Most of these were pretty unlikely to be toggled during a regular play session, but they certainly weren't intuitive. Navigating the system menus, however, was a little confusing - the vintage SNES gamepad we were playing on doesn't have a dedicated 'home' button, so Hyperkin has implemented a series of unlikely button combinations to pull up menus and in game options. Both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and a Harvest Moon title for the GBA ran perfectly on the system, and even looked pretty decent blown up on a 60-inch TV, thanks to the software emulator's various filters.

We spent some time playing around with a prototype - the final motherboard hasn't been fitted into a functional case just yet - and came away pretty satisfied. It's a somewhat different approach for a retro console, but it seems like a good one. Mum may be the word on the device's software specifics, but the advantages are clear: this console can receive software and compatibility updates and offers Virtual Console-like features to players using their old game cartridges. It didn't take long for a very familiar looking notification window to pop up - Hyperkin staff wouldn't confirm or deny it, but the Retron 5 appears to be running on a highly customized Android ROM. Suffice to say, we were surprised - in a demo, there was a clear menu system, offering options to tweak aspect ratio, filter overlays, utilize save states and even enter cheats. When we stopped by Hyperkin's booth, this was the kind of device we expected to see, a chip-based machine that echoed the company's previous retro consoles. For the most part, this hardware emulation approach works fairly well, but it can present some compatibility issues, and it's not really possible to update or tweak the system after it's been launched. Most retro game consoles ape their system of choice by attempting to condense its hardware into a system-on-a-chip.

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