AtGames Ages Apocalypse plug-and-plays

AtGames has produced a large amount of mh:awesomegames:Sega Genesis/Mega Drive plug 'n play systems officially licensed by Sega, these systems usually include a large amount of built-in Genesis/Mega Drive games and some of them even allow the user to use proper Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges and play them via emulation, or even slots for classic Genesis/Mega Drive controllers. While they may seem like promising products, they are very notorious for poor quality and always having the same problems.

Examples

 * Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Player
 * Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Classic Game Console
 * Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Flashback
 * Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Ultimate Portable Game Player

Why Most of Them Suck

 * 1) Many of them (such as the 25th Anniversary one) have very poor build quality, in fact Luigitehplumber (a former Admin on this Wiki) managed to destroy one of the models with no effort at all.
 * 2) * Many of them are also made out of very cheap plastic, with the 25th Anniversary one being the cheapest.
 * 3) Off-pitch and ear bleeding sound reproduction in all of the games.
 * 4) * Not only that, but audio for a lot of games are off-key; The YM2612 (FM) is pitched down by 4, whereas the SN76489 (PSG) is pitched down by 7.
 * 5) * The audio for the Sonic 25th Anniversary Edition is total earrape, not to mention Snake was already earrape.
 * 6) They often include shovelware for no reason other than to increase the amount of games included.
 * 7) * Not to mention they are pointlessly renamed games from Microlab's "16-bit Portable Motion Sensing Game Console". (Cross Street as Cross the Road, Sky Up as Jack's Pea, etc.)
 * 8) ** "Pipe Worker" was renamed to "Plumbing Contest", which is dumb, considering there's no rival competition.
 * 9) * When the games by DevWorks Game Technology were localized, Bil Bolha was localized as Mr. Balls, which is possibly the most laughable localization.
 * 10) Poor emulation. Using actual Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges doesn't fix this. In fact, homebrew cartridges are not compatible with those consoles!
 * 11) * Some games like Street Fighter II' Plus: Champion Edition will end up crashing as soon you start a fight. Which doesn't happen on real hardware at all.
 * 12) Random game breaking bugs.
 * 13) Frame rate dropping and pitch lowering is very frequent.
 * 14) Often the systems use frame skipping to try to hide the framerate drops but it's just as jarring.
 * 15) The Wireless controllers tend to be cheaply made and are often unresponsive due to using infrared technology (known for being used in TV remotes), instead of wireless 2.4G RF or Bluetooth. Fortunately, these were replaced with wired ones in 2017.
 * 16) Bland, ugly interfaces with clunky navigation.
 * 17) The handheld ones often have horrible screen resolutions.
 * 18) Some of them have RPG games, yet still have no save states or internal batteries, making them almost unplayable. This is unacceptable because the RPG games included take at least 20 hours to complete. That's why they invented the save feature in the first place, so you can shut down the console and resume playing.
 * 19) The pre-2017 systems only included composite video output, which is outdated, and nowadays inferior to HDMI or Component/SCART RGB, meaning you cannot connect it to most modern HDTVs (except cheaper one) unless you connected them to an upscaler, which typically cost several times more than the system itself, or simply using composite to HDMI adapter directly, which would giving more inferior, blurry (due to HDTVs automatically upscales it and ended up poorly) video quality.
 * 20) * To add insult to injury, it only has ONE audio output. Which means, the audio itself, is mono, compared to the Model 1 Genesis/Mega Drive from 1989 which have it on the headphone jack.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The consoles still have many great games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Ristar, Vectorman, and Mortal Kombat.
 * 2) The 2017 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Flashback HD improved the sound emulation compared to previous models, somewhat better controllers, and added save states.
 * 3) As mentioned above, some of them do allow you to play actual Genesis cartridges.
 * 4) Most of the newer ones include controller ports, allowing you to use actual Genesis controllers in place of the crappy stock controllers.
 * 5) The portable versions have a slot on the top that you can put SD cards containing ROMs in. You can also install the Neto Boot Loader onto the SD card to fix the sounds.
 * 6) The 2018 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Flashback HD improved the overall emulation and fixed most of the emulation problems.
 * 7) * Its successor, the 2019 model adds even more improvements, such as better build quality, finally making the AtGames Genesis/Mega Drive plug-and-plays a lot better at doing their job. However, when Sega announced Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, it's too late.
 * 8) Sega learned from their mistakes and stopped collaborating with AtGames in 2019 to work with M2 instead and make their own plug & play system, the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, which blows the AtGames systems out of the water in every way.
 * 9) * Despite that, AtGames still makes new plug-and-plays with other licensed games that have better emulation quality such as the Atari Flashback series and the Legends series which includes numerous arcade and console games from various publishers such Namco, Capcom, Taito, Data East, Jaleco, Acclaim, Lucasfilm, and even Disney.

Videos
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