Super Console X Cube - 41,000+ Classic Mini Games, 4K HD Output, 4 USB Ports, 5-Player Support with LAN/WiFi - Includes 2 Gamepads (128GB) - Perfect for Family Game Nights & Retro Gaming Enthusiasts

Now that I've completed all 50006 games packaged into this console, it's time to write my review!... Okay, you got me. I haven't completed all of the games...nor have I even started them all... nor even anywhere close to a decent percentage of them. In fact, it's not even true that there are 50000+ games, as you might naively expect from the product description that THERE ARE 50,000+ GAMES. More on that below.================== HARDWARE SETUP==================My first impression is that this product's worth at least $10 from the start just to have what looks like a miniature NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) to display on the tabletop, even were it actually a non-functioning brick. Maybe that's just me though.As advertised, the console is plug-and-play; you won't need to connect to a network at all to get up and running. I just unplugged the near end of an HDMI cable from a console I wasn't using, plugged it into the Super Console X Cube, and along with the connected power supply unit, the machine booted up straightaway. After a quick splashscreen video, it prompted that no gamepad was detected, as I'd expected, which brings us to...==================== CONTROLLER SETUP====================The product comes packaged with two generic controllers that seem identical in form to Sony Dualshock 2 (PS2) controllers, with the exception of a lack of a wired connection, and correspondingly a covered pocket to insert two AAA batteries (not included), and the presence of a power on/off switch. Rattling around in the battery pocket? Not a detached crucial element, as you might fear at first. Just a dongle that plugs into one of the 4 USB slots on the console itself. Apparently you need to pair up the controller with the dongle, but for lack of fresh batteries at the time of installation, I decided to forego using the generic controllers and instead used my own DualShock 2 controller with a USB adapter.My first main gripe with this product is that the console often fails to recognize the presence of a connected controller on start-up. I got lucky in that the DualShock 2 was recognized the first time, but you may find that quite often upon booting the console, it will complain that no controller is detected. So far I've never had luck unplugging/replugging the USB connection to the console when that happens, but rebooting a few times (usually 5-6 times at most) will fix things and it will go straight to an EmuELEC (the default start-up emulation system) screen with a games menu.WARNING: when first configuring the controls for a controller, make sure you have a button mapped to "START" (fifth button to be configured) and that it doesn't overlap with anything else. That's because you need to press START to even get into the controller configuration menu later on to re-map buttons if you've messed anything up the previous time. (For that matter, if you get D-PAD settings wrong, you may have a devil of a time navigating the MAIN MENU to get back to controller configuration.) I suppose if you mess up with a particular controller's button mapping, you would have to simultaneously plug a different controller in and use that one to navigate the menus until the moment it asks you to hold a button on the controller you wish to figure, and then switch to the badly-mapped one.Also, take it slowin mapping the controller buttons, because when actively configuring, you get ONE shot at pressing the correct corresponding button on your controller, and if you get it wrong, it seems you have to live with that choice until you configure all the rest of your buttons and get another shot at configuring from the MAIN MENU. So if you press D-pad down when the configuration manu comes up and is seeking your input for "D-PAD UP", then that's it. D-pad down will instead go up in the menu system until you have a chance to reconfigure buttons.By the time you get to "HOTKEY ENABLED" you might be out of available buttons on your controller, as I was. I don't think you actually need this defined, so if necessary follow the instruction "HOLD ANY BUTTON TO SKIP". It'll warn "THIS IS REQUIRED FOR EXITING GAMES WITH A CONTROLLER. DO YOU WANT TO USE THE SELECT BUTTON DEFAULT?" So... I guess that's what you might want to do. I believe that, practically speaking, that means pressing SELECT will still function as the mapped "SELECT" button action, but holding SELECT and pressing another button simultaneously will allow the use of emulator-level actions (of which exiting games would be one).=================== INTERFACE SETUP===================From the MAIN MENU, there are two alternate themes to the default theme for EmuELEC, in the "UI SETTINGS" menu. I found "ALEKFULL SOLO COBALTO" to be a bit nicer than the default "ES-THEME_EMEUELEC-CARBON", personally. There are other settings you can play around with in UI SETTINGS as well, though I haven't felt the need to modify them. Overall, tweaking the interface for EmuELEC seems pretty straightforward.As for the interface *within* emulation of games (note: all emulator/game files are on the storage card that ships with this console), that's a different story, probably since I don't have extensive experience with tuning emulators. In some games, I've needed to resize the output window so that it fits on-screen and doesn't truncate the borders, but there's no clear way to do that for a novice. Most of the systems' games seem to launch by default with the RetroArch emulator, and it looks like the best way to do this is to navigate to Options -> Borders -> Full. Worked so far with a Sega Master System game that had truncated screen output, but it would have been nice had such settings been frozen in as the defaults for certain emulators on the storage card.=================== OVERALL CONTENT===================Here's probably the meat of the matter when it comes to considering whether you'll get full value from your purchase (assuming you don't hit any setup/interface roadblocks up to this point). The 50000+ refers to the number of *unique entries* on the list of all games (filtering out a few hidden categories of developer utilities that I've uncovered).Many games are repeated across multiple platforms (often 4 or more), which adds flexibility in case you have a preferred platform to play a game on, but that's obviously not as great for overall content as multiple unique games. Added to that, there are often apparent duplicate entries in the games list, or entries that are *not* games at all.Furthermore, your effective list of easily playable games will be diminished seeing that for some systems, keyboard input will be required. (I believe there's a way to use a virtual keyboard for the associated emulators based on what I've read, but this is a barrier to entry to the general less tech-savvy user.)The list is further whittled by games that aren't in your language. Assuming you speak English but not Japanese, that's a fair chunk of them. (I've also seen some games that are in Spanish, French, and others, including a lot of text adventures, for which language proficiency would be more of a necessity.)Finally, whittled down to the games which you could easily set up to play and understand, much of the rest will either be crap or not a genre/style you'd be interested in.So it's extremely unlikely you'll experience anywhere near the full benefit of "50,000+ games", but were you really expecting to? I think I'd be interested in a few hundred of the list at most, but in my opinion that's still more than enough for what I paid. Still, I would count it as a negative mark in reviewing the product itself as, reasonably interpreted, "50,000+ games" is false advertising. It's difficult to pin an exact number that could be charitably considered accurate, but it's certainly not the entire list of entries.As an analogy, navigating the console's pre-packaged content like taking a tour of a home you're interested in buying, advertised at a price 20% lower from what you'd expect compared to similar houses in the neighborhood and with similar numbers of competing buyers. You go in for the tour, wondering: what's the catch? The catch is that house comes loaded with a huge, bewildering mess of random objects of varying and uncertain states of functionality. Some of it may be useful to you as-is. Much of it works but would be of no use to you, and you'd have to go through the extra effort of hauling it off or selling it at a yard sale. Much of it is completely broken garbage that's just in the way. That's been my experience in navigating the content. There are jewels to be found, but they're at first lost in a giant dumpsite.====================== CONTENT MANAGEMENT======================This review won't cover anything requiring network connectivity or acquisition of new content (hey, you there, downloading extra game ROMs, that's probably technically ILLEGAL! BAD YOU!) However, there's still some work you might want to do with arranging your "favorites" from the pre-installed content. Unfortunately (in my opinion) there were already dozens of "favorite" games (indicated with star icons in the EmuELEC interface) that were probably inherited from whoever had been actively using the file system frozen for use on the included storage card. That meant about 20-30 minutes of slowly navigating the games lists to "un-favorite" these so that I could use this system to denote my own favorites.There's also a separate emulator that comes packaged in, "RetroArch", that stores a favorites list independently; I wish there were a clear way to unify these with those from EmuELEC. Games on most of the emulated systems I've played seem to launch with RetroArch, so that operations such as saving/loading emulator states, or closing/restarting the game instance, will be done with the use of HOTKEY button combinations (see CONTROLLER SETUP above). On my controller, SELECT (default HOTKEY) + (Triangle button) is the way to get out to the RetroArch menu, from which you can also hop between other games that you've launchedThe Nintendo DS games seem linked by default to launch with the DraStic emulator, and I was confused at first why my hotkey button to access the RetroArch menu (to close the game) wasn't working. The first few times, I assumed something was malfunctioning and that my only recourse was to hard-reset the console. I don't remember the initial button (or combination) it was, but I eventually stumbled on what brought me to the DraStic emulator menu with a game still running. If you do this, make sure to take the opportunity to configure your Nintendo DS controls in this window, and you may want to go ahead and save the settings globally across all DS games, the first time. Be sure to remember how you map the "Enter Menu" button (the first entry after you toggle the view with "Extra Control" on the first control screen), which will be how to get back to this set of menus from active gameplay the next time.=============================== REVIEW SCORE CONSIDERATIONS===============================Pluses:. Having a miniature NES sitting on my table, regardless of whether it even works.. Easy to set up, hardware-wise.. Easily enough content that both works, and is enjoyable, to justify the purchase price.Minuses:. Unreasonable difficulties (potentially enough to block some users from even getting started) with controller recognition and setup.. Horrendously bad/incomplete documentation (a native English speaker, preferably a technical writer, would have been invaluable).. Minimal curation/organization of content (weeding out duplicates and games that don't work, localizing games' descriptions from Spanish or French to English, filling in missing descriptions etc.). I realize that the sparsity of descriptions/images for games comes from the source of the ROMs themselves, but I think it behooves a product manufacturer to fill in deficiencies of the source products they're using, when possible, before they reach the end product, or said deficiencies can be taken as a mark against them.. Poor support for initial configuration of emulators or instructions (in-product or printed materials) for ways to configure them puts another unnecessary hurdle in place for emulator novicesOverall: 3/5. Great (and even potentially extremely great, for the price) quantity of classic gaming content detached from dependence on other computing devices, given some patience to work through the issues noted above. However, this is nearly equally marred by the lack of coherent organization, helpful documentation for emulation customization (following cryptically-advertised external links to YouTube videos should not be needed), and controller setup difficulties.The Super Console X Cube is essentially a Super Console X Pro with a Mini NES style shell. This is better because the unit does not heat up as much. The game selection/performance is the same. Some PSP, PS1, and N64 games do have slowdown/lag issues. Anything 16 bit or below work fantastic. The controllers are basically cheap Chinese knockoffs of PS2 controllers. They are a bit better than similar controllers I’ve encountered with systems like this. They work but you also can use other Bluetooth/USB controllers(which I highly recommend). For the price you are getting a very cool Retro console that is easy to use!It's really easy to. Use I was blown away how many games was on this thing if you love old video games like nes super new Sega ECT. Please buy it you won't be disappointed some of the games didn't work but that's ok most of em do I would of never dreamed that for the price of 4 carts you could get something like this with 50,000 games wow! I would have gave anything to have something like this when I was a kid so just buy this thing trust me it's awesome!.The controllers are garbage, but the console makes it worth buying. My only issue is that the games on the handheld systems show up extremely small on the screen. I’m still trying to figure out what to do in order to fix the issueOverall great product. Able to play all old school arcade games and all retro conole games..:)This has brought back so many memories of nights spent with friends and family members with my old game systems (and the some). The operating system used, Emuelec, is well laid out and easy to use after a short period of learning. There are truly a ton of games but bear in mind that you will come across duplicates do to makers providing multiple systems access to their games. You will also find that some games are glitchy with the stock configurations within the emulators. Not a problem with most after some tweaks though. The controllers are decent enough and are plug and play. I found myself saying "Oh man, they have this game too" so many times now that I've lost count. If you're looking for a true plug and play option to retro gaming that won't break the bank and bring years worth of fun, this is a great option.So alot ot the arcade games don't work and some others in other categories, wasted space on these games and added a ps2 emulatorOrdered the 128 gb version and couldnt be happier. It has a little ovee 41,000 games on it across many sytems.. all the greats are on there and im very pleased so far..only thing i upgraded was the contoller but the one that came with it wasnt horrible, i just wanted a little better.