Bring the power of an arcade to your home with the Super Retro-Cade plug and play console by Retro-Bit. Packed with over 90 popular retro games from Capcom®, Data East, Technos, and Irem. The stylish console re-introduces such gems as Mega Man™ 2, BurgerTime, Joe and Mac™, Bad Dudes, Double Dragon, Strider, Super Dodge Ball, the Final Fight series and many more.
The two included gamepads have an angular, wing-like grip design and a SNES controller button layout. They’re white controllers with red A/B/X/Y buttons and a direction pad on the face, along with black Start and Select buttons, and red L and R shoulder buttons on the top. The 10-foot cords attached are a huge perk for a system like this. Most wired retro systems have a 2 to 5-foot cord. The one downfall, in my opinion is using the D-pad to move around the action. Most of the games in the arcade require a joystick type controller to move your character easier. I found some games rather difficult to move as well as getting a little cramp in the thumb when playing. The box mentions support for third-party controllers, so you could find a USB controller that has a joystick to make it easier if you like.
The Super Retro-Cade has both standard Composite and HDMI. The HDMI cable included with the system makes the graphics a bit cleaner but not a high definition as one may expect. The interface is best described as functional. It shows games in rows of five, enabling you to scroll to whichever title you desire. You can sort titles by alphabetical order, by genre, or by which system they’re on. If you want to play fighting games, select fighting. If you want to see Genesis games, select Genesis. Each title has a brief description, and you’re able to load and save them as well. Again, the interface isn’t flashy, but it gets the job done. One negative feature is the lack of a reset button. If you want to go back and play a different game or stop the game, you need to power of the unit and power it back on. Sometimes I feel like that is an easy option to have had built into the system. 
If you’re looking for robust graphical options, you’re going to be disappointed. You can’t adjust filters or change the resolution like you can with other emulator consoles. The only thing you can do is change the image from Full Screen to Normal Size. In terms of the SD Card, I found that my 32GB card worked just fine. When you plug it into the device and it’s already on, it will prompt you to either search the SD Card or the Local Memory.
The Super Retro-Cade changes many of the wrongs that were present in the Generations from last year. It still is a worthy home game system for the price and with 90 titles to choose from, there is plenty of gaming to have on this little system. Its nice to go back and play games of my childhood and share them with my children who can experience the fun that was gaming in the 80s and 90s.
Todd Friedman is heavily involved in the retro gaming community and has co-promoted the Video Game Summit in Chicago, IL for the past 16 years. He also has published 2 books and written for various different gaming magazines including Old School Gamer.
