Should you buy a Hyperkin Smartboy Game Boy Game Adapter? A RoXolid Review

Retro gaming is all the rage right now and the folks at Hyperkin really push the envelope. From NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Master System, Famicom, Super Famicom and other systems Hyperkin has continued to develop amazing pieces of tech. One such amazing piece of tech started as an April Fools gag, and I’m of course talking about the Smartboy.

The Smartboy attaches to an Android-powered phone equipped with a USB-C port and allows you to play physical Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges directly on your phone. While you can play these games on your phone you do not play the cartridge itself. The Smartboy borrows inspiration from Hyperkin’s own Retron 5 system as the cartridge has its ROM dumped onto local memory on your smartphone. This process works decently, however the load time can vary depending on the size of the game itself. It is for this very reason that the Smartboy ONLY plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, Game Boy Advanced games were deemed too large and took too long to download the ROM to the phone. This, to some, can limit the appeal of the Smartboy.

Once you have downloaded the 2 free apps and connect the cartridge the Smartboy does a good job playing games. There is a little bit of latency added with the Smartboy, odd for a device which connects physically to your phone via USB-C. Here’s the thing, USB-C is faster than Micro USB and a physical connection should be faster than Bluetooth. On some games this caused more issues than others, most noticeably playing platformers.

Overall the Smartboy played everything I threw at it except for Donkey Kong Country. We’ve reached out to Hyperkin and they have acknowledged that the Smartboy doesn’t have 100% game compatibility as the hardware depends on 3rd party software, namely the MyOldBoy! app. This is one instance where having software developed separately truly hurt the performance of the hardware.

At $50 the Smartboy is an inexpensive novelty. My issue comes from being able to buy the real hardware with 100% game compatibility for under $30. If the Smartboy had better compatibility, better latency and the software was less of an afterthought I could possibly recommend trying it. But for right now it doesn’t feel like the Smartboy is ready for primetime and it cannot replace my Gameboy Advance SP for portable gaming. I hope Hyperkin continues to work on development as there’s a lot of potential here, but people don’t buy potential; they buy finished product.

Why it RoX:
Has an “Oh wow” factor when you see it
They actually did it
Allows you to play physical cartridges on your smart phone
Amazing sound and video quality
Replaces crappy touch screen controls with decent feeling physical controls

What could be improved
While the hardware is nice the software feels like an afterthought
You can’t see all the on-screen options on the MyOldBoy! App, leaving the user to guess at selections.
USB-C and Android only limits market penetration
Load times on GBC games can be loooooooong
No support for GBA
No official emulation support
You can get the real hardware for less


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Should You Buy a Gamerz Tek 8Bit HD NES Clone Console?

There are a ton of different options out there these days for playing classic and retro Nintendo Entertainment System games and we, as game players, reap the benefits. The latest console we had a chance to test out is the Gamerz Tek 8Bit HD console, which we recently unboxed. This system is a true clone, no emulation, and plays real genuine NES cartridges. How does the Gamerz Tek 8Bit HD measure up? Were there any issues with compatibility? How do games look and sound on this sub-$30 console? Should you buy one? Watch to find out.

Why it RoX?
Awesome value for the money
2 Controllers, and they're usable!
Great games compatibility
Good color palette
AV and HDMI output
Small size

What could be improved?
The audio is off and it's distracting
AV out is mono not stereo
Power is a barrel-style connector, not Micro USB
The plastic design is a little uninspiring


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Unboxing the Gamerz Tek 8Bit HD NES Clone Console

We’re in an era where what’s old is new again and the folks over at Gamerz Tek are here to breathe new life into your old Nintendo Entertainment System games. Where the NES connected to your 80’s-era tube television via RF Modulator or AV Cables and were perfectly acceptable for your 13” black and white tube TV that just isn’t going to cut it in the 21st century. That’s where the 8-bit HD comes in, allowing you to connect your 1983 copy of Super Mario Brothers to your 2017 HD 4K flat panel tv. We just got our version from Amazon today and this is our unboxing, showing you what all comes in the box. Make sure you come back for our full-blown review.

8-Bit HD on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/8-Bit-HD-Entertainment-System/dp/B01MYXNB7G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502311391&sr=8-1&keywords=8bit+hd

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Unboxing the Hyperkin Smart Boy Game Boy Adapter - Play Cartridges On Your Phone

Several years ago Hyperkin shocked the world with an adapter for smart phones which was reported to allow you to play your classic Nintendo Game Boy cartridges on your phone. Sure, emulators had been out for some time but the promise of Hyperkin’s adapter was that you’d be able to play with physical controls. After a lot of interest, design, testing, tweaking and modifying Hyperkin has actually done it and brought their April Fool’s joke to life and the result is the just-released Hyperkin Smart Boy. Much like their proof of concept piece the Smart Boy will allow you to play your Game Boy and Game Boy Color (or Game Boy Colour) games natively on your smart phone. Check out how the Smart Boy comes out of the box, how it fits our test phone and more in this unboxing.

Make sure you are Subscribed to RoXolid Productions to see the full review once completed!

Thanks to Live Action Games for help with this review. Make sure to throw them a like on their Facebook Page at

https://www.facebook.com/LAG217/


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Should You Shave The Cord With PlayStation Vue

In this episode of our Cord Cutting series we delve into the world that is Playstation Vue, Sony's answer to cutting the cord. PS Vue offers great features such as time shifting, on-demand and cloud-based DVR. recently Sony made changed the pricing structure of their service and took it from perhaps one of the most budget friendly services to a me-to service. What was our favorite service when we started this journey to an also-ran. Make sure you watch our full overview to see how Playstation Vue works.

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Should You Shave the Cord with DirecTV Now: 30-days Later

As people search for ways to get more for less DirecTV and AT&T released their DirecTV Now over the top streaming service. We've been using the service for the past month and found some (mostly) good, (rarely) bad and greater perspective on what this service has to offer. Take a look at this follow-up to our initial DirecTV Now overview.

Should You: Shave the Cord with DIRECTV NOW video: https://youtu.be/B9jE6iSXceM

Should You: Shave the Cord with SlingTv?: https://youtu.be/vGV5XkaLPrs

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Should You: Shave the Cord with DIRECTV NOW

Cutting the cord and shaving the cord is more popular than ever. With all the different contenders out there one of the most popular pay-tv providers, DirecTV, has entered into the cord shaving and online streaming game with their new service, DirecTV Now. We take a look at DirecTV Now, some of the features that it has, some of the limitations it has and how it stacks up to our previous test service Sling TV. One thing to remember on DirecTV Now is that you can only stream on two different devices at one time so if that is a consideration for you this may not be the service for you.

See our overview of Sling TV at the link below:
https://youtu.be/vGV5XkaLPrs

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Should You: Shave the Cord with Sling TV?

In part 2 of our cord cutting and cord shaving series we look into one of the many different providers that are out there to help you possibly save money every month by shaving the cord. in this video we're looking at Sling TV specifically the orange and blue packages that are available out there. Sling TV is one of many different streaming services that provide paid TV channels at a reduced cost compared to cable or satellite. How does Sling TV measure up? Will it fill the need that we're looking to fill? We investigate those questions and more in our video.

See our overview of DirecTV Now at the link below:
https://youtu.be/B9jE6iSXceM

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Should You: Cut or Shave the Cord - First Steps

Should You: Cut or Shave the Cord?

I've been generally unhappy with my pay TV service for some time and looking for Alternatives and how to cut the cord. I recently picked up an HDHomerun Prime from Silicondust and begin the process of testing and seeing what my needs were versus what I could find out there. And this video I will show you some tips and tricks that I've picked up as we begin down the road of cord cutting in 2017.

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Should You Buy an AV2HDMI Adapter?

In today's living room the HDMI connector is king. Unlike audio/video connectors of the past it is capable of carrying a lot of data in one simple and easy connection. This was not always the case however. Back in the dark ages, we'll call them the 1980's and 1990's, we had to suffer through low-resolution connections such as RF (gasp), Component (Shriek!) or Composite (Faint!!!).

It is possible to connect devices from yesteryear to modern HDMI-equipped televisions. We have one such offering here in the Mini AV2HDMI adapter. Purchased off of eBay for under $15 I wanted to see if this little box was the miracle I was hoping for to help me connect my Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Famicom, Sharp Famicom  Twin, Super Famicom and Nintendo N64 via HDMI.

The connection is super simple, just connect your AV cables to one side, the Mini USB cable to another and finally your HDMI output cable to a third. Once connected and power has been provided you're ready to go. Sort of. The systems I was trying to up-scale all ran at a naitive resolution below even today's Standard Definition Standard of 480P. To begin with the adapter is having to up-scale a pretty crummy resolution. Beyond that when I connected ANY input device to it I had a noticable audio buzz coming through my system. I tried different Mini USB cables to make sure the insulation wasn't too thin and causing RF noise, different HDMI and AV cables but the buzz was always there. Just for that fact I would say pass on this adapter, but there are more reasons yet to come.

On my classic NES titles they were all blown out to 16:9 aspect ratio with no way to bring them back to their naitive 4:3. This lead to the graphics not scaling properly and also some pretty gnarly artifacting in the graphics themselves. The title screen on Mike Tyson's Punch Out is one of the worst offenders but everything from Super Mario Bros to Excitebike and everything in-between had weird artifacting in the graphics. When compared to my NES Classic there's no comparison, the AV2HDMI does a poor job at up-scaling.

There is one thing that this adapter does well and that's convert AV cables to HDMI. That's about all it does well. The 720/1080 switch didn't seem like it changed ANYTHING, at least I never noticed a discernable change. If you're on a smaller TV, like 24-27" you might not notice all the artifacting I did on my 60", but even on my 48" in my media room it was distracting and, honestly, my AV cables looked BETTER on the same TV!

If you're into retro gaming and looking to connect your old system to an HDMI port pass on these adapters. They are all over eBay and if they are anything like this one they are port adapters, not up-scalers. Don't waste your money on this, instead save your pennies and have the guys at https://www.game-tech.us/product/hi-def-nes/ upgrade your console for you, you won't be disappointed. Or less expensive but super fun is to pick up an NES Classic, it supports HDMI naitively!


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