Uploaded March 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

UPDATE: Apparently you can buy these at Wal-Mart:

walmart.com/ip/RETRO-BIT-Top-Loader-8-Bit-NES-System-Black-and-Red-NES-N-A/21692829

This completely shocks me. Moving on.

Here's an after-market NES clone made by Retro-Bit called the Retro Entertainment System, basically an NES on a chip. Retro-bit makes all sorts of controllers, adapters, and accessories for old game consoles, mainly NES to N64 era. They also make consoles designed to play NES games, SNES games, etc. These can be handy if one has trouble finding the original system, or in the case of the original NES, a fully functioning system (as we all know, the NES is notorious for not working properly). Plus, most of the time these clones are far cheaper than the original hardware. However, the Retro-bit consoles and other clones usually use emulation instead of genuine hardware to play the games, and therefore, not all games will run properly if at all. Luckily there are only a few games affected by this. Also, the build quality of this and other clones are nowhere near the quality of the original systems.

But whatever, these still do their job and function well enough to earn my approval. I still prefer the original NES over these clones, but if all you care about are the games, then it doesn't really matter which one you buy, as long as you're happy.