218-in-1 pirate multicart review (must be the best one as of 2020)

I do not want to defend any form of pirate cartridges but for those of you who are really on the cheap and cannot afford a flash cart or a lot of original cartridges, I got the new 218-in-1 chinese multicart just for the sake of it (and convenience if you are giving out a spare console but you are keeping your 300+ games and your everdrive like me...), and it is just awesome and probably better than anything we have seen so far, given the cost. Of course a real flash cart is way better, in order to play all the hacks, translations, demos, homebrew, etc.
This is still better than PC o rpi emulation IMHO. Or even FPGA for that matter. At least you are still playing the real code through the real unaided hardware, with zero added lag.

PROs
- less than 16€ shipped from Jeff Bezos store's chinese competitor I won't mention
- 218 games: nice menu with sort-of screenshot for each game, easy & fast to navigate. I would say that most of the top 200 is in there, 95% of the best games are present
- it really does save (you can see the battery if you pick the clear shell) for the 8 games that do (RPGs mostly)
- full PCB not that crappy plastic + globbed flashchip. There is in fact a daughterboard (see pic) that holds the 2GB flash (I think it's 2 GIGA POWER, not really 2GB but 256MB (2048/8) which sounds like it can hold 218 roms)
- can be opened with a regular screwdriver (there are additional clamps, though)
- loading times are non-existent

CONs
- thicker PCB as usual (only because the pin parts don't look to be slimmer I guess)
- probably wrong voltage as usual and no level-shifters? (I honestly don't care)
- Shinobi III is repeated (because there is the japanese Super Shinobi II in there)
- not always the best REV version as expected (Sonic is REV00 etc)
- Langrisser II is is japanese. Only the officially released in the west are translated
- Sonic 3 is borked and does not include Sonic & Knuckles
- Sometimes only one game per franchise (UMK3, SSF2 which does work...) but the 3 SoR & Golden Axes are in there
- Even though the sticker doesn't suck and doesn't peel off from the upper side just by looking at it, the text is very Zerowing-esque: "Genesis & Megadriver"
- Some unlicensed games (very few) considered somewhat decent (Tecmo Cup, that taiwanese brawler...)
- the menu music gets old fast

My own pics:
Attachment 15458Attachment 15459Attachment 15460Attachment 15461
The list of gamesAttachment 15462

Please note that I have not done extensive testing on this. Some reviews are less favorable... I'm not even sure the save works properly or not: I just tested Soleil FTM. But serously, for the cost even without save ability it would already be great

I wonder why they didn't put the SOJ-Disney trilogy
(Castle of Illusion, Quack Shot, World of Illusion)
not even one of them.
Those three games were very famous here back then.

Yeah, seems like a kind of schizophrenic assortment of games, but I can see how it would be attractive to someone with sticker shock after looking at the price of the Mega Everdrive Pro, or even trying to build a collection of real cartridges since the two classic game pricing apocalypses (June 2007 and March 2020). Not a horrible label, but if I were making it, I'd make it look like Sega was trying to make a professional Chinese bootleg label. So, basically a proper Genesis cart label, but with an insane gathering of random characters, like Grand Dad, Tony the Tiger, Godzilla, Robocop, Daredevil (black and yellow outfit), Web of Spider-Man #100 Spider-Man (armored), Mario, Darkwing Duck, Lime (Saber Marionette), and Bonk.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bertodecosta

I wonder why they didn't put the SOJ-Disney trilogy
(Castle of Illusion, Quack Shot, World of Illusion)
not even one of them.
Those three games were very famous here back then.

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yeah that's strange, considering Ariel the little mermaid and Fantasia are in there.
Also the lack of many good sports games, ie FIFA, NBA Live, Jam, etc but oh well at least ISS is in there. The NBA choice is weird (Bulls vs Lakers, one of the worst early ones probably)

EDIT: Ranger X is also repeated as Japanese version Ex-Ranza is also in there.

RPGs and Sonic 3 do save, I checked. Sonic 3 bugs out when Sonic enters some bonus rounds (not the other characters). It looks like a trained version that somehow gives you a lot of rings and extra lives.