ARC-S Odyssey

We're not going to talk about the thing. The thing bothers me beyond measure, and I feel like we've lost a little of ourselves by making that thing a permanent thing. But like I said, I'm not discussing the thing. The ugly, rotting thing that grows like a malignant tumor at the base of our neck, sapping away our vital fluids and our will to live. That thing. Not talking about that. No.

The Anbernic RG-S uses the same clear plastic
design as the Skeleton Saturn, released only
in Japan. It's easy enough to ignore if you're
not down with the late 1990s, iMac
aesthetics... you're just going to look
at the screen anyway.
(image from Anbernic)
(which sounds like a celebrity coupling.
You know, like Bran-gelina or Ben-nifer.)

 

But hey, I got one of those fancy-schmancy aftermarket retro handhelds! It's the Anbernic RG ARC S, and it looks a heck of a lot like a Sega Saturn controller with a screen built into it. So it bookmarks well with my Data Frog SF2000, which looks just like a Super NES handheld... that inconveniently has trouble playing games for the system that inspired it.

Yeah, there are problems with the ARC S. It could have been just about perfect for a Sega lovin' guy like myself, but the hardware (the RK3266, which doesn't pack the necessary muscle to handle anything past the original Playstation, and the Dreamcast at a stretch) coupled with a trio of interfaces, each uniquely annoying to use, combine to keep this from totally obsoleting my previous emulation handheld, the Playstation Vita.

First disappointment: It plays Saturn games. Kind of. If "kind of" is as much enthusiasm as you can muster for the Sega Saturn, you'll be happy enough, but for those of us who made it our game console of choice in the late 1990s, the performance offered on the ARC S just won't cut it. Games that only need the 2D half of the Saturn's brain will work more often than not, and you might even shake a good game of Bulk Slash out of it... by the way, if you've never seen that one, imagine a 3D hybrid of Virtual On and Desert Strike and you're on the right track. 

On the flip side, even some of the 2D games run slowly (Blast Wind) or have weird broken graphics*, and 3D games are going to run a little slowly, if they run at all. Even Tempest 2000 is a big nope on this system, despite its seemingly humble hardware demands. My recommendation is if you can find the same version of the game for another system (Playstation for the 3D games, and Neo-Geo or CPS2 for the 2D games), play that instead and just pretend it's a Saturn game. With Capcom's Marvel vs. series, the arcade games are pretty much indistinguishable from the arcade ports anyway.

* EDIT: I mistakenly said Tryrush Deppy had broken graphics. Actually, that one has aggravating bouts of slowdown... it's Purikura Daisakusen that has issues with graphics vanishing at random. Apologies for that.

Dreamcast and PSP fare better, but your mileage may vary. You can get a pretty good game of Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX out of the ARC thanks to the button arrangement, although you'll need to give the PPSSPP emulator a good whack upside the head and move a few buttons around for a more arcade-like experience. Capcom vs. SNK 2 on Dreamcast is practically perfect, with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Mortal Kombat Gold, and Under Defeat close behind, but Dead or Alive 2 is too slow to play comfortably, and the port of Samurai Shodown: Tenkaichi for the Atomiswave runs almost comically badly. (There are better SamSho games; play one of those instead. Not the third one.) 

Overall, Dreamcast borders on very good... not quite there, but within grasping distance. PSP is not as impressive, but 2D games and some 3D titles won't give you much trouble. Resist the urge to play the God of Wars or the Burnouts, though.

Let me touch on the other problem... there are three interfaces available for the ARC S, including the painfully plain stock OS offered by default, the more attractive but hardware constraining Retro Arena, and Rocknix (nee JelOS), which I hated with a bitter passion in the beginning but adjusted to after putting both it and all my games on one SD card. There are two SD card ports on the ARC S; Rocknix is supposed to read them both but only seems to recognize the first. Weird quirks like this and inconsistent button mapping (A is advance and B is back, until it isn't. Good luck figuring out which is which and when!) are profoundly aggravating, but it runs arcade games faster than Retro Arena and looks a fair bit nicer than the stock OS.

Beyond the gripes, the ARC S is a pretty good system for a pretty specific audience. Most players have fallen out of love with Sega's hardware design in the twenty plus years since it left the hardware business, but I still carry a torch for it, using Sega or Sega-like controllers on any console or computer that will accept them. A floating D-pad on the left and six buttons on the right is just how I like it, and Anbernic left plenty of room in the middle of the ARC S for a crisp, colorful screen. It's not on par with the OLED in the original Vita, but you won't find much else to complain about, whether you're playing fast-paced 3D shooters (Ikaruga, Under Defeat) or arcade classics (Donkey Kong, Black Tiger, and the Metal Slugs).

The RK3266 isn't quite beefy enough for Saturn and some PSP games, but for everything before that, fehgeddabawdit. The overwhelming majority of MAME and Final Burn NEO games run beautifully*, a boon for arcade addicts, and game systems that use the same 4:3 aspect ratio as the ARC S, particularly the NES, Super NES, Turbografx-16, and Genesis, look terrific, showing off each console's respective strengths and quirks. Even the relatively humble ColecoVision looks grand... I took my game Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons for a spin on the ARC-S after hammering out an issue with a missing BIOS, and it's never looked better, putting my actual ColecoVision's meager composite video to shame.

* not on Retro Arena. Kindly fix this.

If you're into 1980s and 1990s gaming, and prefer the feel of the D-pad and buttons on later Sega game consoles, the ARC-S gets an easy recommendation. It's not perfect, and it's aggravating how close to perfect it would be with a better user interface and a faster processor, but Anbernic is definitely on the right track with the ARC-S. (Just get Saturn games running on the follow-up. Running properly, not kinda sorta running.)