The Super Retro Champ is yet another handheld to come out of CES this year, and although it’s not as strong as the newly revealed Alienware handheld, it’s certainly interesting for those of us that have still kept hold of our beloved SNES and SEGA Genesis cartridges.
Retro gaming experts known as My Arcade revealed its latest portable gaming console named the Super Retro Champ, a large, bulky handheld designed to bring life back to your old Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis cartridges. My Arcade certainly don’t make the best retro handhelds on the market, but the Super Retro Champ is definitely one of their most innovative products they have produced.
The handheld features a large 7″ display that is surrounded by a large black border with buttons, speakers and ports. It’s a very large handheld, some would say too large, but that’s because the technology behind it also needs to house two old school cartridges, which as we know, isn’t small! It features ABXY buttons on the right, along with your start/select, a speaker grill and a light to indicate if Player 2 has connected their controller.
On the left hand side, a durable looking DPAD, a reset button, and again a controller light and speaker. We’re not fans of having speaker grills at the front as sometimes your hand gets in the way, just like the Game Kiddy 350H, but this handheld is so long, that this will not be a problem.
On the back of the Super Retro Champ you will notice a lot is going on. You obviously have your two cartridge ports which take up most of the space, two “shoulder” buttons, volume buttons, many ports and two controller slots. Why controller slots? Well, if you look closely, you will also see a kick stand on this thing, the Super Retro Champ is also designed to be a console. Simply pop the kick stand, insert the HDMI cable, add your controllers and boom, you have a portable SNES and Sega Genesis that you can take to friends and families houses. What better way to play your best SNES games on the go with a friend?
That’s what makes this handheld so great, its not just a portable handheld, it’s a portable console, but you’ll need to remember your controllers when leaving your pad. Just like the Nintendo Switch, it can also go into dock mode. My Arcade include two wireless pads that allow gamers to play on the go. This is great for train journeys, unplanned Street Fighter battles or a weekend away with your partner.
Inside of the Retro Champ there’s a large 3000MAH+ battery that can power your console for up to 5 hours on one charge. It’s a large screen to power, so we don’t know exactly how long it will last, but that’s what My Arcade are stating. Some of you may be wondering why there’s a 16:9 screen on a console that only plays 4:3 games, well you most likely have the ability to stretch your games into full screen.
It’s certainly one of the weirder looking handheld consoles we’ve seen this year, heck, it even have a built in cartridge cleaning kit, should your legendary blowing skills not be up to scratch. They’ve thought of it all, and with a price tag of $109.99, it needs to be better quality than most of the products that My Arcade have pumped out, but we believe in them.
There’s no memory card slot, no onboard memory, and no USB port, so you can’t upload your own ROMs. You’ll simply need to save your states onto the cartridges themselves. That’s if you have cartridges that is. If not, eBay is your friend, but be prepared to pay a pretty price for those more popular games out there, as you all know the retro gaming market is becoming a collectors paradise. Many of them sapping up cartridges for their collection, and making those on the market even more expensive.
