Display Note: Technical limitations made it difficult to get proper pictures of this system. The display isn’t as washed out as these images suggest; it looks great in person.

I never owned a Genesis as a child, but I had friends who did and there were several games for the system that I loved. So when Innex announced their Retro-Bit brand portable Genesis with games built right in, I was interested. Retailing at around fifty dollars, this handheld is a little smaller than an original Nintendo DS, runs on three AAA batteries, and comes with 20 Genesis games built right in that you pick from a menu.

The hardware holds up well enough. The LCD screen is understandably small, but most of these games are playable on it. Notably the controls are not exact replicas of a Genesis d-pad and buttons, but instead are vague ’close enough’ versions that are suitable for most of the games on this handheld. An onboard speaker provides decent sound, though you can use headphones or hook the audio and video up to a TV if you prefer; headphones aren’t included but the A/V cables for playing on a TV are right there in the box.

The three AAA batteries are held in by a panel that clamps over them, which you can in turn also screw shut; a small phillips-head is required to open this panel when you first get the system, though that screw isn’t strictly necessary to have around afterward. I don’t have an exact measure of battery life, but it seemed to be reasonable; I didn’t have to change them much during the course of my review.

It’s great that the handheld itself is solid, but all the good hardware in the world wouldn’t matter if the games didn’t back that up. So what does your fifty dollars buy? Well, the following twenty games; you can’t change them, so this is a take it or leave it proposition. I’ll give a very brief description of each, though I hope long-time fans of some of them will forgive me for the lack of exhausting detail... there is only so much that can be said about any one game when you have to explain twenty of them in one article.

Important: Most of these games act like they support two players, because they are essentially Genesis ROMs running in a dedicated handheld. Unfortunately, there is no way to get a second player involved in most of them, so most of these are singleplayer affairs.


Alex Kidd: A side-scrolling platformer, and one of the oldest games in this set. I’m admittedly a little underwhelmed by it, as it seems the collision detection is a little bit off; things that look like valid jump-kicks to me turn out to just get me killed more often than not. I’m not a fan of this one, but the games mostly get better from here.

Alien Storm: A brawler much like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, though most of your enemies have been replaced by aliens. Your character is fairly agile for this kind of game, interestingly enough. It’s not bad... a little plain, but not bad.

Altered Beast: A side-scrolling brawler, different from Alien Storm in that you’re basically ’on rails’ and have only a limited area to move around in. Main goal is to go from left to right beating up enemies, then beat up a boss, then do it all over again in the next stage. You can collect orbs to gain more powerful attacks, and eventually turn into a beast with even better attacks. It’s an okay game, nothing amazing... but you absolutely must play it once just to hear the digitized voice calling for your character to "Wise from your gwave!"

Arrow Flash: Well, we’re still side-scrolling, but this time it’s a plane shooter similar to Gradius or Life Force. The power-ups for your ship’s guns are fairly basic, but you can change it from plane mode to ’giant robot’ (relatively speaking) mode as you play. Another fairly simple game, but it’s decent fun if you’re a fan of the genre.

Columns 3: This is a ’match three’ puzzle game where you drop colored pieces into a field, and compete against the AI. It has a few power-ups and such so it’s actually kind of similar to Puzzle Fighter, though obviously not as refined as that more modern title. It’s decent enough; I’m not fond of this type of game but I can admit Columns 3 is reasonably fun.

Next: More game summaries.