesis controller to play Genesis games or get creative and plug a SNES controller to play Genesis games – with the RetroN 5 you can do that!
The RetroN 5 console has an easy to use, proprietary user-interface that allows for customization and a some awesome features like allowing players to instantly freeze and save a game at any point whether the original system allowed it or not – great for those hard as hell games that didn’t offer a native save system. Saving not enough? The famous Game Genie cheat system is built right in just in case you find your old games are a little more difficult then you remembered. Part of collecting retro video games is showing off online to all your friends - the RetroN 5 allows players to take cool screenshots at the touch of a button and save them to an SD card.
Making the life of a retro video game enthusiast a whole lot easier – button assignments can be configured through the user-interface for both the RetroN’s native controller and any of your original controllers, and the RetroN 5 saves these custom layouts, so that you do not have to constantly reconfigure the buttons. Very cool! Do yourself, your living room, and likely your family who doesn’t understand your obsession a favor and eliminate about a metric ton of old tube TV, plastic consoles, and tangled video wires from your life and pick up a RetroN 5 video game console.