Disappointed with Retroid Mini

I got a Retroid Mini second hand from eBay last week with the ropes of getting something that would become my ”Switch for retrogames”. I wanted something that could run up to Dreamcast and that I could both plug into my TV at home and take with me while traveling.

The device technically fits the bill, but the user experience is not as polished as I’d hoped. I think I was spoiled by the Polymega because I can simply put any supported disk or cartridge on it and it just works, with rare exceptions.

I used to be an avid user of emulators since the days of Genecyst, Nesticle, Zsnes and Snex9x so I’m no stranger to fiddling things around until you get the best settings, crawling the internet for the best bios and so on, but I just forgot how boring it is (and how much free time I had back then - I was a teenager after all).

That said it has been years since I last touched an emulator and by acquiring the polymega last year I thought “oh wow! We sure went a long way… no more setup and I can simply play my games like a normal console”. The only flaws of the Polymega are that it is not portable and it doesn’t support PS2 and DC.

So when I got the Retroid Mini I was super excited because I thought technology had evolved to a point where I would have the seamless experience of the polymega with all the advantages of mobile. I was ready to eBay the polymega because I had just acquired the ultimate retro machine!

But I was wrong. In this past week I’ve spent many hours finding the right roms, fiddling with different game formats and compression, several different emulators for the same system, debugging crashes, configuring retroarch over and over… and I still don’t know why some of the things don’t work as expected.

I also grew a deep hatred for both Retroarch and Android.

The Retroid mini feels like a patchwork of random emulators more than a proper console.

I respect the build quality, although I think the mini is a bit too mini for me, but in the end the software is just not there yet for me and I’ll be putting it back for sale on eBay very soon.