Nope. As other have said but I'll iron out for 100% confirmation - these are still emulators of the original system, from a single chip, the exact same one as the built-in systems. The sole difference is the location they're reading data from - instead of the flash chip that stores the in-built ROMs, it's the real cartridge via the datalines to the chip. In terms of what it's doing once the game starts running, it's exactly the same as if it was running on any other Atgame system. Shitty sound and everything.
That's what I meant to begin with. I played Mushroom Hill Zone and it everything sounded so off that I figured it was the alternate version of the song. Gosh I feel stupid.
Picked up one of these last week, it's not really worth the $40. I found it at my local Dollar General for the same price (but with a coffee stain all over it). The sound is sufficiently awful. The wireless controllers both have menu buttons above the start that restart it, and also thankfully have a player 1 and 2 switch. Although the box-art was little different. oh
Yeah, that's been known for a little while and is on several box variants of AtGame systems. Still funny, mind. =P
No Sonic specifically, but here's a video with other games to show how bad the sound is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Ey5zKKldY
Also, enjoy the fact that the Atgames hardware always has the YM2612 chip missing. Atgames is notorious for that. Hope you like your Genesis/Mega Drive music sounding like shit. Edit: hmmm Interesting that it's able to play international games. If only the sound was better. I might actually buy one if not for the sound. But fuck that, if I really wanted to, I could region mod my Genesis.
I wish there were high quality hardware clones, made out of very good materials, even better than the MD1. It would be for enthusiasts, obviously, the average consumer wouldn't care. Still, some gold-plated MD with the 32x and CD built in with great sound and even digital video output, all using the real components and not knockoffs or emulation would be fucking amazing.
I looked more into this thing on YouTube... even the games and graphics on some cartridge games is shit... not just sound... Waste of $40 bucks, or however much they charge for this shit... amazing that they can legally charge money for this trash...
Cinossu & myself did some experimenting with a copy of Sonic 1 and this soundchip - you wouldn't believe just how far out the instrumentation is.
So what is this soundchip? Is it a different one from the Mega Drive? From what I can gather it's just a substitute which sounds crap.
Oh, yes, sorry - the onboard console-on-a-chip these things use emulates the YM2612, and it does it rather well - unfortunately the values it is using for notes are completely wrong, and as such it sounds atrocious. If you change some values around in a Mega Drive ROM to counteract them, the sound is all-but spot on. It's rather sad, really.
So how expensive would it be to build a console that can actually accurately play Genesis games, be it either a hardware clone or emulation.
Sounds like it gets everything right but just at an octave lower or so. Someone record the intro of Spiderman Animated Series on it, see if it can handle the detune bug. As much as the cheapest hardware (PC or Android) that has enough horsepower to run an emulator. edit: actually, if you can get a stock of sega 315-6123s from somewhere (China, etc), it would cost as much as that + ram + video encoder + some discrete components and a PCB design, to build a full Megadrive.
Emulation is easier, because it's lazy, but to have all the actual components!? Do they even still create some components the Mega Drive uses? Y'know, it's more or less 24 years old now. It would have to be mass produced too, so that would cost a lot. If you're going to all that effort to build a one-off console that plays those games, then you should just buy a Mega Drive/Genesis.
Food for thought - a brand new Raspberry Pi costs less than a lot of those second-hand Mega Drive bundles. You could shove an emulator on that and plug in a cheapo keyboard and you'd be good to go (provided you had the necessary leads... can't even remember if the Pi comes with a power supply). I'm not sure why you'd do this but it's an option! As for the quality of emulation here? Well... it does date back quite a number of years now (I get the feeling the technology is rooted in 2007/2008?). It wasn't too long ago when bog-standard Gens was often the emulator of choice, and that doesn't handle the 32X's audio that well. Taken on the idea that "official" vendors are always a few years behind, the sound emulation in this wouldn't have been outstandingly awful for its day. Can't remember if this is a step up (or a step to the side) from those plug-in-and-play things by Radica. Sound quality has improved a bit since then in these sorts of clones. IIRC the RetroN 3 is more accurate - we're expecting the RetroN 5 to be better, and I have a feeling AtGames has moved aware from the Firecore OS/emualtor/whatever it is
