The Super Retro Champ fuses the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo

Throughout the years in the video game industry, lines are drawn in the ever evolving Console Wars. No matter the generation, no conflict will ever come as close as the rivalry between the SEGA Genesis and the Super Nintendo.

However, a new device called the Super Retro Champ by My Arcade looks to bury the hatchet for good.

The successor to the Retro Champ is a beastly piece of tech. With a seven-inch screen, a modern gamepad layout, and two cartridge slots on the top and the bottom, the Super Retro Champ is nearly the size of two Nintendo Switch Lites. It looks more like a fat tablet than a handheld console.

There are some concerns with the system’s battery life, a screen that large requires a lot of power. It reportedly runs on a five hour charge – compare that to the Switch Lite’s seven hour playtime and you’ll see that you’re cutting yourself short. That said, the Super Retro Champ sports HDMI out to allow players to connect the console to your television.

To be completely honest, I’m unsure what My Arcade is trying to accomplish. Its is about as portable as carrying four iPad in your pocket, and other companies have tried and failed at portable home cartridge gaming. Hyperkin released the SupaBoy to little fanfare, citing inadequate manufacturing and poor compatibility with the SNES library.

There’s also the question of whether we need another clone console. Priced at $110, it puts itself in the middle of two outstanding alternatives to original hardware. For $79,99, the SEGA Genesis Mini gives players the very best of SEGA’s 16-bit gaming, and would arguably be around the same size. On the other hand, you could take a deeper plunge in the wallet to procure Analogue’s Mega Sg. It plays all your Classic Genesis games via FPGA, rather than emulation.

It looks like My Arcade is trying to fill a need that doesn’t exist on hardware that isn’t up to snuff. Perhaps it could prove useful to that one guy who wants to compare the Genesis and SNES versions of Mortal Kombat on the fly (I know you’re out there), but for the rest of us, we might be better off just passing on this one.