3rd-party consoles any good

[JeenLeen]

At my local hobby/game shop, I've seen some third-party consoles for playing Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and/or Sega Genesis games. (Some handle 2+ systems, some one.)
Anyone have experience with those if they're any good or not?
I wouldn't trust if it was one of those fancy things they sell at mall kiosks near Christmas, but something at the local hobby shop alongside their games seems more legit.

My toddler broke my Super Nintendo, and I'm trying to decide on getting a fix estimate (a local shop does that), getting a new one, or getting a third party.

[Arutema]

I know of a couple players in that market:

Hyperkin

The one you're more likely to see sitting on store shelves. Their systems run cartridges via software emulation. Thus the experience is basically the same as running the ROM image on an emulator on a PC.

- Can't load savegames from the cartridge.
- Savegames will instead be tied to that console.
+ Can save and load games even if the cartridge has a dead save battery.

Analogue

A boutique manufacturer. Their systems use programmable microcontrollers (FPGA) to mimic the original hardware.

- Harder to find and more expensive.
+ Generally better accuracy than emulation.
+ Savegames can be loaded and saved from the cartridge as on OG hardware.
- Can't save or load if the cartridge develops a dead save battery.

[Gnoman]

Note that the emulators used by a lot of those non-Analogue systems are really bad. Compatibility is poor, and there are a lot of bugs.


If you have a lot of old cartridges and no original systems, they're not fundamentally terrible, but they're unquestionably a worse option than digging out the old consoles with a good upscaler (or modifying them) or using an FPGA solution.