Due to procrastination and later due to personal circumstances I haven’t talked about this thing which I got a year ago. This is the first (and most likely the last) time I get something form Analogue. Placed a preorder in May 2023 thinking they would run out (like it has happened with other Analogue products), which didn’t happen. And it took forever for the thing to ship (Early December 2023).
Packaging is Premium, kinda like an Apple product, you know how it goes, this whole “experience begins with packaging”, yada yada yada.
In the beginning I say it wasn’t worth the (long) wait. It came with issues, the worst of them being the inconsistency on pairing controllers. Tried the Xbox Series X and Wii U Pro controllers. They worked but had some issues when pairing them back with their consoles and trying to pair them back with the Analogue. The wired Xbox 360 controller worked fine, though no way for setting up turbos. In the end the Turbografx 16 mini usb controller worked better. Original controllers worked fine without an extension but as you know the original cords are (Japanese) short. They ended up working fine with the extension after upgrading the firmware.
Not a lot of video options but enough to make it look as if I’m using a CRT TV (sort of). I say sort of because I have a real PC Engine and play it on a real CRT, the Analogue Duo (and other similar products) will never look like the real thing no matter how good the filters are.
Original games worked fine, cards and CDs. A reproduction card I have also worked fine though the game name was not detected. From what I read, some units are notorious for scratching disks, I didn’t experienced that issue but I’m not risking it anymore. The other thing is the card grip is too tight, feels as if I could break something when pulling a card. My Turbo Everdrive v 1.1 didn’t work initially. It wasn’t until someone on the internet figured a work around that I got it to work. The workaround is basically boot a real game, insert the Everdrive then load the original game from the library. Someone even came up with an adapter for this reason and also to protect the console’s slot. Go to Guinea Pig games if you are interested.
Like other Analogue products there is an unofficial jailbreak firmware, it took a couple of months for it to come out and hasn’t been updated since February 2023. The most important feature is being able to play roms and isos from the SD card. So no need to risk damaging your original games or the console, or no need for messing around with the turbo everdrive or burning disks. FPGA magic with roms and isos, kinda like using a mister (which what I should have done since the beginning).
Is it worth it? I’d say no, it is not a good complement for your original console as there is a risk of damaging your original games. How about playing roms using FPGA? Maybe, as it is cheaper than a mister but you only get to play PC Engine games, so it is best to invest in a Mister.
