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After a legion of retro clones offering inconsistent performance on a tight budget, 2014's Retron 5 was a breath of fresh air. Positioned as an all-in-one solution for your vintage gaming needs, Hyperkin's Android-powered console covered a wide range of formats - including SNES, Mega Drive and Game Boy Advance - and came with a raft of emulator-specific features, such as save states and screen filters. It was almost inevitable that rivals would appear following the same approach, and the first out of the gate is the Japan-made Retro Freak, courtesy of a tiny company called Cyber Gadget. A cursory glance at the spec sheet reveals a close match for the Retron 5, but there are some key differences - some very positive, others less so.On a purely physical level, the Retro Freak is a console you'd struggle to call eye-catching. It's boxy, grey, and covered in cartridge slots for the various formats it supports, making it look like some kind of nightmarish swiss cheese. In its favour, the Retro Freak is noticeably smaller than the Retron 5 and therefore easier to fit underneath your television. Cyber Gadget's machine offers an added bonus in that it's actually comprised of two parts - the main unit, which contains the brains of the system, and the cartridge adapter, which is by far the larger of the two and can be separated from the main unit when you're not using it.
Unlike the Retron 5, the Retro Freak allows you to dump ROMs from cartridges onto a MicroSD card, and once you've done that you can disconnect the cartridge adapter and store it away if you so wish. This makes the system even easier to integrate into your cramped entertainment setup - the main component of the console is roughly the size of a SNES cartridge.
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