The past half decade has offered a plethora of “retro” systems designed to be clones of the SNES, NES, and Genesis. Many of these have been two or three in ones, such as the Retro Duo or Retron 3. However, most have been plagued with less than perfect game compatibility and build quality issues. Additionally, none really offered anything new, other than crappy clone controllers which felt worse than the originals.

The recently announced Retron 5 looks to fix that with a number of features unique to the retro system space, such as a wireless Bluetooth (instead of flaky infrared) controllers in addition to original controls and the ability to remap buttons for any controller to any game (this is a feat Nintendo only recently remembered how to do). It also will output to HDMI and includes graphics and sound filters in an attempt to make old games not look like garbage on new TVs.

Most importantly though is it's ability to play Gameboy Advance games! I own close to 50 GBA games so it's nice to finally see someone make a decent alternative to the Gameboy Player, which while a competent product looks terrible on HDTVs and doesn't allow for configurable controls. This last point was alleviated somewhat by Hori's Gameboy Player controller, until mine broke (one of three times I've ever had a controller break). I thankfully had bought a backup years ago for $20, but to this day am afraid to open it since they now cost $200 on e-bay.

Now the only question is whether or not this thing will play Mother 3…