Ok,
So I spent the last few hours with this thing. My overall impressions:
Handheld. Really great quality for the $130 price (and the fact that it comes with 20 built-in games). Screen is good and serviceable but about on par with the earlier SPs...but obviously not back-lit as such. Operating system is quite quick and the included games load nice and fast. Stick is amazing. I prefer it to even the more recent replica pads and I feel it is better than the one on the pocket. They knocked it out with the stick. Everything else, button-wise are good. Thing is a fingerprint magnet, though. It has a similar face-feel to the Vita. Sound output over headphones is alright but with only six levels to choose from the gradations are too chunky (I'm using IE6 buds). Back rubber/plastic grip is neat as are the two very well-done SNK logos. System seems a little too big for its own good and after seeing images of the PCB it looks as if they were a bit lazy.
Games: I personally bought this for Nam-1975 and Cyber-Lip as those were two of the games I owned when I had and AES and I've very fond memories...likely because they were $200. But, I truly think Nam-1975 is one of the greatest arcade experiences ever and we used to always play it in 7-11 despite owning the cart. Now, there is quite a bit of tearing issues on most of the games depending on what you are playing and where and how you are viewing the image. I hooked the system up to two different CRTs (both eruro multisync cheapies via composite) and those exhibited some truly dreadful tearing. Even single sprites that move across the screen tore a little. This is not as much of a problem when playing on the handheld or HDMI on my Samsung HDTV. The image was so bad, quality-wise and tearing-wise on my CRTs I'll never play them like that. Fighters without a lot of screen scrolling have the least. Side-scrollers like Cyber-Lip had some of the worst. Different setups handled it differently, kinda weird. FWIW, both my CRTs are heavy multi-sync which play everything from Secam to multiple flavors of NTSC to PAL. They are both Ghetto, one dug out of a dumpster and another I paid $99 for. Overall not happy with CRT/Composite playback. Also, like others have mentioned, this thing out of the box is very dark and heavy image tweaking is necessary to get it passable.
Docking Station. Looks great, works great. It is exactly a nice little replica of the AES! And once you get the handheld in there it actually has some heft to it and feels quite nice. The reset button is cool, too. It is just a little mechanical button that presses the menu button on the handheld. Nice little docking station and a cool addition to anybody's game room.
Arcade Stick. I absolutely love these. Buttons feel better than any of the recent replicas and stick is quite good. I'm probably gonna open up one of my two to check out what is inside. They are light, yes, but put them on a little box (I use an arcade stick box) and they have rubber feet that grip nicely. I'm gonna put some lead ballast in one to get it up to heaviness anyways. Altogether 70% on the way to feeling like an AES stick. I'll add that the ball-top is a bit cheap.
HDMI Output. With CRT woefully out of the picture I'm resigned to playing on my big Samsung HDTV so I've gotta go with HDMI. With some image tweaking I got it looking pretty good. Sound is fantastic, too. No problem there. Altogether, I'm moderately pleased with its HDMI output after adjustments. Certainly enough to get two-player Nam-1975 on over the holidays. I've also got two free HDMI inputs on my Framemeister upscaler and after reading Fudoh's poor review on shmups of how it didn't help much (just make shit smell a little better) I was pretty bummed. I hooked it anyways and tweaked the image through the upscaler and I finally got it looking quite nice. All the underlying issues are still there but it does help to cover them up a little and my color tweaks are all on a preset so I'm happy with the results.
Overall. Pretty happy with the system. Certain aspects are a true love-affair with the system. Emulation is nowhere near the Wii but decent enough. I don't need to justify the $200 price as I was never not going to get one, being an official SNK-licensed product...and it is cheap enough for shits and giggles. Quite happy with the handheld and will be doing most of the playing there. Hoping they can update the firmware somehow but I'm not expecting it. Interesting to see what the hackers make of the system...lot of potential on that end. Recommended only for those who can recalibrate their expectations. This is not in any way a replacement for and MVS or AES (or even Wii VC). If you have ANY TYPE of aversion to screen-tearing then stay far, far away...or at least give the handheld a go to see if you can stomach it there. A curiosity when all is said and done.
Here is an image I finally got via HDMI and the upscaler after spending a bit of time changing the colors to get Nam to what I remember it being like in the arcades (going from memory since it has been 20 years since I played the game):
I also have a few of my close-up shots of the hardware at my instagram page:
http://instagram.com/arcadestick
