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Remember when handheld gaming devices basically stopped existing? You know,

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after the 3DS and VA sort of went away and smartphones started taking over.

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Thank god that time is over and we have handheld gaming devices galore. We have

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way more than we can handle and today we are unboxing the Amberick RG DS. As the

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name implies, it's basically like a little DS. That's

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pretty cool. ShortCircuit done. We did it. In the box, you get your device. You

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get a stylus. This is a really

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ginormous stylus. It's a really big stylus. I don't see a place for this to

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fit. This goes back here. In the box, we

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have our wrist strap. That's pretty nice. I had that back in the day. Uh

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maybe I'll try to put on later. We have screen protectors. Did that come default

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in this box? >> Yes. >> That's kind of nice. Uh, thank goodness

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I'm not taking this anywhere cuz I don't like putting screen protectors on. So,

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bye. But that's actually really cool and it feels like tempered glass. That's

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pretty high quality. We have the version that comes with a 256 gig micro SD from

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very well-known brand Leaders Logic. Guess it's nice to have the convenience

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of it coming with your device knowing that it'll be compatible. It does not

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come with any games by default just so they can sidestep any copyright issues.

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We also have a little quick start guide and then

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type A to C 3FT cable. That is about as

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cheap as they make them. That makes sense. This whole package uh minus this

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uh starts at $95. You heard that right. less than $100

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gets you a pretty nice looking DS like

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device with fairly modern hardware as well as some nice quality of life stuff

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that just makes this a better than DS experience. I can't believe these things

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are this cheap, especially with this pretty okay plastic finish. It looks a

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little bit cheap. It also is already scratched and I think people have been

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fairly careful with this. So, I expect this not to be the most durable

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material. I like the more matte finish on the bottom. It actually feels more uh

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Nintendo console to me, like almost like the Game Boy Advance SB plastic. Uh

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neither is super bad. However, um seeing as clam shell designs for handheld

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consoles is the peak design because it has a built-in little case and screen

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protector. Uh it would be nice to have this be a little bit more not

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stickeresque. On the top of the device, we have our micro SD slot. We actually

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already have a micro SD card, so we're going to keep that one in the box. We have two USB ports, one presumably for

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charging and one for kind of more of the fullfeatured USB accessories, you know,

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display out or controllers. We also have four shoulder buttons, uh, which is two

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more than the original DS had, and that's because even though this is

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clearly DS inspired, it's not locked to

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just DS games. You can play uh all kinds

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of stuff up to a certain point because of the technical limitations which we

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will get to, but that would include PS1, which did have four shoulder buttons. On

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the bottom, we just have our screw holes. Looks like hex screws, which

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means that it's not impossible to fix, but uh makes me wonder how hard the

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whole thing will be. We have our 3.5 mm jack on the front, which is pretty nice.

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Although, I could see having it on the side getting in the way of the way you

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want to grip the device. Not the end of the world. It's far enough that it

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should be fine for most people, but I could see some people kind of wanting a

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more vertical stance and then being forced out of it. Sides got nothing.

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Which brings us to the inside. We have our stereo speakers. We have two

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matching 480p IPS displays, which is

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exactly 2 and 1/2 times the resolution of the original DS's screen. That's

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okay. Presumably, we can run the games

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at 2.5x resolution, but it does worry me

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that it's not an even multiplier because the really wellthoughtout retro

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handhelds usually have a screen resolution that is a multiple of four or

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five exactly of the original display. So then you can do just like 4x, have it be

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super clean upscaling, either pixel perfect or you can do scaling that looks

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even better. Uh, then we have our D-pad.

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Oh no. That's so freaking mid, man. Oh, the

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face buttons feel similarly clicky to the point where I almost wonder if it's

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like exactly the same kind of switches underneath. The joysticks are very

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small, PS Vita sized, and they're recessed so that the whole device can

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actually close neatly. However, that means that these are not going to be the

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greatest feeling joysticks in the world. This is not too bad, though. The recess

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is big enough that I think I could make it work. It's not the most comfortable gaming experience, but should be fine.

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We have four buttons that'll matter more once we're in software, which we're

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below and save $15 by using code ShortCircuit. Let's turn this thing on. Wow,

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that is the most Android looking splash screen I've ever seen in my entire life.

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Uh, I wish they did a little bit more custom work. I just don't want Chrome to

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be the first thing that's on my splash screen when I'm opening a retro style

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device. However, it's really easy to get access to all the the emulation stations

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in this bad boy. And it gives you an idea of the variety that you can tackle.

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You got your PC, you have your Neo Geo,

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you have your MSX. Cool. That's cool. That's pre-installed. N64. Uh, and then

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probably most importantly, you're going to have your Game Boy Advance. Then

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there's drastic, which is your DS1, which is probably why you're buying this

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thing. It's important to note no Melon support, which means no DSI support. But

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how many of you out there are really like that DSI experience? I want that. I

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guess before we get into an actual game, I should figure out how to do like dual screen stuff. The screens actually

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function independently. It's not like it needs the software to assign what the

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second screen is doing. You can have your Android stuff down here, watch

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videos, open up guides, play your game on the top, or if it is a dual screen

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game. Take control of both. Just like an Android device, if you pull from the

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top, you get access to your quick settings, then your deeper settings there. If you turn RG Launcher on, you

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actually do get a much more uh retro

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style display. I like the cleanness of this, but I do think uh it would be nice

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to have a little bit more styling, not just kind of color and shadow. I want to

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see how good the dual screen experience really is. Both screens are actually

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touchscreen as opposed to the original DS where it was just the bottom. Yeah,

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the screen is not ideal for video

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watching. It doesn't look very sharp. Uh the motion blur is uh not very good and

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the colors are pretty underwhelming. However, if I click to the bottom

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screen, I'm immediately in control of what I want to do. Okay, we've

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discovered a little bit of a configuration problem that we had where you can get emulators working on the

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main operating system with ROMs, but they won't show up in this RG launcher.

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So, make sure when you set it up that you configure it right. Apparently, it

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is possible to swap what the screens are doing. But what I'm finding is that the

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interface on this device is really not

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well optimized between different apps.

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The buttons do different things in different places. uh which can be fine,

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but I think there's going to be quite a learning curve if you want to uh get the

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full use of this device. That probably means that there is a ton of control

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that you can get out of this. And if you're someone that likes sort of uncovering the mysteries of weirdly uh

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designed UIs, you're going to love this thing. Let's try just doing a DS game,

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which is sort of its core functionality. We need to figure that out. Okay, that's

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a little troublesome. Uh, I assumed that opening the default emulator and opening

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the game, it would all be preconfigured. But no, we are on an adventure to

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figuring out how this friaking work. Oh

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no. Okay, so the trick is open the app on the bottom device and then it'll work

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on both. That's one of my problems with my experience with retro Android devices

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is unless they're preconfigured or you can install sort of a uh fan-made OS on

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it like you can with like the Mi or whatever, I've always had a little bit

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of struggle bus feeling with them where

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you got to work a little bit too hard to make it work. This input latency is pretty bad. I can feel it already.

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Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh, if you're not big into

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emulation, input latency is a pretty common issue across all software

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emulation. uh across all devices. Doesn't matter how powerful it is.

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There's just going to be some level of input latency. The fact that I can feel

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it in the menu is a little troublesome. Uh but let's play a game and see. Maybe

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it's not so bad. I haven't played Mario Kart DS in a billion years. So, let's

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see how this goes. Forgot this. Both shoulder buttons don't do the same thing

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cuz it was uh there's much many fewer buttons on the original DS. This looks

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pretty okay. The colors are popping a little bit more here than on our crappy

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YouTube videos. It's very soft looking

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and doesn't look scaled in an ideal manner. One advantage of software

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emulation is that if you have enough power, you can crank the resolution to

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theoretically whatever you want. Um, and

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this feels very DS resolution both in

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the foreground and the distance, but it plays pretty good and the input latency

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doesn't actually feel as bad out here. Maybe there's something wrong with that menu. That being said, totally playable

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and I could definitely beat all of the Mario Kart races on this. The touchcreen

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on this device is not very good. Both my finger and the pen suck. This pen makes

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it worse. This is clearly designed for finger use. I'm going to leave that for

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now. I don't want to be too hard on this device because it is a very good value.

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And a lot of these problems, in fact, probably all of them are solvable with

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enough tinkering and problem solving ability. But when I buy a standalone

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device to do very limited amount of things, I wanted to do it out of the box

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and well um and although you're seeing

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me struggle a little bit here, this isn't the first time someone has struggled with this. We had Reese uh

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figuring out how to make the two screens freaking work. Uh and I don't think he

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particularly likes this device. >> I hate it. >> At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is is it playing games

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pretty well. And so far, it's playing

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them well enough that I could have a pretty good time playing them. That

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makes sense. It has a a pretty decently powered quad core Cortex processor. Has

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3 gigs of RAM, which obviously isn't enough if you're trying to run modern

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stuff, but for emulation, we're totally fine. Comes builtin with 32 gigs of

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storage. It has Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi 5, um, which again are fine for this

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device. However, that extra lag from the Bluetooth 4.0 means that I probably

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would not This feels horrible. Oh no. It just feels a little slow. And this is a

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game that I've played a hund,000 times.

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I'm very familiar with the way it's supposed to feel. Certainly not

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unplayable and I could definitely get used to it. But I am pretty sensitive to

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input latency in 2D platformers. Uh and

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so if you're like me, this is probably not the ideal option. You're probably

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going to want something like a analog pocket where it's pretty much zero lag.

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The last spec we haven't really talked about is battery life. It's a 4,000

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milliamp hour battery, which they claim is good for six hours of gaming. Uh,

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obviously, if you're playing less demanding stuff, it should be even less.

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If you close the device, it's supposed to go to sleep and pop back up. It

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obviously paused my game, which is great. Oh, wait. Does each screen get

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different scaling? So, that really blurry text is a scaling issue, which I

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can adjust. However, when I did that, it only

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adjusted one of the screens uh filtering

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so that the bottom screen looks pretty okay, and this one is blurry mess city.

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It's not immediately apparent how to change the top one, uh even though I've

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been changing the bottom one. So, I'm going to close the app. See, maybe

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that's how you do it. Okay. Thankfully, closing and resetting the app got the

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scaling to uh match on both screens. So that this is significantly closer to

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what I expect at a 2.5x resolution scale. Looks totally fine.

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Just enough input latency that it's a bit hard to play a rhythm game on this,

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which is fine. There's not that many rhythm games I want to play on the DS. Most of what I want to play is RPGs and

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Zelda and stuff, and I can live with a little bit of input latency on that. Okay, I'm calling it Rhythm Heaven. Not

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a super great experience on this. Let's play a game that might do better for us.

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Let's play Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Let's see. Maybe some of the

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scaling will actually look good here. Ah, First impression, this is

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fine. You could totally play it. It looks sharper than it did on the original DS. It's responsive enough. You

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could play a game like this. If you're looking for a way to play DS games, this

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is going to pass the bar mostly. Uh, I'm

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curious if I can fix some of the softness with one of those visual

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filters that I hated before, but maybe I'll come around on catchy. What we do

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that high resolution 3D rendering. That's kind of cool. It seems like the

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the sharp 3D mode is slightly sharper.

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Um, let's see if I can see it this time.

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>> Is it off? >> This is off. >> Okay.

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What do I think of the Amber Nicknick RGDS?

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Pretty unbeatable deal at this price. And if you're someone that needs the

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device to be under 100 bucks for you to buy it, I actually think this is pretty

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cool. Uh the screens are totally decent. The fact that it comes jam-packed with

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ways to play a bunch of games, super cool. I think that the UI needs a

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complete rework, which is really hard on any budget Android device where there isn't an entire team making this a

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really good experience. However, I do

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think that it's a pretty solid option for 95 bucks. The fact that you can get

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this kind of emulation for under $100.

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It's pretty freaking sweet. And yes, you want the SD cards if you want like

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entire libraries of games, but you can get most of the games you want to play

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at once on this thing built in. I think I'm going to hold off a little bit more

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for something that's a little bit more polished and high-end. However, what I'm

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not going to hold off on is telling you you should watch more ShortCircuit if

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you like retro devices and you want something that's more accurate. We just

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unboxed the SuperStation 1, which is a PlayStation 1 form factor Mr. FPGA style

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retro device, and it is awesome.