7 months ago a thread on reddit started by the “creator” of the RetroMini promised us a follow up device with improvements in almost every area.
Although the thread quickly took a downward turn as people accused the OP of being a drop shipper with no claim to the original device, a couple of photos of the new shell prototypes at least filled us with some hope that this wasn’t all hot air.
Well the device is now available to purchase, but it looks like something terrible happened to their funding or development plan somewhere along the way.
Whilst they addressed some of the issues of the original RetroMini by creating a larger shell with more accessible shoulder buttons – they’ve rendered all of that effort useless by stuffing a Famiclone board inside and pre-loading a bunch of NES ROMs.
Why 4 face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons if this thing can only play NES games? We can only assume that the shell was at one point destined for greater things, and at some point they had to abandon those plans and lump for a Famiclone board instead. Such a shame!
Their official site is showing Out Of Stock pre-orders for $29.99 in both smokey and transparent variants – however you can pick these up on Aliexpress here or here under the Data Frog brand for about £11.
No-one needs another handheld Famiclone, but I’m almost tempted to get one just for the shell. I sincerely hope that a manufacturer re-uses this shell for something that doesn’t suck.
If you do fancy one, be quick. They’re currently 20% off but that’ll end tomorrow apparently.