Retro Warriors

Le Freak Ç’est Chic

Taking a look at CyberGadget’s Retro Freak, another competitor for your retro hardware dollars

By: Chris Saturn

When the Retro Freak was first announced, two things immediately caught my attention: PC Engine/TurboGrafx support, and the ability to save your games onto the installed microSD card. But could I really justify the price, after I’d already invested in a Retron 5?

First, I should probably catch up the people who aren’t familiar with the device. CyberGadget’s Retro Freak is a clone console. Retro gamers should be used to these things by now; modern hardware takes on classic game systems that are often in short supply, or may be starting to degrade from age. It’s a welcome concept, more so as our classic consoles continue to age. Like the Retron 5 before it, the Retro Freak does some things a little differently than clone consoles of the past. Namely, it doesn’t use clone or recycled hardware to attempt to replicate the actual functions of the original consoles. Instead, it uses emulators to playback ROM images made from your game cartridges. This allows some extra leeway over the original systems. Emulators allow for save states, frameskip, cheats, and other modern amenities that make our games less like what we once played, and more like what we remembered playing.

As you can see in the title image above, the Retro Freak comes with a few pieces. That tiny rectangular piece on its own? That’s the actual console. The rest is purely optional. Once you’ve installed some games to a microSD card, the rest can be stored away for future use. Two front USB ports allow for plugging in the included SNES-like controller, or the Retro Freak’s controller adapter (both also pictured). The controller adapter doesn’t come with all configurations of the Retro Freak, but it’s absolutely worth it. This little box, which is roughly the size of the console itself, allows you to connect Famicom (expansion), NES, AV Famicom, SNES/SFC, Genesis/MD, and PC Engine/TurboDuo controllers to the device, so you can play games the way you remember. Without this, you’d be forced to rely on either the bundled controller or another modern USB controller. This isn’t too bad, and the console even natively recognizes PS3 and PS4 controllers that are connected via USB.

The final and largest piece of the puzzle is the cartridge connector. This big mama jamma allows the Retro Freak to dock inside of it to allow you to connect your games. The included ports support Genesis/Mega Drive, Famicom, Super Famicom/SNES, PC-Engine/TurboGrafx/SuperGrafx, and Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance carts/cards. That’s a massive library of games already, but with a couple of adapters (obviously sold separately), you can also plug NES games into the Famicom slot, or Sega Master System, SG-1000, SG-1000 Mk II, Mark III, or Game Gear games into the Genesis slot. This allows for a ludicrous library of games to play on a tiny little device. The biggest difference in the Retro Freak vs. previous clone consoles is that it will allow you to archive your games onto the microSD card. The first time you insert a game, you’ll get a prompt asking if you’d like to copy the game, so that you can play it later. No more swapping carts, just insert once and be done.

For owners of the Retron 5, the question begs to be asked: how does it stack up? Emulation-wise it does very well. I’ve played several dozen hours of games across the various supported platforms, and I’ve encountered no issues. The menus all feel intuitive, and I’m able to easily turn on or off features like scanlines, texture filters, and ratios. The output looks great, too. Like the Retron 5, the console is locked to 720p, which is more than enough for any of our classic favorites. Unlike the Retron 5, though, the Retro Freak supports Super Gameboy emulation (although it is still less than perfect), meaning games like Donkey Kong and Mario’s Picross benefit from greater palettes and borders. The bundled controller is significantly better than the Retron 5 controller, too. Unfortunately, it connects via USB, so you will have to stay tethered to the console.

The view isn’t completely rose-tinted over in Retro Freak land, though. The price is noticeably higher than the Retron, sometimes going for as much as twice the Retron’s already hefty cost. Load times can be a pain, too. If you have a sizable collection of games on your microSD, be prepared to wait several minutes upon powering on the device. Recognizing a new cart also seems to take a few moments more than the Retron, and the Retro Freak seems to be pickier about recognizing games the first time. That said, once they’re recognized, you can just back them up and never worry about the cart again. I’ve also encountered one or two crashes when playing games with frequent and abused fast forward features, so make sure to save often.

What does the Retro Freak offer to RetroPie users? Not a lot, beyond a sense of legitimacy. Since you can backup your own games, it feels a bit more genuine to play a game on the Retro Freak over the RetroPie. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from dumping ROMs onto the Retro Freak’s microSD and playing those, either. In fact, intrepid pirates have even learned that the Retro Freak even has full support for Famicom Disk System disk images, despite no native support to copy the games from the FDS’s disk slot. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Sega Mega CD or PC Engine CD games (yet).

Overall, is it worth it? I suppose that depends on what you’re looking for. Knowing that I have all of my carts legitimately backed up to an SD makes me feel great. Sure, I’ve been able to download copies of those games for ages, but these are my games. This isn’t someone else’s copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 or The Legend of Zelda. I can, in an instant, see my mother’s Final Fantasy III save, copied straight from the SNES cart. And I can then take that save and move it to my computer, or to the cloud. That may not be worth the price to some people, but it was enough to sell me on the system. If you’re just looking for a cheap way to play retro games, and you don’t have a ton of carts laying around, this isn’t for you. But if you’re looking to preserve your nostalgia, and have a convenient way to relive it then I can’t imagine a better way to do it.