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There has never been a better time to be a gamer, and a big part of that is all these amazing retro

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devices that are coming out that make playing old games better than ever. And today we have the

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analog duo. This is the first PC Engine TurboGrafx 16 focus FPGA console, which is pretty cool.

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You might not have ever played the TurboGrafx 16 if you're in the west, but the PC Engine,

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the Japanese counterpart, was actually a better seller than the Mega Drive, which is the Genesis

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in Japan. And it has probably one of the most underappreciated libraries of any console ever.

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It has the best classic venue in my opinion. It's got the Bonk and Arizona games. It has

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the start of the Ease franchise. And finally, it's easy to play. Getting a TurboGrafx 16

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is pretty expensive. You can get PC Engines for cheap, but they look like a smoker,

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ate them and spat them out just like this. This white console is kind of pre-smoker colored,

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and I think I kind of dig it. The console itself is very reminiscent of a Turbo Duo,

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which is the combo device that they released that was both the PC Engine and the CD add-on built in,

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because the CD add-on actually came later and with it brought some of the console's

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absolute best game. So this is a pretty small package. It's a lot wider than other analog

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consoles, but it's not deeper, which is nice. So that'll fit very well. And because there's no

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cartridge going on top, you could fit this in quite a small little space on your retro shelf.

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On the front, we have our power, our hue card slot, and our CD slot with the eject button.

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On the back, we have our SD card slot. Ours came pre-loaded with an SD card that has some cover

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art on it, but yours will not. We have an HDMI slot that can do up to 1080p60. You have your two USBs

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where you can use any wired controller, which is really nice. And this one's actually Type-C,

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which is sort of new for the full-fledged analog consoles. The NT Noir, the Super NT,

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and the Mega SG are all micro USB, which is not a huge deal, because I'm not unplugging,

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replugging all the time, but it's nice that they've entered the 21st century. On the bottom,

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we have this cool little analog pattern. I think it's quite attractive, and it'll help

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prevent it from slipping and sliding. It's quite grippy. And the neat little wavy pattern,

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just like the turbo duo had back in the day. On the top, we have this transparent bit

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that looks like you should be able to see the CD spinning, but there's actually another smoker

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beige piece of plastic underneath. So you cannot. On the side, we have the PC Engine Controller

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port. It's cool that you can use an original controller, but if you want to use a turbo

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graphics controller, you actually need a little adapter. They're cheap, but it would have been

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nice for them to include it in the box. The compromise is that they've built 2.4G,

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as well as Bluetooth, right into the console. So you can use the 8-bit dough wireless ones

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without a dongle. We also have our headphone jack, just like the original console had,

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as well as our volume rocker and the pairing button, as well as what I believe are controller

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port indicators. All right, let's see what else is in the box. We have a little analog sticker,

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FPGA, and a quick start guide. We have the full manual PDF, as well as the most recent firmware,

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which is nice, but even better is the jailbroken firmware that's just been released, which we will

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try. Also included is a, is that what, three feet C to C cable, which works with the included block.

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Analog really recommends that you use this block. There's been some reports of voltage issues with

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other ones. It's a bit of a shame. I like to have four six port USB things, so I can power a bunch

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of devices at once. So having to use an entire block just for this to be safe is a bit of an

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issue. And honestly, I probably would risk it. We're going to be using the white analog today,

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but it also comes in black. So it's just a preference thing. One thing of note is that

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analog has finally caught up to their demand. For many years, it took years to get stuff that

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you ordered. What isn't awesome is that there's actually no controllers included with the device.

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I understand you're trying to keep costs down, but it's kind of frustrating if you don't know that

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and you get this beautiful device and you can't play it. And most stores aren't carrying these.

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So you have to wait another week or so to get your controller. Just something of notes. Make

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sure you get a controller when you buy this. All right, let's turn it on. In terms of games,

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we have the super rare Keith Courage that you don't see at every game store ever. Powergolf,

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which I've never played, although I've been told it's extremely difficult,

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as well as my favorite Shrek 3D. We're playing on a 1440p display, which is an ideal.

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The analogs cap out currently at 1080p. And so there'll be some scaling happening in the monitor.

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That's fine for today. It gives us an idea of what we're working with. Okay,

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we load right into a little tutorial. Pairing is surprisingly easy once you read the manual.

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You hit the pairing button on the console, then the 8-bit dough button on the controller,

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and then hold select for it to flash quickly. And then it paired in just a second. And away we go.

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That's not bad. Truly not a big deal. I wish the pairing button on the console was not so flush

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with it. I'm not sure if I'm touching an LED or the button. For the best experience,

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Duo requires a dedicated SD card. Uh, it's good that I got one in there from you.

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Memory's allowed to save states, capture screenshots,

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libraries, reference level database to catalog your game collection, the games you play.

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This is kind of neat. In your library, every time you play a game, it'll add it,

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and it'll show the time played and theoretically could have the art. So you'll have a nice little

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database of all the games you've played. It's not ripping the game seemingly to the device

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like a poly megawood. The whole point of this over a mister is that you want to put your real

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games in. If you're buying this to rip games to this and you play other consoles, just get a mister.

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Display modes. Original display modes record the appearance of the original hardware display,

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such as the PC Engine LT and PC Engine GT. I'm not super familiar with the specific display modes

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that they're talking about that are console-based. Um, but I do play a lot on a CRT. And that's one

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thing I really like about analog consoles on modern displays is that they do a good job

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approximating what a CRT would do to the very primitive sprites. Here we are at the main menu.

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We got insert game. We don't have a game in right now. That's fine. We have our library,

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which shows all the games that have been played on this console. If you're not familiar with the

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PC Engine slash Turbo graphics, it's kind of hybrid 8-bit 16-bit. So it's more primitive than

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the Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo, but it's much more advanced than the NES or the Master

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system. And you can see right away with the amount of colors as well as the sprite detail.

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We're going to go to settings, duo, system, and then we can mess around with my favorite part of

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the settings. So we have our display mode. So based on the different consoles, they'll all have

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slightly different color profiles. So we have our display modes. We have our mode settings where

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you can adjust sharpness. Inside the size menu, we can set a custom scale with our resolution here,

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or make sure that we're at integer scales of three, four, five. If you're on a 1080p display,

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I don't think there's a reason to not do five necks. We have an option to show or unshow over

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scan. We can choose between RGB and composite color. In terms of audio, we have the HuCard audio,

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as well as our volume selector. It's nice. This can actually play every PC Engine game ever,

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including the super graphics games. There was like 16 of them that were made. And so it's very

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nice that it's just included here. We have CD-ROM options. We can choose the CD-ROM format if we're

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trying to like lock it into one specific one. We'll leave that on auto detect. We have our

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controller options. Again, auto detect. I'm going to trust that it works. That's one of the strengths

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of the analog systems. When I play on my minster at home, I often have to tinker with things and

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mess around with things. If I want just to plug something in and it works exactly as intended,

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I generally choose an analog console for that. This is apparently OS 7, but if you have an analog

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pocket, it's going to look very familiar, although it doesn't have open FPGA. And so I'm a little

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bit disappointed that you don't get access to the multitude of cores that are designed for open FPGA

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use. And I think that's especially disappointing considering that the card adapters for the

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analog pocket have come out. And you can actually put HuCards into an analog pocket using the adapters

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now. And there's a lot more options available through the pocket if you're playing handheld,

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and they're even updating it to be more versatile through the dock. At the end of the day, the

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thing that matters is, does it look good and does it play well? And because this is an FPGA system,

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it's probably going to be friggin awesome. There's in perceptible lag. They claim it's not emulation,

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but FPGA is still emulation. It's just way better hardware design specifically for this one task.

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And so I could play this game, but I want to play a game that I actually know much better. And that

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is Castlevania Rondo of Blood. The fact that I want to just play this game and stop talking tells

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me that this is a very accurate experience. Even wirelessly, I don't feel any lag. It's an immediate

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response. It looks good. I wish I had other filters I could play with to get a preferred look. But in

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terms of play experience, this feels awesome. As much as I want to sit here and play through this

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entire game right now, I'm going to call in Tanner, who has a whole new perspective on retro games

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for me. All right, what game do you want to play? What do we have? We have, I think our best games

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are legally backed up in this beautiful Shrek double dragon. We have Garud and Tetsu special,

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which I don't know. And Bong 3, which is another great single player game.

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One of the issues I'm seeing now that we're connected to controllers is that there's no

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indicator on the controllers, which port they're plugged into. There's the indicator on the side

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of here that tells you how many are plugged in. That's not necessarily the fault of analog,

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but that's a little bit of an oversight for this controller. Maybe they'll make a v2 that has like

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more LEDs to indicate what we're doing. Errgolf, Bong 3, what are we doing? Bong 3.

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Bong 3? Two player? Two player. It's probably like Mario where it takes turns. Oh, it's like Sonic,

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where we can't play at the same time. So yeah, when you jump on stuff, you have to use your

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forehead to see. Oh, no. I was so excited to be giant for a second. Honestly, this picture looks good.

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The sound we're using a monitor, so I don't have very high expectations for the sound.

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I assume the sound is probably pretty good. Yeah, that's one of the things I like about

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analog consoles is that the sound works pretty well. For my mister, there's some consoles that just

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in certain situations sound off. And I never really feel that with my analog consoles. I always

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am pretty darn certain that I'm getting the right experience. People that are a little more

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familiar with this library games have noted that there are some audio inconsistencies compared

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to original hardware. But it seems like it's nothing so serious that if this is your first

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time playing PCN2 games, you would notice. Let's change the game. We're going to eject this one.

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That's not bad. Apparently, some people have been complaining about how far it spits this out.

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And it seems like a reasonable spot where I can just kind of pull it out. There are reports of

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disc becoming scratched in the console. These are old discs, so these are not a good indicator.

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Hold on. Before you do that, before you do that, let's take a look at what the bottom looks like.

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You're smart. Oh, there's some chonks. Yeah, these are not well-cared for discs to begin with.

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All right. Double drag. Double dragon. Let's go punch some other floppers. I think that the

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PCN2 is such an interesting piece of hardware. Hold on. What's happening with the sprites here?

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Are you seeing what's happening? Yeah, that flickering. I'm not sure if that's

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accurate to the original experience or not, but it's definitely noticeable. I found it interesting

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how neatly between 8th and 16th bit the PCN2 sits. It looks better than NES games,

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but not quite as good as Genesis games. I was just playing Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis,

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and it looks so much better than this, but this is so much better than double dragon on the NES.

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Oh, I forgot about price. It's $250. It seems like a lot, but for the polished experience that

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you're getting, I think it's pretty fair. You'll know if that's worth it to you. Overall, if you're

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the audience for this, you probably already know it. If you want a very easy out-of-the-box

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experience that's very accurate, very simple to use, the analog consoles are great. If you're

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someone that's trying to maximize your dollar and get every system and you're not that concerned with

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plugging in real cartridges or CDs, this probably isn't the best move. Even with a jailbreak,

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it makes a lot more sense to save the money on this and your next analog console and combine that

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and get a mister. The mister experience is just as accurate, takes a little more work to get running

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properly, but then you have access to pretty much everything all the way up to PS1. Playing this now,

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I do not forget my period. I got exactly what I thought I was going to get out of the box,

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and the fact that it's already jailbroken means that all of my legally backed up ROMs are easily

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playable. I don't have to burn a bunch of disks to make that happen, and I'm a big fan of easy

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and consistent, like ShortCircuit. If you liked this video, why don't you check out the video

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where Emily unboxes the analog pocket. The device, I think, is the better option for most people.
