Should You Buy the AtGames Blast Pac Man and Legends Plug & Play Dongles

In this video, we take a look at the AtGames Flashback Blast plug and play HDMI dongles, featuring The Namco Bandai Classics and the Legends games.

In late 2018, AtGames released a series of plug and play HDMI dongles featuring a number of pre-loaded games, these dongles offered 720p resolution, and wireless controller. Shortly before their release, they sent samples to the Immortal John Hancock, specifically the Pac-Man Edition. What we learned, later on, was that they sent John different versions from the final production samples, and the games that were shipped did not match the games that John tested.

On a trip to the local Meijer store, I noticed that they had these systems knocked down to $10 each. I figured I'd give him a shot, they promised to be an Amazon TV fire stick or a Roku stick that played video games, at least something I found intriguing

The design of the dongle was pretty simple and straightforward. The reason why I mentioned the Roku Streaming Stick or the Amazon Firestick is that that's really what it looks like. A plastic dongle with an HDMI output, a spot on the side for a micro USB power cable to plug in, and the name of AtGames in the side of the system. Pretty simple, if not very functional, design.

The controller is very similar to a Sega Genesis 6 button controller, it's comfortable in the hands, however, the d-pad is not very responsive. It feels extremely floaty and not very precise. The A/B/C/X/Y/Z buttons all felt clicky enough, as did the start, menu and Rewind buttons. I really wish the location of the rewind and start buttons were reversed, I pressed rewind far too many times when I meant to hit start

One good thing about the controller is that, while it uses regular AAA batteries, getting into the controller to install and change batteries is easy. A lot of controllers use a phillips screws to keep the battery door shut securely. Thankfully, this is just a tab, which is really all that's needed.

The emulation is okay at best. Both systems upscale to 720p, but any text or lettering I thought looked extremely muddy and blurry. The audio was also just okay, but the lag in the controls was terrible. For games like Pac-Man and Lock N Chase you can plan your moves ahead of time to play around the latency, but if you need to make quick moves you are not going to be able to do it with these controllers.

Why It RoX:
- Inexpensive
- Plug And Play
- Multiple systems with different games in each one

What could be improved?
- Terrible lag in the controls
- Graphics look smudged
- Audio is ok, but not great
- I ran into multiple issues capturing footage through either my EZCap 284 or my ElGato
- Some of the games are really just not good
- The positioning of the Rewind and Start Buttons should be reversed

Should you buy one?
In a word, no. Even at the $10 I paid I thought these were quite bad. I could look past not loving all of the titles, but the play control is really quite poor. Yes, you can adapt and overcome the lag and latency, but you shouldn't have to. AtGames has made better systems than this, these just don't pass the smell test however.

The footage used in this review are used under the Fair Use laws, referenced below:

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