First, a confession. The last game console I played was an Atari 2600, in the 1970s when I probably had the first in my hometown. I won $100 in a Pong tournament in my local pub in 1976. Since then I dabbled in MSDOS games like Doom and Chuck Yeager's Air combat, but I got over my game addiction in the 1990s and nothing since. All this to say that my expectations of this gaming stick were quite low.The gaming stick is almost completely undocumented. There's a cursory owner's manual which is almost useless. Once you get the system up on your screen, there are good on-screen instructions, until you get into the games themselves where there are no instructions and sometimes weird mapping of the original controls to the modern controllers included in the package.Setup is actually quite easy. You put the included USBA dongle in the USBA port on the device, an old-style micro-usb phone charger in the adjacent port, pull the cap off the other end and plug the male HDMI jack into the port on the back of your monitor. You'll get a green LED on the device and an introductory screen geared to the included controllers. All good so far.The controllers take two AA batteries each and the micro-USB power suggest that this is very old tech. These days you expect USBC power on all three devices.Being familiar with the seminal Atari 2600 I first tried that simulator, and tried Asteroids and Centipede. The controls used are the four direction buttons to the left of the controller and the A and B buttons, with the Mode button used to exit back to the game menu. The translation of the Atari digital joystick to the direction pad is weird and mysterious. Even with a high-resolution monitor, the graphics were lower resolution than the Atari on an analog TV, blocky and jerky.I also tried the Windows emulator. The games were similarly blocky, some entirely in an Asian-looking language, and the mapping of the original controls to the included controllers was obscure and undocumented. I was unable to find a version of Chuck Yaeger's air combat game.I don't have any 8-year olds around right now, and I know that age group can grind down technical obscurities with their energy and exploratory instincts. I'll borrow a friend's young sons over the holidays and see how they do with it. Hopefully I won't be embarrassed.In conclusion, I am done with this device. It is not as good as the Atari 2600 or the 1990s MSDOS machines with contemporary games. I downloaded a version of Chuck Yaeger onto my PC. I'll use that instead.However, this $40 item is a possible "cheap and cheerful" candidate. I don't think so. I can't imagine any market segment that would find it enjoyable. It is poor value even for the price.
First, a confession. The last game console I played was an Atari 2600, in the 1970s when I probably had the first in my hometown. I won $100 in a Pong tournament in my local pub in 1976. Since then I dabbled in MSDOS games like Doom and Chuck Yeager's Air combat, but I got over my game addiction in the 1990s and nothing since. All this to say that my expectations of this gaming stick were quite low.The gaming stick is almost completely undocumented. There's a cursory owner's manual which is almost useless. Once you get the system up on your screen, there are good on-screen instructions, until you get into the games themselves where there are no instructions and sometimes weird mapping of the original controls to the modern controllers included in the package.Setup is actually quite easy. You put the included USBA dongle in the USBA port on the device, an old-style micro-usb phone charger in the adjacent port, pull the cap off the other end and plug the male HDMI jack into the port on the back of your monitor. You'll get a green LED on the device and an introductory screen geared to the included controllers. All good so far.The controllers take two AA batteries each and the micro-USB power suggest that this is very old tech. These days you expect USBC power on all three devices.Being familiar with the seminal Atari 2600 I first tried that simulator, and tried Asteroids and Centipede. The controls used are the four direction buttons to the left of the controller and the A and B buttons, with the Mode button used to exit back to the game menu. The translation of the Atari digital joystick to the direction pad is weird and mysterious. Even with a high-resolution monitor, the graphics were lower resolution than the Atari on an analog TV, blocky and jerky.I also tried the Windows emulator. The games were similarly blocky, some entirely in an Asian-looking language, and the mapping of the original controls to the included controllers was obscure and undocumented. I was unable to find a version of Chuck Yaeger's air combat game.I don't have any 8-year olds around right now, and I know that age group can grind down technical obscurities with their energy and exploratory instincts. I'll borrow a friend's young sons over the holidays and see how they do with it. Hopefully I won't be embarrassed.In conclusion, I am done with this device. It is not as good as the Atari 2600 or the 1990s MSDOS machines with contemporary games. I downloaded a version of Chuck Yaeger onto my PC. I'll use that instead.However, this $40 item is a possible "cheap and cheerful" candidate. I don't think so. I can't imagine any market segment that would find it enjoyable. It is poor value even for the price.



