For $35-50.00 brand new you get a brand new, NES compatible, game console in a box with a matching Hyperkin wired game controller. The thing is composite only, and uses a micro USB connector for power (and possiby more?). Plus the thing takes up almost a 1/4th the size of the original NES "toaster" style system.

Let's first discuss WHY this was made. See, the NES was released in December 1985 in America - that's almost 40 years ago folks, and these original NES-001 units are not getting any younger. Electronics that last 10 years are great, 20 years are amazing, 30 years are incredible, 40 years though is getting into that "exceptional" territory. I'm one of the lucky few running an original NES with the original method of cartridge attachment, with all original, Nintendo-assembled parts (Though I put the NES together out of three different NESes myself - that part is unoriginal), but overall, it's quite amazing that this thing even works at all considering how hard it's been used. The motherboard is from my Bro-In-Law's 1985, the case is from an ex-girlfriend's NES, and the cart edge connection was from an old pal of mine, Jonathan's, Game Genie free NES (though it's far from virgin from Game Genies now obviously). Mines now turning yellow despite minimual sun exposure and ZERO exposure to smoke (might be my first major Retrobrite job, lol). Oh yeah, and I'm still using the original Game Pads from my original NES I got for Christmas in 1990. In the guitar world, this already applies a "Vintage". Basically, it's like owning a 1964 Fender Jazzmaster, except the Jazzmaster is far less cantankerous. My original NES, I still have to pull questionable crap like pushing in carts at odd angles, pressing on them and pushing them forward or plling back with the NES on to get rid of intereference, or sometimes just slap a cartridge into the Game Genie to use it - usually meaning it's time to break out the paper clips, isopropyl, paper and cardboard, and clean and re-align the pins on the 72 pin connector again.

• Cartridge Attachment - Gone is the "toaster style" slide the cart in and press down then close the door method. This method was way to complex, though it did serve it's historical purpose of making the NES seem less like a game console and more like an "entertainment system". People complain carts are hard to remove but it seems they are not to me, I did it with one hand by grabbing it near the bottom and pushing against the console (kinda gently) with my fingers.
• Power Bricks - The original NES used a 9VAC power brick with a pretty-standard, large sized, barrel jack connector. It works also with US-Robotics Modem PSUs which were rated the same, as well as with other power supplies. However, the Retron AV follows what's common today, which is to provide a USB cable and no power adapter. The upside to this is that you can connect the Retron to your modern Television's USB ports and use the Teleivision for power, eliminating the need for auxilary power altogether. Honestly, this setup with a flash-cart would probably make the entire shebang similar or the same to a NES mini that powers on with the TV for maximum convenience - could just leave it on and have a game on tap at all times (or the flash cart you're using).
• Space near the TV - When the NES came out, we were still using 4:3 aspect ratio CRT television sets with a lot of surface area on top, or a lot of surface area on the enteratinment hutch or TV stand that the Television sat on. So size was not much of an issue, especially if you look at how big VCRs are. Actually, the typical middle-class home of the 80's had a "console" CRT TV with a huge chunk of real-estate on the top, sometimes designed to allow for at least a VCR and a game system or cable box on top. But in 2022, there's nowhere to sit an NES on top of a flat screen, and the size of entertainment hutches have gotten wider, but thinner overall, leaving little to no real-estate for a game system, let a lone a VHS, DVD, or cable box, and most digital media players for movies are so tiny that they could be velcroed to the back of the TV itself for a seamless integration. The Retron has a tiny footprint at about 8"x8"x2".
• Color/Style - When Nintendo introduced the NES, you could have it in any color scheme you wanted, as long as it was black/gray/dark gray/red - and that was it. The Retron A/V comes in a multitude of color schemes. The Turquoise/Pink/Black one we wanted because it fit the theme of our bedroom, and I love that color scheme (obviously).

A Word on DSP - If you are experiencing "lag", it's NOT the Retron to blame, it's your TV. See, modern UHD 4K TV's have a epic megaton of Digital Signal Processing - or DSP - applied to an input signal, compared to your old CRT TV which had none. That DSP is running on an anemic CPU inside the TV, and is not quick enough to react so when applied to certain game systems without some kind of lag-compensation feature for HDMI or whatever, like a lot of modern consoles, you might experience LAG. It's suggested to remove as MUCH processing as you can when running older consoles like this. Lukily this works with my SHARP and my older Samsung, but my TCL does not play as easily or nicely.

You can see my game collection here as well as here for the Japanese Famicom releases I'm using with a 72 pin to 60 pin adapter. Since it's rather time consuming to go through all the games all at once and complete this page, I'm going to mention issues as they arise.

First is that most of your bog-standard, off-the-shelf NES games will work as intended. The audio, however, is just a little bright, and less as warm as the original NES hardware over AV or RF, and some sounds are little different. This is likely because this is a NES on a Chip, so it does not behave 100% like a regular Ricoh 2a03 NES-001 unit. Most people, will generally be just fine with the regular, bog-standard, licensed NES titles on this console.

I did have an oddity with Dragon Warrior III at one point where all my characters were somehow, automatically healed when I went into Zoma's castle.

Sound on Kirby's Adventure doesn't always process right, sounds like a channel is missing on this particlar device every once in awhile, and the volume levels are inconsistant. This is something I'm also trying to see if it's the TV's DSP messing with us or the Retron AV.

I purchased a 150-in-1 "Pocket Games" Famicom MultiCart in 2023, and found some oddness as well with certain games such as Parodius, which refused to run right at all when selected. I also had some weird problems with my Sharp Smart TV with "Summer Carnival 92'" going from letterboxed to fullscreen briefly during gameplay. However, it's hard to tell if this is just the multicart itself, or the actual game causing this.