The Polymega
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- čas přidán 29. 03. 2024
- Episode 400 - The Polymega from Playmaji is an interesting emulation device that hooks up to your HDTV which enables you to play your old physical NES, SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, 32X, Sega CD, 32XCD, PlayStation, Saturn, Neo Geo CD, TurboGrafx-16, TurboGrafx-CD, Turbo Duo. PC Engine, PC Engine Arcade Card CD, SuperGrafx, and Nintendo 64 games as well as use their controllers. Let's check how good or not good this is!
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What do you think of the Polymega? Yay or nay?
Super interesting concept that seams to work very well considering. But yeah that price point 👀
The fact that it straight up REMOVES the pre installed ganes with some system software updates makes that a MAJOR Nay for me.
Fantastic review as always. If I'm going to drop that kind of coin on a retro console emulator, I want it to outperform the Ali Express handhelds.
I could forgive occasional frame drops, but the the controller glitches just make it an instant nay.
Isn’t it based on standard x86 PC hardware? Just use a PC then!
It's kind of junky for that price point. Good concept. Bad execution.
Damn, that is a LOT of problems for a bare bones emulation box that's more expensive than a PS5.
The price of this thing is obscene
ha HAHAHA
People will find a reason to complain about anything
@@The_Badcompanythe cost of things is usually a pretty good reason.
@@jeffro9252 Complaining won't change anything. All it does is make you and others around you miserable by being negative.
@@The_BadcompanyI have a solution. Let it be, don't complain and most important don't buy it 😅
$500 for an underpowered Retroarch machine is a hard ask.
Retroarch runs games a bit better
@@Starwarsgeek-98And gets upstream support from its authors without needing to go through a vendor. And you're allowed to apply patches to it yourself if desired.
Careful, you'll upset the Polymega apologist fanboys 🤣
Not buying the thing, but consider it a Pi + a bunch of retrode modules. Those are expen$ive. It's a pretty niche project nonetheless and would have sold probably very well about 10 years ago.
No Philips CD-i?
Well excuse me princess
What about Amiga CD 32?
lol
Or 3DO?
I don't know about CD-i, but good 3DO emulation would have been nice. I have like 50+ games for it somewhere since the 90's. I have some legit good memories about 3DO. Other than it was too expensive at release, it was a solid console for the time.
@@kosmosyche I wish I didn't know about CD-i xD
Imagine paying $550 for a freaking Celeron based Emulation box... Yeah, no thanks.
Yes, that is insane. Elitedesk mini running a Ryzen5 with embedded graphics and 8 times the RAM is $100…
Seriously. It's basically manufactured e-waste at this point.
@@strawmanfallacy you can thank Soulja boi. His scam console is even trashier than the poly mega, even by raspberry pi
I appreciate your brutal honesty. Companies need to bring their A game before you review their product.
It's pretty cool but, running emulators on a 6 year old laptop you have sitting around in your basement through HDMI is surprisingly competent for a fraction of the cost.
better hardware in the laptop, based on some specs i'm seeing here.
my 10+ year old laptop ran PSX games till about 7 years ago. thanks windows update & computer illiteracy
And near perfect emulation, too. None of that frame skips with the audio.
I have a free 12 year old Mac my neighbor gave me and it can do everything the Polymega can.
My Wii U does all of these consoles AND it's a Wii/Wii U and it runs GameCube games.
Originally announced in 2017, 7 years ago. So many better options today with a smaller price tag.
yea, and it's such a buggy mess after all this time...
Yeah, I mean you could buy all the analog consoles for less than the cost of this thing. And at least there it's perfect fpga hardware emulation.
@@Cimone90 Fpga is still isn't perfect
@user-se9dz1wy3y it's damn near 100% though. I have all the analog fpga consoles to date and they are indistinguishable from playing on real hardware. Aside from the better video output from the analog consoles, of course.
@@user-se9dz1wy3y Oh and this underpowered CPU it's using clearly is? 🤣
How the hell is this thing still so unfinished after all this time? Specially considering it uses free Emulators that have existed for years?
The shimmering in the output is absurd for such an expensive device...
super underpowered CPU
Some of the issues relate to the choice of emulators: Mega Drive emulation is somewhat fragmented, but Kega Fusion hasn't been updated for almost 15 years now and the only reason to use it at all at this point is the 32X support (the Mega CD emulation is especially ropey). It seems really weird that they didn't license Genesis Plus GX, BlastEm or Ares instead.
@@flandrble and probably does not use the RAM properly
@@flandrble It's not even expensive to upgrade the CPU with something way better
The fact that this thing costs so much and requires physical modules to expand its capabilities makes me think this was envisioned as a hardware emulator at some point before they realized that it would be to difficult/expensive to do that but decided to go ahead anyway. So my guess is that this is basically a highly compromised zombie project, which would explain a lot.
I canceled my preorder and got my money back. I have no regrets.
Same. I knew this thing was going to be bad but I didn't expect it to be this bad
Me too. I cancelled my preorder years ago. Ended up building a mini itx pc with a bunch of emulators, then I dumped my whole PS1 and Saturn discs. Couldn't be happier.
You have dodged a bullet there.
The fact that you even preordered one LOL!
I'd heard of the name around the block, but never really knew what a Polymega was. This not only educated me on what it is, but also why I don't want one!
$500? For a system with 2GB of ram and a Celeron? Using software emulation? With 4-7 frames of audio delay? Yiiiikes. Seems hard to justify the cost when emulation is right there anyway. Not being able to pull your cart saves either? What's the point of the console then? Just for the novelty of putting in the cartridges you own? Hard pass, really.
Great video though! Always love your production quality!!
For that price point why wouldnt you just buy an old laptop or a Beelink mini PC...? The idea of this machine is cool but what are they thinking with those prices??
Correct its Not worth it especially if you don't even OWN physical games for all of those systems anymore and I don't even buy Physical PS3/PS4 games anymore.
Performance looks kind of ass on this.
@@Marmite101That too! RetroArch does too good of a job for me to consider alternatives really.
@@ChairmanMeow1 I got a beelink mini-PC for half the price of this, with a modern Ryzen CPU, 16GB of RAM, 500GB of M.2 storage. I can download all of these emulators, put them in a front-end, and use whatever controllers i want. The only thing i wouldn't be able to do use insert my physical copies, which doesn't even remotely matter in this case anyway since you can't dump unknown games nor can you import your own battery saves. It's a novelty for sure but that's a LOT of money for something that's not an FPGA/Mister
Man, for 500+ bucks to get up and running, this has way too many issues for me. I love the concept of a definitive modular retro box, but it needs either a massive price drop or a lot of work to smooth out some of those issues. Thanks for the in-depth review!
500 for emulator station.
i'd rather just buy a desktop PC at that price and forget about having to swap hardware.
But you have to set it up yourself with the image library, etc. @@baysidejr
@@Deep_wolf Exactly. I thought my Retron 5 used to be kind of cool back in the day...until I realized using my cartridges was meaningless and it was all emulation. Either use the actual hardware or just use an emulator on your computer
Thank you for showing and trying the Polymega so we don't have to
"Huh, guess the next Game Sack vid will mention a portrait video mode of some sort"
- Joe's neighbours
Lol, Joe's neighbors moved away years ago
Don't you mean taint mode, I mean tate mode?
Wow. $500,00 + $80,00 a module for a lot of plastic waste running a CELERON, with a free OS (Linux) and free emulators, that has a lot of bugs.
How is that price even justifiable? How can the devs put on the market something like that?
I mean anyone could see this thing was a disaster years ago
For that price they should be using something much better, and except for the attachments for cartridges/controllers, you can easily do everything with Retroarch.
I mean, it's cool that you can upgrade the CPU but I agree, it should've been tweaked and fixed. 2GB of RAM? Should've been 8GB instead. Makes me wonder if there's ways to upgrade the RAM too.
Oh yeah I am seriously worried about the plastic waste.
Yeah, honestly you can buy a brand new Raspberry Pi 5 for like $80, and a USB DVD drive for like $40. Rip the games on the computer you already have, send them over to a Retro Pie install, and you'll get the same (or better) experience.
Just wanna say, I am very sensitive to audio delay. That's one thing I just can't get over
I love the skit callback to the "too much blast processing" gag, one of my favs from the show.
i got mine a few months ago. Started boot looping out of the box. Never got to play a single game on it. The company takes over a month to respond to emails. Should have kept my money.
Hey Joe! Just wanted to say that over the years I’ve watched your channel grow, and your content constantly improve (as well as your humorous delivery). You have a knack to make technical info delivery understandable and entertaining, I honestly think that in the retro space your content is the best out there. Much appreciation from a fellow Gen-X
5:10 You know you're watching a good channel when you start to smile as soon as you see a game sideways 'cause you know you're about the hear the thing XD
Joe do the thing, do the thing!!!
"tAte MoOoO00oodDde!!"
Come on Bart, say the thing
@@JaredConnell "I didn't do it..... err I mean TATTTTEEE MOOO000DDEE"
Or was it "1 million MEEGGAA POOWWAAA"??
I've watched some video reviews of this in preparation before I made the jump to order and this one by far is the most damning. While I understand that emulation isn't perfect on other devices and in some cases I don't mind, the constant need for configuration from booting a game to just plugging in a controller on top of the emulation issues is a major deal-breaker for me. Though I'm intrigued by the convenience of getting to have access to various game libraries on one console, this is gonna have to be a hard nay for me, especially for $500. Great in-depth review., brother. This is why I subscribe. 👍
80 bucks for each module too on top of the 500 bucks. And u lose all svae game progress when u dump your cart, it does not transfer over.
I use to be a warrior like you, but then I took a HD temporal blur to the knee
if the Polymega was based on an FPGA ,that could drastically improve its quality. A more user friendly, consolized version of MISTER would be pretty awesome.
Originally it was meant to be an FPGA system, but something changed and this is what we ended up with.
Yet it is still priced like an fpga
What does the female pro golf association have to do with a shitty emulation box? Did they sponsor it?
Emulation works well enough for 99% of us without OCD. This is just a shitty product
I'll translate your comment: This would be better if it was a completely different product.
I want a multi console based on FPGA, not a weak Celeron based system from 2017 running high latency software emulation.
I had high hopes when it got announced, I could deal with the change from FPGA to Software Emulation (if done right) and they announced the Polymega with an Intel i7 / i5 at the start, seeing it run on a lowly Intel Celeron now while still carrying the hefty price tag is stunning. I applaud myself for going MiSTer years ago :)
You shouldn't even have to deal with software emulation over fpga given the $80 price tag for the modules. For those things being emulators that are simple and a big waste of plastic, that thing should be $40-$50. And I only say that high because of the included controllers.
Loved the ending 'tower' bit - vintage gamesack!!
Thank you Joe! I was so excited for this, and was trying to save up for this... Now I don't need to waste my money! I was under the impression that modules were needed for near hardware level emulation... not simply to adapt the cartridge.
So glad youtubers like you exist.
NO ONE was expecting Game Sack to cover this! This should be interesting!
Oh no Joe! You missed it. "We're gonna rock down to NEC avenue!"
I'm always baffked by how much work goes into your videos. You're amazing
You always upload on sunday mornings here in the Netherlands, thank you for waking me up with TATE MODE!!!
I really love the concept of the Polymega and have been a supporter since its early announcement.
The Base + Ultra Expansion was the package I really looked forward for. However to see that it has still so many baby-illness problems unfixed after all this time is bad, and for such a heavy price-tag it is difficult to justify such a big investment....
Gimme that Lightening Force model 1 synth soundtrack any day of the week!
Yep, blew the other ones comparing out of the water.
When you use youtube reviews as your QA department.
$500 U.S. for the console... then $80 additional, depending on the module you want? ...I'll stick with the MiSTer.
i wanted to like the poly but
im just gonna keep hoarding OG hardware 😅
You own a MiSTer? You da man!
Yeah but can the MiSTer quench my ever more perverse obsession with inserting ancient plastic discs/cartridges into things? I didn't think so, check and mate. *Throws $550 dollars at polymega to watch a disc go into a drive while his eyes roll into the back of his head from pure bliss*
Yeah for that price you could just get a Retrotink and original hardware.
at least a mister can PLAY GAMES CORRECTLY. this machine is the best joke of the day
I remember asking the "value" question when this thing was first announced. I was told "this isn't for the enthusiast who knows about emulation. Its for the person who just wants to put in their game and play."
So its an expensive toy for people with little to no understanding of tech... I think we all know what to call something like that.
Happy easter and thanks Joe :)
Glad to see you're stil around delivering such quality content!
Man I love this machine. It definitely needs some updates and yes it's expensive but I'm having a blast having access to my full retro collection again
My guy, there are like 20 other ways to do this without having wasted 500-1000 dollars lol You got absolutely fucking hosed buying this shitty low power computer running a bunch of free emulators badly. Just get over the weird obsession with needing to stick a cartridge or a disc in things and download the roms for the stuff you own.
Base unit at 500 USD. Not a chance
You could get an older office PC that still has its optical drive and get almost the same experience as the PolyMega, at least when it comes to the disc based systems as Retroarch lets you play those games directly from the drive or will copy them for you. Sure you'd be giving up being able to use real cartridges but since you aren't actually playing the game from them using another cart dumper to get your roms would be no different, if a few extra steps.
All in all you'd get almost the same experience at a far cheaper price and with more systems available to play.
Thank you for the attention to detail!
I'm astonished at all the issues. Excellent review.
1.Started at $250, ended up costing $550.
2.Abandoned Features: Dropped FPGA support after pre-orders.
3.Performance Problems: Reports of bugs, lag, and compatibility issues.
4.Expensive Expansion: To get other 5 modules , they will cost your around $400.
5. Dated hardware
Unlike Analoge pocket, which bundled expansions together, Polymega requires users to purchase each module separately, increasing the overall cost and making it less convenient for consumers seeking a comprehensive gaming experience.
I live for the TATE MODE call outs
I'm surprised he is still saying it wrong
@@ru5t397gotta commit to the bit.
@ru5t397 He intentionally says it wrong to irritate Japanophiles and pronunciation nazis. It's part of his personality and style of humor.
This thing reminds me of the LaserActive from the '90s that I desperately wanted back then, only better. I'm not going to buy it but man, it's tempting.
Love that stop-motion, by the way!
Just realized I’ve been subscribed and watching for 10 years. Thanks so much Joe!
_Two_ 32Xs? Why, that's 64 Megabits of POWER!
Megashits
Do the math!
I like these concepts of newer hardware running older games,. The main downside I can see is that if the main unit breaks down and the manufacturer stops making that specific unit, you're left in the dust, and getting another used unit will most probably be VERY expensive due to the sparse availability. On the other hand, finding original consoles is easier, much more affordable, and in some cases easier to repair due to being older hardware and the existence of several videos and tutorials spread all over the Internet. AND it's also easier to just buy a second or third console as backup in the eventual case your original consoles also start breaking down and you can't repair them 🙂
Happy Easter Joe and thanks for a video on the holiday.
Great review. Love the end skit too.
Ooofff... the sheer gall to ask 500usd for a console that never play anything right..
If I want an emulation box, I can connect any old controller to my pc and emulate there, with better quality, playing literally any of the... ALL? of the roms that you can find online, for free. I don't see the point of these devices. Either you play with original hard, or you go FPGA or just use a pc.
Meh, people should just play these games in whatever way they find most enjoyable. The real problem here is how little you get for your money rather than the concept itself.
Love your videos and the humor ❤
Always full of great content!
Thanks Joe!!!!!!! You make my day better
I actually liked the original idea but since that got lost during development, I stick to my expensive hardware from Analogue 😂
Analogue may be expensive but at least you know you're getting crisp fpga emulation
With all the current issues and massive delays, I'm glad I cancelled my order and went the MiSTer route. Still, a cool console for physical collectors, once the bugs are squashed. Awesome vid as usual, Joe!
You have dodged a very expensive bullet.
@@randy7894 I'm spry for a fat guy!
Welcome back! Missed both you and Mustie1 last Sunday morning!
Best video I have seen on the product. Thank you!
So many issues and such a hefty price tag
I certainly know what YOU think about the PolyMega Joe lol.
watching that tower of power wobble caused me actual physical pain
Been following the saga of this thing for a long time, and I never get tired of seeing it fumble the ball
Sackmen, unite!
I'm a man of the sack!
Getting my Sack on.
yes😎👍
Sack it!
$580 and it can't even run Ocarina of Time properly? Just get an old laptop or a Steam Deck or something.
Or just buy almost any Retro Handheld and plug that up to your TV instead. 😕
As always, stellar review Joe.
The "PolyShmegma". I'm not sure where I heard that name used a few years back... but now every time I see this console - I just hear it pronounced as the _PolyShmegma._ lol. In my head-canon, your voice Joe, is by far the funniest one to pronounce it repeatedly in a 30 minute video!
Everything about this console is nonsense: from the price of base unit, to the modules (and their cost), to the fact that its a expensive modern 'software emulation' device that makes it so hard to do simple things even cheap emulation boxes allow (even accounting for it being closed source). I'm not sure who they designed this for, given its prohibitive expense - and how cheap alternative are for people who want to play with carts.
But one thing is for sure: It's a fascinating device to see you cover, and the PolyShmegma is the greatest game console name ever in the history of the universe! Thank you Joe for bringing us the scoop!
Game developer here, the audio delay is from the ALSA audio driver on Linux. On Windows, this issue is solved long ago with the WASAPI (XAudio) driver. On Linux, one would have to use the more obscure JACK driver instead.
I’m running ALSA on retropie and batocera across pi3b+, X86.64, and odroid XU4 respectively. Pretty sure ALSA is the OS backend for my latest project, a pseudo 16-bit engine being cross developed for both Windows and Linux using SDL2 and I’ve spent hundreds of hours so far testing in both environments… not only have I never noticed inherent audio lag using ALSA, I’ve never even heard someone make that claim. Do you have something to back that up?
It's actually PulseAudio rather than ALSA. Both PulseAudio and JACK use ALSA drivers. The developers most likely just need to change one PulseAudio config file to give lower latency.
TAAAAAATE MOOOOODE! Happy Easter, Joe!
lmao I'm so glad you have all the skits compiled. thanks for all the great entertainment
Sometimes I feel down I like how new episodes of this keep coming out.
So like....an absurdly expensive emulator that makes you feel better by using official software. Interesting. Not really.
8 minutes into your 32 minute video was all I needed to pass up on this thing. Who is this for? It's too expensive for casuals and it's not feature-rich enough for enthusiasts.
Looks like it's for people who want to get into retro gaming but aren't knowledgeable enough to realize how bad of a deal it is.
I'd never heard of this thing before. It's good to learn new things.
Great video and great ending lol!
why would anyone buy this at an absurd price? You can literally find easier way to play games for different system.
I say nay, just use a pc you already own and retroarch with controller adapters if you want to use original controllers.
RetroArch. 🤮🤮🤮
Happy Easter, Sackboy! :)
Great presentation on this video, I was a fan of the "Bzzt!" and "Ding" along the way.
🔥 *TATE MODE!!!* 🔥 never gets old. 5:10
Really hope he never drops this gag as well as “Did you just say tits??”
Probably just stick with my old PSP for retro emulation.
Thanks for the video! I've been waiting years for the Polymega. But seeing that after all this time there are so many issues i doubt the system will ever work perfect...
Quoting the Mega 64: "Raspberry Pi Bro"
IMHO, Polymega is pretty much dead on arrival. If Polymega were to use AMD AM4 motherboard with iGPU support up until Ryzen 7 5700G + upgradable external memory, perhaps this could be an emulation beast.
Easter Sunday Sack! Still digging the new opening animation.
Love Blaster Master in the background at the beginning of the vid. Currently trying to beat it.
Someone has probably already pointed this out, but the game at 2:55 is TinHead, not TinStar :)
So you can buy a ps5, a 6900xt on sale, or.... this thing with a ton of issues...
Two Xbox Ones or an XSX is my preferred way to go. The deal might not be as sweet with Retroarch patched out of retail mode, but it's consolized emulation and it works pretty well. My XSX only gets used for Retroarch.
As soon as I saw your shirt at the beginning of your new episode Joe, I about fell out of my chair laughing!
A friend of mine recently bought one… that arrived without booting 🤡 he hasn’t heard back from Polymega yet.
I don’t see the point of buying one instead of buying a MiSTer FPGA or a RetroTink 5X and proper SCART / component cables.
And, finally: awesome content, as usual.
I think if you gave the MiSTeR cart and cd playback like the Polymega has and ripped off the interface most people wouldn't look twice at the latter.
Looks like Playing emulated games on PC or a hacked handheld is still the way to go.
As soon as they switched the concept from FPGA to software emulation I was out. The fact that it doesn't actually play from the cartridge makes it no different to playing emulators on the PC, frankly. I can get adapters for genuine controllers to use on the PC and have a better experience than the Polymega controllers
Apparently it was because they got more interest on this thing playing CD based stuff and they said the FPGA they had planned couldn't handle the 32 bit consoles.
The smarter idea to me now given the look would have been keeping the same size, including an FPGA instead and upgrading it seamlessly. Like the front end we see now would have functioned the same but the back end would have lifted off the drive bottom vertically so as to be invisible to the naked eye. This could have switched out to a newer more powerful FPGA or they could have even created a combo unit of an FPGA and traditional processor.
I think our best hope now is to BEG the head of Framework, after they offer an OLED screen option on that laptop, to look at giving us what the Polymega was meant to be.
Thanks for this video, i canceled my preorder several months ago, glad to know i did the right thing.
20:52 Joe I got angry when you cut the music I was so engrossed in the awesome music 😂😅
Great video thanks for showing us I learn a lot about retro video and audio from you 😊
Overpriced. Give me FPGA for that price.
I guess this is the device for people that have more money than sense. You can do all this on PC and just get adapters for your controllers.
The appeal for many was it was it was an easy way to dump all of your carts/cds and has an awesome interface.
That is one thing I do hate about some of these emulation setups is the interface is horrid or JUST serviceable(I mean looks generally when I say both of these things). The emulator creators really need to take a design class.
Great review. It was very fair and well researched. Hope to have you review it again once more features come out in the future. Also, if you haven’t yet, check out the patches you can side load to your games. It really is a great feature, especially when taking Disc games into account. :)
I'm excited to see you Joe. That is my own wired dongle.