Just plugged in my PAL system and SF2 runs at a snails pace so I would say it was accurate, midnight resistance is faster on a NTSC system too. As for sonic 2 we all know it runs slower on PAL its just this time they got music to play at the right speed unlike Sonic 1.
@@enigma776 no it aint ...its at least 20% slow ..... i own virtually every streetfighter game its my jam.... its what i do its my thing and trust me its slow as fuk
@@enigma776 something is up with your machine or rom cart ... same model 1 md and pal ... its faster and sound is faster ... using just md original cart and a crt. 8 dont care really mine is ok ... but that emulated sf2 is too slow regardless of what we both say.. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone.. unless your super poor
2:50 the top side chip is in a very typical packaging style for flash memory, so this one is likely just storage, with the main CPU being on the other side under that black blob.
I didn't know you had this. Funny thing, I'm sure I'm subscribed to your channel but I never get any notifications. I'd better go and check out the link I think.
@@RetroCore I can't really see who is subbed to my channel and sometime I did notice notification doesn't work perfect on UA-cam. Never the less awesome to have you with the Wicked Family !! You have a great collection of game systems by the way. :D
I bought one of these, exactly the same except branded as a Street Fighter arcade plug & play, and it just plays SFII instead of going to the menu. I'm going to open it up and see if I can somehow unlock all those other games, hopefully they're still on the ROM. Oh and as an Australian who grew up with PAL games, I know for sure this thing plays way slower than the original, at least SFII on my one does.
I admit this would be a nice little thing if done properly. By the way,i don't know if someone already said it but Sonic 2 is also running slow but you can't notice it because they sped up the music for the PAL release so it sounds normal but that's about it.
There's a jumper on the board (the 3 gold pads on the top side... Not sure if that does the trick I have a megadrive clone that changes to ntsc by cutting that trace between the second and third pads..
Don't worry we got arcade perfect 240p support @ 60hz ... we felt sorry for you being left with 480i when a well informed gamer could do it all 50hz60hz/480i/240p 😂..
don't compare a legit product from sega with licensed games to a bunch of illegal roms on a piece of garbage (fixed pal, speed issues, awful sound, battery only, etc) retro core is a hero for "playing" these junks and letting us know what NOT to buy :D (even if it is 20 USD only why would ANYONE take their precious time on something like THIS?! these kind of products just ruin the otherwise great games!!)
Sound Emulation seems to actually be pretty good, however the sound quality is horrid! I wonder if that could be fixed with some added Caps or Resistors? Makes me wonder if that's what those spots were for the Caps & they just decided to be cheap and not add them...
My guess is that the sound quality is because this is running Firecore hardware. Firecore hardware doesn't work too well with Megadrive games, as seen with Atgames and their Megadrives circa 2016 backward.
Yeah, few resistors should fix the audio feed. By the way, I checked the right channel option today. The machine actually outputs real stereo once modded.
@@RetroCore Wow, that's pretty nice! You should post a quick sequel video outlining the mods you did to it. For that vid, you should definitely try out the resistors to see if it helps the audio output, & post the change. Would be pretty cool to see.
@@RetroCore Pilotwings, SIm City, most RPG´s, and many mpre those runt o fast or with glitches on a SFC or US SNES. There were a few PAL optimized Sega Title, too, but not as much as on the SNES
@@Retro_Royal I remember seeing one MD game in PAL that was full screen. That game was Toejam and Earl 2. Can't thing of any others as I avoided PAL stuff like the plague.
@@RetroCore Sonic 3,Sonic and Knuckles,Alien Soldier were perfect on PAL. Later Megadrive games were well PAL optimised, Sega Saturn was also very good on PAL.
People are confused about PAL vs NTSC. 50fps is 17% lower than 60fps. These games seem slower than that. Also you wouldn't see borders on the sides of a PAL screen but you may see the redundant 8 pixels on the top and bottom as NTSC has an awkwardly lower horizontal resolution compared to PAL. Also, PAL has better image fidelity than NTSC and better colour reproduction.
It may be slow, but what's worse is the SOUND! It's so scratchy and peaking in the red, and it reminds me of a Genesis atgames model doing this and the 8 bit guy had to do some soldering/wiring and fix the sound distortion issue.
Yep, it definitely needs some resistors to fix the audio peaking. By the way, I checked the stereo and it does actually have true stereo output. Such a shame they were to cheap to wire that up.
Hm, so I wonder then if you change that timing crystal if you could make it run at 60Hz? You should try it, as well as wiring up another RCA socket for the Stereo channel! Could be a decent little mod considering the joystick is pretty good.
This is basically a MD clone just like the AtGames first release console. The flash chip built in is just a multi cartridge but soldered into the main board. I guess its possible to set it into the NTSC somewhat, probably by soldering two points or removing the connection. Why this is really interesting ? Well, buy a cheap knockoff MD controller, disassemble it, leave the cord outside, glue the board inside and solder the points connecting the buttons into the responsive pads at the controller board. And voila, you gor yourself a MD compatible fighting stick !
I think this unit would make for a good hack project. Im thinking of buying a pi Zero for next to nothing then loading a few 16 bit and 8 bit emulators on to it. That way I'll have a cool little plug in play emulation box.
They might as well just chuck the around 15gb FBA emulator n roms and you'll b good as it includes Megadrive, NeoGeo/MAME/Arcade, PC Engine, Master System games etc. :) I use it on my PS3, Switch and Vita...except no substitutes :p But I suppose u could then say might as well put a bartop around it with a monitor so it seems cool for what it is. Got me keen to get an OG Mega Drive stick.
Midnight resistance is VERY slow from what I remember. I beg to differ on it being regular. That’s a first too. You and I always are on the same page. Also, the sound seems off a bit too but I’m not sure. I realize it’s mono but... Have a great week my friend. Wait: Great list of games btw!!
One assumes the build quality is creaky, plasticky. Still, I cant help but to think, for 19€, this would make a decent housing for a Picade plug'n play. :)
That's what I'm going to do. Already have the parts to mod this in to a cool HD plug'n play. The actual housing if not bad. Those suction cups on the bottom are really strong too.
Either use pal rom or these machine have some problem when play the game, after all Sega console really hard to emulate even Sega Genesis mini have some minor problem, which many won't notice but for Hardcore "Sega fans" they do notice it, for me I don't notice it after someone post it online and I start notice it too.
Hello. I want to ask you. when you open it, the board is a orange-raspberry-bannana pi? or is a propietary emulation. I want to buy it, because i can separate the joystick and use the board for other things. I can use the buttons and the joystick for my emulation center, because is bigger than this machine. My question is - can i canibalize for the 2 things? use the board and use the parts of the joystick?
The board inside was a cheap 1chip effort. You can use it for parts but it's not as easy as putting a Raspberry Pi in there and connecting up a USB connection.
The Megadrive-on-a-chip is actually underneath that circular black glob. The chip on the other side is where the roms are stored. It looks like there are 3 pairs of jumpers to the right of that black glob. Maybe you can bridge one pair of the jumpers to change it to NTSC like in this clone: ua-cam.com/video/t3xh3Tk263Y/v-deo.html Also I think some games are optimized for PAL so they don't run slow.
Thanks for the info. I checked the jumpers today. They don't seem to make a difference although joining the far left and right together will reset the system but it won't restart. By the way, I can confirm it does output true stereo. Checked the RO pad. It is indeed the right audio channel. So this device is actually missing audio since it doesn't mix the left and right in to mono.
I've only reached the SF2' part but I'm 100% sure that the PAL version in not as slow while played on real hardware. The music is incredibly slow on your video.
I'm not sure. I've played next to no PAL Mega Drive games. If they're not that slow then this is really bad. But I do think it is a PAL system due to the boarded look the console has.
@Retro Core I'm from Belgium and I was a huge fan on SF2 on arcade then SNES and I owned also a PAL Megadrive (1st model) and I played the game on it for few days when I borrowed it from a friend. I would be on shock if the music was so slow. The borders make it look like Pal, but another theory is that they used a non original rom that was intended to run at 60hrz and they forced it to run at 50hrz. And as you can see at the title screen the rom was dumped from the recent 30th Anniversary Collection not from an original cartridge. That's why the music is broken.
This is a Chinesium device, so I can't say I'm too surprised. After all, a cheap USB arcade stick on Aliexpress is like around 20 $mackers before postage for one of 'em.
To answer the question on the thumbnail.. it sucks😅 a great idea, poor execution.. but what can you expect, right?😅 i do agree that it would be a good gift for kids..thanks for doing these clone retro consoles videos for us!
I have one of these. The difference is sf2 is ntsc but not the msi version, most of the games are in Russian, the menu music is different and boring, and sound emulation is terrible.
I don’t remember PAL being that slow. I think the sound especially seems too slow even for PAL.
Strange as some games work slow while others are fine. It is an odd beast.
Just plugged in my PAL system and SF2 runs at a snails pace so I would say it was accurate, midnight resistance is faster on a NTSC system too. As for sonic 2 we all know it runs slower on PAL its just this time they got music to play at the right speed unlike Sonic 1.
@@enigma776 no it aint ...its at least 20% slow ..... i own virtually every streetfighter game its my jam.... its what i do its my thing and trust me its slow as fuk
@@vasili1207 I just tested it on real hardware on a pal system with a pal cart it is that slow.
@@enigma776 something is up with your machine or rom cart ... same model 1 md and pal ... its faster and sound is faster ... using just md original cart and a crt. 8 dont care really mine is ok ... but that emulated sf2 is too slow regardless of what we both say.. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone.. unless your super poor
Pal games were never as slow as this thing is.
2:50 the top side chip is in a very typical packaging style for flash memory, so this one is likely just storage, with the main CPU being on the other side under that black blob.
Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure about that.
aaaah you have it to, idea for this plug and play stick was really cool.
Shame indeed about the poor signal output and PAL Games.
I didn't know you had this. Funny thing, I'm sure I'm subscribed to your channel but I never get any notifications. I'd better go and check out the link I think.
Turns out I wasn't. Just subbed. I'm sure I had subbed in the past.
@@RetroCore
I can't really see who is subbed to my channel and sometime I did notice notification doesn't work perfect on UA-cam.
Never the less awesome to have you with the Wicked Family !!
You have a great collection of game systems by the way. :D
Who here isn't a fan of the dude behind "Package From CHINA!" 😁
I've not gotten around to getting one of these yet. Thanks for the review.
I bought one of these, exactly the same except branded as a Street Fighter arcade plug & play, and it just plays SFII instead of going to the menu. I'm going to open it up and see if I can somehow unlock all those other games, hopefully they're still on the ROM. Oh and as an Australian who grew up with PAL games, I know for sure this thing plays way slower than the original, at least SFII on my one does.
Same here, pal was never this slow 🤔
I admit this would be a nice little thing if done properly. By the way,i don't know if someone already said it but Sonic 2 is also running slow but you can't notice it because they sped up the music for the PAL release so it sounds normal but that's about it.
There's a jumper on the board (the 3 gold pads on the top side... Not sure if that does the trick I have a megadrive clone that changes to ntsc by cutting that trace between the second and third pads..
Well spotted. If that does the trick it would improve this a lot. The overly hot audio should be fixable with a few resistors.
Poor PAL territories. We Americans never knew!
Don't worry we got arcade perfect 240p support @ 60hz ... we felt sorry for you being left with 480i when a well informed gamer could do it all 50hz60hz/480i/240p 😂..
You werent kidding. There are alot of great games. Better so than the genesis mini. If it wasnt pal version id definitely get it over the gen mini.
don't compare a legit product from sega with licensed games to a bunch of illegal roms on a piece of garbage (fixed pal, speed issues, awful sound, battery only, etc)
retro core is a hero for "playing" these junks and letting us know what NOT to buy :D
(even if it is 20 USD only why would ANYONE take their precious time on something like THIS?! these kind of products just ruin the otherwise great games!!)
Ooooh, I don't know Mark .Looks like a tough sale for me.
Anthony..
Can't argue with that.
Solder a usb cable to batt terminals.. jobs a good one..
When it comes to classic games the first thing i think of is Mah Jongg Cop...
Sound Emulation seems to actually be pretty good, however the sound quality is horrid! I wonder if that could be fixed with some added Caps or Resistors? Makes me wonder if that's what those spots were for the Caps & they just decided to be cheap and not add them...
My guess is that the sound quality is because this is running Firecore hardware.
Firecore hardware doesn't work too well with Megadrive games, as seen with Atgames and their Megadrives circa 2016 backward.
Yeah, few resistors should fix the audio feed. By the way, I checked the right channel option today. The machine actually outputs real stereo once modded.
@@RetroCore Wow, that's pretty nice! You should post a quick sequel video outlining the mods you did to it. For that vid, you should definitely try out the resistors to see if it helps the audio output, & post the change. Would be pretty cool to see.
I would have bite me tongue off before saying that as a teenager but, Nintendo converted a lot of its own Games to the SNES without PAL Borders.
Really? Then again, Nintendo didn't make many games themselves in PAL format.
@@RetroCore Pilotwings, SIm City, most RPG´s, and many mpre those runt o fast or with glitches on a SFC or US SNES. There were a few PAL optimized Sega Title, too, but not as much as on the SNES
@@Retro_Royal I remember seeing one MD game in PAL that was full screen. That game was Toejam and Earl 2. Can't thing of any others as I avoided PAL stuff like the plague.
@@RetroCore thunderforce 4 ran at 60hz on pal megadrive
@@RetroCore Sonic 3,Sonic and Knuckles,Alien Soldier were perfect on PAL.
Later Megadrive games were well PAL optimised, Sega Saturn was also very good on PAL.
People are confused about PAL vs NTSC. 50fps is 17% lower than 60fps. These games seem slower than that. Also you wouldn't see borders on the sides of a PAL screen but you may see the redundant 8 pixels on the top and bottom as NTSC has an awkwardly lower horizontal resolution compared to PAL. Also, PAL has better image fidelity than NTSC and better colour reproduction.
Shout out patreon crew! 👍🏻😊
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Feel the love! 😂
the china sanwa jlf clones are alright in these china pandora boxes and stuff like this.
pretty ok
It may be slow, but what's worse is the SOUND! It's so scratchy and peaking in the red, and it reminds me of a Genesis atgames model doing this and the 8 bit guy had to do some soldering/wiring and fix the sound distortion issue.
Yep, it definitely needs some resistors to fix the audio peaking. By the way, I checked the stereo and it does actually have true stereo output. Such a shame they were to cheap to wire that up.
Hm, so I wonder then if you change that timing crystal if you could make it run at 60Hz? You should try it, as well as wiring up another RCA socket for the Stereo channel! Could be a decent little mod considering the joystick is pretty good.
Sounds like a good idea for a project, its cheap enough!
The stereo sound I tested out today. This thing actually does out put real stereo once modded.
This is basically a MD clone just like the AtGames first release console. The flash chip built in is just a multi cartridge but soldered into the main board. I guess its possible to set it into the NTSC somewhat, probably by soldering two points or removing the connection.
Why this is really interesting ? Well, buy a cheap knockoff MD controller, disassemble it, leave the cord outside, glue the board inside and solder the points connecting the buttons into the responsive pads at the controller board. And voila, you gor yourself a MD compatible fighting stick !
I think this unit would make for a good hack project. Im thinking of buying a pi Zero for next to nothing then loading a few 16 bit and 8 bit emulators on to it. That way I'll have a cool little plug in play emulation box.
Sonic 2 and some other Genesis games is optimized for PAL hardware
I see. Someone else mentioned this also,
Looks like a neat little device i would get one but i have a flash cart with every MD and Genesis game on it.
PAL is not that slow, I grew up with that.
Maybe if you combine NTSC games with PAL, dunno :-/
It's possible. I'm not sure to be honest. I do know that it's not an NTSC image though. It's too squashed for that.
They might as well just chuck the around 15gb FBA emulator n roms and you'll b good as it includes Megadrive, NeoGeo/MAME/Arcade, PC Engine, Master System games etc. :) I use it on my PS3, Switch and Vita...except no substitutes :p But I suppose u could then say might as well put a bartop around it with a monitor so it seems cool for what it is. Got me keen to get an OG Mega Drive stick.
If you can check what voltage the console ran on you can definitely use a variable power supply to power it up.
It's got to be 5volts 1amp at that's what the input on the board says.
Midnight resistance is VERY slow from what I remember. I beg to differ on it being regular. That’s a first too. You and I always are on the same page. Also, the sound seems off a bit too but I’m not sure. I realize it’s mono but... Have a great week my friend. Wait: Great list of games btw!!
I'll have to get Midnight Resistance out and have a game. I own the original Japanese one bug I'm sure it's the same speed. Hmm, maybe I'm forgetting.
another great video, Mark. it would be great using a crt tv for the complete retro experience!
Sadly I don't have the space for one.
Wonder if replacing the oscillator with a faster one would get you to 60hz!?. Looks like the one installed is running at 27mhz
I think that would do the trick.
One assumes the build quality is creaky, plasticky. Still, I cant help but to think, for 19€, this would make a decent housing for a Picade plug'n play. :)
That's what I'm going to do. Already have the parts to mod this in to a cool HD plug'n play.
The actual housing if not bad. Those suction cups on the bottom are really strong too.
Either use pal rom or these machine have some problem when play the game, after all Sega console really hard to emulate even Sega Genesis mini have some minor problem, which many won't notice but for Hardcore "Sega fans" they do notice it, for me I don't notice it after someone post it online and I start notice it too.
I recommend a sanwa JLF lever and hayabusa buttons.
I have a box of Sanwa parts just waiting to be used 👍. Actually, the electronics came yesterday so this might be. Project I do over the weekend.
Hello. I want to ask you. when you open it, the board is a orange-raspberry-bannana pi? or is a propietary emulation. I want to buy it, because i can separate the joystick and use the board for other things. I can use the buttons and the joystick for my emulation center, because is bigger than this machine. My question is - can i canibalize for the 2 things? use the board and use the parts of the joystick?
The board inside was a cheap 1chip effort. You can use it for parts but it's not as easy as putting a Raspberry Pi in there and connecting up a USB connection.
Get an 80s video monitor for that baby.
The Megadrive-on-a-chip is actually underneath that circular black glob. The chip on the other side is where the roms are stored. It looks like there are 3 pairs of jumpers to the right of that black glob. Maybe you can bridge one pair of the jumpers to change it to NTSC like in this clone: ua-cam.com/video/t3xh3Tk263Y/v-deo.html Also I think some games are optimized for PAL so they don't run slow.
Thanks for the info.
I checked the jumpers today. They don't seem to make a difference although joining the far left and right together will reset the system but it won't restart.
By the way, I can confirm it does output true stereo. Checked the RO pad. It is indeed the right audio channel. So this device is actually missing audio since it doesn't mix the left and right in to mono.
Slooow Fighterrrr 2222....
Can you sideload the Pxrnhub app on this thing?
I doubt it.
Obviously I live in the PAL Region, and Trust me... 6:14 - That is FAR SLOWER than it should be!!! WOW! Thats BAD EMULATION in this thing!
Bummer. But not to worry as I have a plan for this stick.
I've only reached the SF2' part but I'm 100% sure that the PAL version in not as slow while played on real hardware. The music is incredibly slow on your video.
I'm not sure. I've played next to no PAL Mega Drive games. If they're not that slow then this is really bad. But I do think it is a PAL system due to the boarded look the console has.
@Retro Core I'm from Belgium and I was a huge fan on SF2 on arcade then SNES and I owned also a PAL Megadrive (1st model) and I played the game on it for few days when I borrowed it from a friend. I would be on shock if the music was so slow. The borders make it look like Pal, but another theory is that they used a non original rom that was intended to run at 60hrz and they forced it to run at 50hrz. And as you can see at the title screen the rom was dumped from the recent 30th Anniversary Collection not from an original cartridge. That's why the music is broken.
Nearly 2020 a device like this is unforgiven. Bad emulation, A/V mono output, no savestates... Total crap.
Thanks for showing Mark!
I wonder if this could be modded with a pi Zero. That's powerful enough for MD emulation.
This is a Chinesium device, so I can't say I'm too surprised. After all, a cheap USB arcade stick on Aliexpress is like around 20 $mackers before postage for one of 'em.
To answer the question on the thumbnail.. it sucks😅 a great idea, poor execution.. but what can you expect, right?😅 i do agree that it would be a good gift for kids..thanks for doing these clone retro consoles videos for us!
No worries. Actually, I've bought some parts to make this device in to a perfect Mega Drive plug'n play. May start the project over the weekend.
Mega Drive in an Arcade Joystick? Interesting, but the sound is bad from what I can tell.
It's too hot. The sound emulation is a bit iffy as well.
@@RetroCore I see.
I need one, its funny to play
Cool man l want one please
holy cow
We just have to know is this better or worse than at games
Hmm, with some mods to the audio to make it less "hot" and an NTSC mod it mad be better.
I can assure you that pal games don't run that slow!!!!
Honestly I hate playing with arcade joysticks depending on which game genre it's based on.
I find them good for fighting games mostly.
Yeah because you're gonna need fluid motion to control, something like Isometric games work better with a joystick in my eyes.
It looks kinda shitty, but i want one... lol
Can you play 2 players on this thanks
Nope.
I have one of these. The difference is sf2 is ntsc but not the msi version, most of the games are in Russian, the menu music is different and boring, and sound emulation is terrible.
Maybe an older revision?
@@RetroCore Possibly, but I did get it from Aliexpress.
Shame, it looks good and button/joystick switches are nice...
Needs a little mod. Put a pi Zero in there for some good emulation.
Laggy frames-dropping showcase games have me felt the cringe.
If speed up this video to 1.25 it's whole different story.
THIS thing is horrendously slow. It's a disgrace to even call it pal
Such a waste of a micro switch joystick. If this ran in NTSC speeds and had an HDMI out, I'd buy 10 of them.
Hold on to that thought. I have a mod job in mind for this.
@@RetroCore Nice!
Hopefully a video coming next week.
These games sounded bad mark
Yeah, it's way too hot. The system needs some resistors to bring down the amplitude of the audio.
That’s not even PAL. Just shit emulation
Dear God that sounds horrible! It's so crackly and distorted.