A little while ago we reviewed a video game system called the Retro Duo which was a pretty cool little video game system that could play Super Nintendo and NES games at the same time. And with an adapter that you bought separately you could play Sega Genesis games on it. Now I've always wanted to see a system come out from these guys that had all three systems in one and well we finally got that. Meet the Super Retro Trio which can play NES, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games on the exact same console. Let's take a look at this thing.
Now I was a fan of the original Retro Duo and I got to say that this system here is pretty much repeating everything one to one but this time with a Sega Genesis slot. The controller is very similar to the last one with very minimal changes. Although in my opinion the gamepad that's included with this works a little bit better than the one that was included in the Duo. However knowing my luck they're probably the exact same controller but this one just felt a little bit better. Once again like the Retro Duo this system does not offer HDMI out or any high definition output at all. This system is limited to standard definition with composite outputs but if you want more of a sharper picture you should use the s-video that's also included on the back. Now while it is true that the Super Retro Trio can play three different video game consoles on one it has a little bit of a weird feature that I'm not a big fan of. See in order to power on let's say the NES you have to power on the Genesis and the SNES first just to get to that cartridge slot. As you move the tab up it powers every slot on until you get to the NES. I personally would have just preferred a design that had a power button beside each cartridge slot but it worked well after I got used to it. So it didn't cause any real problems.
Now my personal favorite part of this console is at the very front hidden beneath this panel. Here you have direct access to plugging in three different kinds of controllers NES, Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo. Now naturally the system comes with the Super Nintendo controller as I've shown you but what's weird is that Super Nintendo controller goes through the Genesis port. Now just using that controller you can play any single video game on any of the systems included without any problems. As crazy as it is to play Sonic the Hedgehog with a Super Nintendo controller you can do it and it does work. But if you're more traditional and you want to use a real Genesis controller all you have to do is plug one up and it works perfectly fine. You'll also notice right between the Genesis ports there's a region switch setting for the Sega Genesis so you can go between different regions of console games.
Now unfortunately I couldn't test every single video game out there so I just tried a selection of random ones to see if I could just find one that didn't work. On the NES side I tried out 1942 and it ran really well. I didn't notice any distortions or any glitches while playing the game. I also tried out Mike Tyson's Punch-Out which worked perfectly and even the sound effects were right on cue. I played a little bit of StarTropics which ran absolutely fine and if you haven't played it yourself you probably should give it a try. But to really test this out I wanted to try something that most likely wouldn't work so I tried out a Famicom to NES adapter just to see if we could see any glitches at all. I'm happy to say that even Famicom games with the proper adapter run perfectly fine on this system. To further test the system I ran a couple of pirated carts on it just to see if they wouldn't run on this console and they ran perfectly fine for pirated carts which should have caused some problems. But luckily everything runs great.
Next I tested out the system's ability to play Sega Genesis games. I tried out Super Thunder Blade which worked absolutely fine, Pigskin Footbrawl which ran great, Shadow of the Beast 2 which also ran fine and then as a big test Hard Drivin’ one of the very few 3D games released on the Sega Genesis. And although it's very choppy much like the original release was this still runs exactly like you would have seen it on a real Sega Genesis. No problems at all from what I could see. And finally I took a look at the abilities of this system to play Super Nintendo games. I tried out ActRaiser and Super Mario Kart for their mode 7 graphics settings and both games ran perfectly fine. Sometimes with these kind of consoles mode 7 has a couple of issues running but I couldn't identify any problems at all with this. Then I tried Donkey Kong Country to see if there are any graphical glitches and once again everything ran fine but the real test for me was to see if Stunt Race FX could run on this system. Stunt Race FX like Star Fox is a super FX chip game which means there's an extra little bit of hardware in the cartridge itself that allows the game to run on the system. And once again everything ran perfect.
I couldn't find any graphical glitches in any of the games I played nor could I find any weird sound effects that shouldn't be there. Every game I threw at the system runs fine. The Super Retro Trio ran games so close to the original systems that I personally couldn't tell them apart from the original. So that is a really big plus but unfortunately because it is a clone system you won't be able to get additional elements to run. For instance the Super Nintendo bike that we recently picked up well that wouldn't be able to run on this system because there is no bottom expansion port. Also if you wanted to use the Sega CD on this thing well that's never going to happen. Any of those features that you'd find on an original system that use extra pieces and components well this system simply doesn't have those available because it isn't an original system. But it's still a fun little system that can play all those games you've got in your collection and run them really well. So that's the Super Retro Trio. I think it's a pretty good system and worth purchasing. If you're getting into retro video game collecting now and are kind of afraid about buying a really old system this is a really good first starter system to get into. And honestly it's one that you can keep plugged up instead of keeping three separate video game consoles plugged up your TV. So if you want to try something that's really, really fun and can play retro video games this is totally up your alley.
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