Retron NES Game Console
Now you're playing with power
Last summer, a small vintage store called Maine Vintage Toys had a “video game” day. They were celebrating their new meeting space that was next to their retail store and had set up a variety of video game systems for people to come play for free. Plus they had a spin-the-wheel game to win a free trinket and a signup for a raffle.
We stopped by on a Saturday afternoon and played a few of the Atari 2600 video games they had available. I don’t recall getting anything good in the spin-the-wheel game, perhaps it was a pen, but I did sign up for the raffle.
We went home and later that night I got a text message from the owner saying that I had won the raffle! It was for a RetronN 1 AV, a video game console that plays NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) games. The store was only a few minutes from my house so I raced over there before they closed to pick up my winnings.
The RetroN 1 AV is a low-priced unit, normally selling for just $20 so it’s not like I won anything extravagant, but free is free! But unlike some retro consoles that have built-in games, the RetroN 1 has a cartridge slot and plays original NES games.
I have lots of retro stuff, both video games and computers, but I didn’t have any NES consoles or games. So while I was also there, I also picked up a game to play on it, MLB baseball.
It turns out this baseball game was a poor choice on my part as it was pretty bad. I didn’t like the gameplay or much about it at all. You had to manually create your starting lineups, which was tedious, the gameplay was difficult and the sound was poor.
In the 80s I never owned an NES. I did rent one a few times and enjoyed some of the games (Blades of Steel was a favorite). I also remember selling a lot of NES and games when I worked at Service Merchandise as a teenager. But the NES essentially passed me by because I was mostly into computers (surprise, surprise) at the time.
Since this was the AV model, it has simple composite outputs which easily connected to my 30 year old Sony 27” Trinitron TV (I bought it new in 1995!) for that old-school retro feel.
The RetroN 1 also came with a single controller that is a pretty nice copy of an actual NES controller. It turned out that I did have some original NES controllers in a box and they work fine with the RetroN since it uses the standard NES controller port.
I also recently picked up a couple other NES games to play on it, BurgerTime and the original Super Mario Bros. (with Duck Hunt).
I remembered BurgerTime being a fun, strange game and this NES version is a great port. I found it to be on the difficult side, but it was fun to play and it looked create on the CRT.
Unfortunately I could not get the Super Mario Bros. cartridge to work. I just got some sort of orange screen of death. I fiddled with it a while, but it stayed the same. I did buy this from a somewhat local retro video game shop (Game Zone), so the next time I’m there I’ll maybe see if they can swap it for another copy — I seem to recall they had quite a few.
Since I’m not much of an NES guy, if any of you NES fans out there have some games to recommend, please put them in the comments.
Premium members can keep reading after the break for some more information about other RetroN consoles.