First impressions were great. A brand new and very cute little Mega Drive that not only has a bunch of built-in games, but also accepts old Mega Drive cartridges. It comes with two six button control pads, it's region-free, and it even has a little PAL - NTSC switch on the back to play imported games at the correct speed. One would think the only minor niggle would be the composite output (which itself is better than the RF most of us had to make do with back when the Mega Drive was king). In any case, it's a decent enough image for these games (too clear and you'd see all the massive pixels), and definitely an improvement over RF, if that's what you used to use. Of note is that stereo sound is not possible on this unit. It only outputs a single channel down the white (left) audio cable.

So far, so good, then. As soon as you get it home and open it, you realize it's all a bit 'too good to be true'. This product has that awfully cheap, plastic-y feel of extremely… more »

First impressions were great. A brand new and very cute little Mega Drive that not only has a bunch of built-in games, but also accepts old Mega Drive cartridges. It comes with two six button control pads, it's region-free, and it even has a little PAL - NTSC switch on the back to play imported games at the correct speed. One would think the only minor niggle would be the composite output (which itself is better than the RF most of us had to make do with back when the Mega Drive was king). In any case, it's a decent enough image for these games (too clear and you'd see all the massive pixels), and definitely an improvement over RF, if that's what you used to use. Of note is that stereo sound is not possible on this unit. It only outputs a single channel down the white (left) audio cable.

So far, so good, then. As soon as you get it home and open it, you realize it's all a bit 'too good to be true'. This product has that awfully cheap, plastic-y feel of extremely shoddily-manufactured rubbish from some random factory in China. The console is lighter than my wallet. Feels hollow. Just by changing the orientation of the control pad, the buttons clatter about unbelievably. The pads are also quite tiny. Not the size of the genuine articles. They're about the size of your average mobile phone, give or take. Like scale models of the original pads.

Now, these are all significant downsides, but we haven't even gone into playing it. Upon turning it on, I realized that what we have here is NOT a Mega Drive, but in fact an emulator in disguise. This would be OK if we were running our emulator on a modern PC, but we're not. I tried putting a couple of old carts in it. Sonic seemed to work fine, and Micro Machines *played* fine, but the sound was glitching all over the place.

As mentioned by others, the built-in games play at the wrong speed. I think this is because the built-in games are the NTSC versions, but they will only output in PAL (for some reason, the switch on the back of the unit does nothing), causing the games to run 17% slower than they should. Since a lot of games weren't optimized for PAL, our versions were 17% slower anyway. But a lot of the big blockbuster games (Sonic 2 onwards, Earthworm Jim, etc) were optimized for PAL. It's cool that Sonic & Knuckles is built-in, but it's strange playing it in what almost seems like slow-motion.

Anyway, all these problems would ultimately be forgiveable if it wasn't built to such a low standard. A mate of mine has one of the original Mega Drive units (the big one). It is some 19 years old, and works now as it did when he bought it. This? It broke on me after three days. I can forgive crap controllers when the unit is compatible with the original peripherals. I can forgive the hit and miss emulation, so long as the majority of games run without any huge issues.

What I can't forgive is such terrible workmanship. I know it's gotten all positive reviews so far, but I get the impression that people just open it up, scream with joy, and proceed to post a beaming review of it because they're so delighted, without spending some real time with it to get to know the pros and cons. I've had McDonalds Happy Meal toys that are sturdier than this piece of garbage. My advice is to just get a real Mega Drive. They're built to last, and one will set you back around a tenner or so. Incidentally, I think Play should have a retro section, or at least allow Play Traders to sell retro stuff. In any case - avoid this, however alluring it may be.