So, one month after I bought it it has finally arrived. And I was surprised at how tiny the package actually is. As you can see, you can easily sit it on top of a PS3 game case, which is already pretty small by disc case standards.
Anyway, I got my trusty kitchen knife, and went to open this bad boy up.
Ooooh, two layers of bubble wrap, that's gonna be fun later when I'm bored out of my mind, but that's somehow more protection than what my Xbox One S had when it arrived, so... Good job, I guess, Powkiddy.
One layer done and I was getting quite excited, I don't know why. New toy = brain goes brrr
But... Let's just say I was not very surprised by the box itself. Of course, it's Chinese. It's running whatever Linux distro they could fit into that poor ARM CPU, but... this is a really generic looking box. Not surprised, just, kind of... a feeling of deja vú.
Wow. 64 bits. That's more than my Super Nintendo! I don't see why they'd advertise this, or the consoles it can run, or anything at all.
What is a multilingual language? Shouldn't it be multiple languages?
Well, made in China.
Yeah, the colour is correct, nice. And that USB cable is actually type C, which is pretty impressive for something that costs $39 USD.
The manual is... Useless. You'll find more info on the internet than on that piece of paper. It's not even big enough to wipe your... Never mind.
Fairly useless diagram... Okay, enough of the box. Let's get to the meaty parts.
"Unsheathing" the upper part from the bottom part reveals the goods, and it comes with immediate disappointment. A warning.
It's something I already knew because I read guides and how to use a CFW, bla bla bla, but to a novice user... this can definitely throw them off.
Alright, we ignore that because we're smart boys and girls and anything in between if you're into that.
This is it. And I wasn't expecting much. I'm not really disappointed. It's to be expected. The unboxing experience is supposed to be quick and painless, and that part... Well, they did good.
Now here's the bad boy. Closed. Looking sexy (for a cheap Chinese handheld knocking off a model of a 21 year old console. Although it's a good model of a great console, so no complaints there.
Here's it open and running its default operating system, some sort of Dingux distro or whatever. They throw this crap into every emulation handheld, and you better get rid of it as soon as you get them, which I did.
This does come with a couple thousand roms, and you know, that's a little illegal... But eh, I'm from Brazil, it's not news.
This is the GMenuNX version it's running, which to be fair, is not a bad menu. It also runs on the PocketGo (and both handhelds are really similar), but yeah. I got rid of the default firmware because I want performance.
Before I get to that though, the UX, let me talk about the feel.
It feels... drumrolls
Incredibly comfortable.
Even for my big ass hands, and I'm 183cm (6' for the Americans in the crowd).
It's really nice to hold, the buttons are a little mushy but definitely comfortable and remind me a lot of the GBA SP even if they are a different shape.
The dpad is pretty good, with me trying out some fighting games and immediately being able to do the moves I'm accustomed to (if you're wondering, it was obviously KoF, I'm latino).
The L, R, L2 and R2 triggers are pretty clicky and really nice to use, felt very natural doing powerslides on Mario Kart - Super Circuit.
Now; here's the custom firmware:
I booted it up, and it defaulted to the Neo Geo Pocket Color emulator. It's almost as if it knows me, aww.
But anyway, the default interface looks great, but it's a little too... cluttered for me. So I decided to change it, which is really easy to do.
Just press R to get into the settings pane, go to skins, and choose whichever one you like.
I settled for this one, because it's a lot simpler and easier to navigate.
Now, what about gaming performance? It's just $39... It can't be that great, right?
Wrong.
Unfortunately I couldn't get much footage, but every single GBA game I tried ran perfectly. And there are a lot of settings to change too.
I also tested out a bunch of homebrew that comes with the machine, such as my beloved Tyrian 2000, Doom, an Outrun port, Cave Story, etc, they all run great.
Super Nintendo is... a little hit and miss. Some games will just run perfectly fine with everything maxed out and at fullscreen, such as Super Mario World (all using the PocketSnes emulator).
Some need a little tinkering, such as F-Zero, a personal favorite of mine. Running it at fullscreen makes it a little slower, feels like 30FPS.
Making it unscaled gives you some black bars, but it's so tolerable that I found myself playing it until the battery died.
Plugged it back in, and tried out some NeoGeo. Immediately went for KoF, which runs phenomenally well... Most of the time. Sometimes there are little freezes in the gameplay, which are really really odd. But they're pretty rare, so I found myself getting tons of enjoyment out of that.
MAME is completely unplayable on titles of the 16bit generation such as Raiden, but works fine with stuff like Pacman, Dig-Dug and Rally-X.
Although, I'm fine with Raiden not working, since the Genesis version is pretty good.
And talking about the Genesis... Just absolutely perfect. Runs any older SEGA game great. If you're a SEGA lunatic like me, this thing will be great for parties that you didn't really wanna go to.
You can see that everything just looks newer and better with the CFW I'm using. Performance is better, looks are better, there are more apps, more homebrew, more ports, more everything. If you're getting one of these cheapo Chinese handhelds, use the Miyoo CFW.
Here's a link for the Github page: https://github.com/TriForceX/MiyooCFW
Very simple installation, and lots of tutorials out there.
I'm going to go do some crazy stuff, such as trying out PS1 now so I'll see you guys later. This thing will definitely see a lot of use.
