Play five retro consoles on one machine; that’s the dream of Hyperkin’s recently announced gaming endeavor, the RetroN 5.
The RetroN 3 console by Hyperkin lets users play their well-cherished NES, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis games cartridges all conveniently on one piece of hardware, a true gift from the gaming heavens for any retro-gaming collector with games to spare, but not the space or the patience to deal with multiple legacy consoles tied to one TV.
In recent weeks to the lead up of this past weekend’s Midwest Gaming Classic in Brookfield, Wisconsin, it was believed that a successor to the console — the RetroN 4 – would be unveiled at Hyperkin’s official panel. To everyone’s surprise though, the company performed a classic rope-a-dope and instead took the covers off the RetroN 5.
“5” because this console features five cartridge slots for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Famicom, and Game Boy Advance. Although honestly, Hyperkin should just sticky-note a number “9” because you can also play Super Famicom, Mega Drive, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy cartridges. And if that’s not enough, the RetroN 5 even bypasses region locking that should ensure that both PAL & NTSC cartridges work too.
Games on the RetroN 5 can be upscaled to 720p via HDMI and has built-in shaders that convert the video signal to show clearer and cleaner images. The audio reproduction on the console even has an option to render audio “at a higher output frequency” resulting in a smoother and cleaner audio output.
Controller wise, the RetroN 5 will have wireless Bluetooth-powered ones (but you can still connect original NES, SNES, etc. controllers too) with a microswitch directional pad, six face buttons, two shoulder buttons, and a start & select button — fully programable in any manner so choosing. There’s also a Home button that syncs controllers to the RetroN 5 (up to 4 controllers can be assigned) and 4 LED light indicators to display the player number.
Although, that Home button plays a bigger role than just syncing controllers. When pressed, the Home button gives users access to the RetroN 5’s digital user interface, a system menu ? a first for all RetroN consoles — where you can select which gaming system to boot-up, make changes to button configurations, and load up save state files — another splendid first.
Oh what an age to be alive; during any point game progress can be saved and loaded on the console and upon shutdown the RetroN 5 will autosave for good measure.
Hyperkin hopes to release the RetroN 5 in July at a price point under $100 USD. God speed to them and all their efforts to piece together the ultimate retro-gaming machine, and here’s hoping it’s worth all the hype because there’s a very good chance that if it does it will be releatively huge. Also, I want one super bad, so fingers crossed!
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