I have to admit I have been looking for a good portable gadget to play emulated second generation console games for a while now. Although many people have bragged about making such devices, they were either too expensive, or did not offer support for all my favorite consoles.

I would have never thought to look for my answer at one of the tackiest, most graphically uninspiring, most unattractive PMPs on the market (before you ask... yes it comes from Asia). Despite the bad looks, the GAME-800 (gotta hand it to the team behind this device for choosing such an uninspired name) is a Personal Multimedia Player with a pretty huge twist: it packs an integrated emulator that allows the user to play NES, FC, GB, GBC, and MD games.

It comes with a 3.5-inch 320 x 240 QVGA TFT LCD display, has 4GB of built-in memory and can be expanded via the use of SD cards. It also has a camera mounted on the back with an unspecified number of megapixels (from the looks of it, I'd say 1.3). OK, in case you were concerned about file format support and compatibility, you can rest assured - I have never (and that's not overstating) seen a PMP (there was another one from Asia but I'm not sure it equaled this one) offering better format support.

Probably except for OGG (from what I can tell), it has support for MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC, RM-Audio, AMR, AAC+, RM, RMVB, AVI, WMV, ASF, MPG, MPEG, MPE, MP4, DAT, MOV, DAT, JPEG, GIF and even BMP. Although it says MP5 Player, it does not support MP5 files, nor is it time-travel capable (MP5 has yet to be invented). Sound is offered by its onboard speaker, it has USB connectivity, a TV-out connection and even text to speech function supporting any text in English or Chinese.

It comes at the price of only 80 USD. I have to admit that unlike 99% of Asian products, it's very hard to find a flaw in this one. Needless to say, it does what it's meant to do and does it good. If it weren't for the incredibly uninspired looks and strangely placed directional keys, this thing would be perfect. And I don't mean that by Chinese standards, but by western ones.


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