I decided to take the plunge and get my first famiclone today. The Pocket boy FC-360 is a portable famiclone with a case design copied from the PSP. It got a 2.5 inch color screen and can connect to a TV. The retail price is 5000 yen, which is more or less 50$ US.
Since I knew (even thought I didn't test any) that famiclone are crap, I was not expecting too much. Once I arrived home, the first thing I did was to test has much game as I could.
I general, most game were working, which I was suprised a little bit. The sound was off for the square channel (must be the same bug as most famiclone) and some of the colors are off. For example, Mario skin color is more brownish, some blue of megaman are more greenish, etc. In some game the color looks fine. In other case, they look like crap.
Regarding the AV out, it works but it blurry, more than a famicom RF. The color are better than the one seen on the LCD screen which seems to imply that the color issue is not only caused by the clone but the screen too. In my case, the AV quality was not an issue since I bought it for games on the go.
More complicated mapper didn't work (VRC6), which was expected but some game like Seirei Lickle (Little samson) didn't boot. Most games that I threw at it booted (Ninja gaiden, double dragon 1/2/3, megman 1/2, olympus no tatakai, gun dec, contra, super mario 1/2/3, datsugoku, Top secret, Mitsu ga tooru etc). Even my own MMC3 dev cart with flash eprom was working, which I'm quite happy for testing on the go.
Verdict. No great but not as bad as I expected. Would I recommend it? Too early to tell since I don't know the failure rate of that thing. If it was 30$, I would say yes.
Good part:
- It's cheap (price)
- For now most game worked
- Very light
? You can use a GBA AC adapter for power
Bad parts:
- It's cheap (as in quality)
- There is no head phone jack!
- Already one dead pixel
- AAA batteries arg.. And 3 of them!
Some picture of the box here.
One blog as more picture but all the publicity on the site is porn.. So if you have an issue with that, don't look at the link here.
I now have a portable test machine.
Since I knew (even thought I didn't test any) that famiclone are crap, I was not expecting too much. Once I arrived home, the first thing I did was to test has much game as I could.
I general, most game were working, which I was suprised a little bit. The sound was off for the square channel (must be the same bug as most famiclone) and some of the colors are off. For example, Mario skin color is more brownish, some blue of megaman are more greenish, etc. In some game the color looks fine. In other case, they look like crap.
Regarding the AV out, it works but it blurry, more than a famicom RF. The color are better than the one seen on the LCD screen which seems to imply that the color issue is not only caused by the clone but the screen too. In my case, the AV quality was not an issue since I bought it for games on the go.
More complicated mapper didn't work (VRC6), which was expected but some game like Seirei Lickle (Little samson) didn't boot. Most games that I threw at it booted (Ninja gaiden, double dragon 1/2/3, megman 1/2, olympus no tatakai, gun dec, contra, super mario 1/2/3, datsugoku, Top secret, Mitsu ga tooru etc). Even my own MMC3 dev cart with flash eprom was working, which I'm quite happy for testing on the go.
Verdict. No great but not as bad as I expected. Would I recommend it? Too early to tell since I don't know the failure rate of that thing. If it was 30$, I would say yes.
Good part:
- It's cheap (price)
- For now most game worked
- Very light
? You can use a GBA AC adapter for power
Bad parts:
- It's cheap (as in quality)
- There is no head phone jack!
- Already one dead pixel
- AAA batteries arg.. And 3 of them!
Some picture of the box here.
One blog as more picture but all the publicity on the site is porn.. So if you have an issue with that, don't look at the link here.
I now have a portable test machine.