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Review : Play TV Legends : Super Sonic Gold : Plug-In Game System
One of of My girlfriend's best friends invited us to her son's sixth birthday party this upcoming weekend. Since my girlfriend has already gotten him a present I was sort of compelled to get him something that I would have liked when I was six.
When I was at Target I got him a Radica Play TV Legends : Super Sonic Gold : Plug-In Game System for a mere $10 plus four AA batteries. This is a plug in all in one 16-bit Sega Genesis/Megadrive that is shaped like an original Genesis gamepad but with a good size batter compartment on the under side. The thing has Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic 2. Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. The unit has a gold and purple trim and plugs right into a TV's AV port. It would have been nice if it had a right audio jack. I know that the Genesis was a mono system but they could have had it do dual mono.
It runs on four AA batteries and it sucks that you have to use a small screw driver to get the battery case open. Unless I am trying to adjust a high precision Swiss watch I should not have to break out the jeweler's screwdriver set. I wasn't crazy about how the menu button was right next to the start button and could easily be accidently pressed. However the design of it did feel like a real Sega Genesis controller.
The unit uses an officially licenced Genesis on a chip design and the graphics and gameplay are spot on. The sound is almost there but it sound a bit tinny compared to a real Sega Genesis or the Wii Virtual Console. Now for the games
Sonic 1 - Compleatly awesome
Sonic 2 - even better
Sonic Spin Ball - Meh... I would have prefered Sonic 3
Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine - It is a bastardized version of the compleatly awesome compedative anime inspired Japanese puzzle game Puyo-Puyo. It's a fun game but a horrible example of American localization gone wrong.
One of the weird thing is that since there is no player 2 port the split screen option in Sonic 2 and the 2 player mode in Mean Bean Machine are there but unplayable. They really did not change the ROM image of the origional game one bit.
If you really want pixel perfect Sega Genesis action I would get the Sega Genesis Collection on the PSP or PS2 but for plug in game systems for kids goes this is pretty cool. I just had to open it up, try it and install some batteries so now he can play it out of the box. His mom has never let him have any video games before this but I got permission to give it to him from his mom and I think that Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 for Sega Genesis is a pretty good introduction for a six year old kid into the world of games. Plus it was only ten bucks. The sad thing is that when the Sega Genesis was new and hot it was over a decade before this kid was born.. ugh..
All of my little gripes aside it is a pretty good unit and it can play Sonic 1+2 real nice like. The kid should love it.
Jake at June 1, 2007 
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Comments
Only the first model of the genesis was mono, the second model had stereo support, not sure if any games used it though.
Also I wonder if that controller has Blast Processing!
Posted by: Zach at June 2, 2007 4:15 AM
It seems Sega can't faithfully reproduce the speed of the original titles on any modern console (Sonic on GBA was a bomb and from what I've read, the PAL virtual console version has super slowdown).
So the question I'm asking is 'it is fast'?
Posted by: Matt at June 5, 2007 12:36 PM
Yeah it is as fast as it should be. It's NTSC.
Posted by: Jacob Metcalf ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.8bitjoystick.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 5, 2007 5:49 PM
