Polymega Retro Gaming Console Promises Disc System Support

Polymega's modular approach to system support includes PlayStation, Sega CD, TurboGrafx-CD, and Neo-Geo CD thanks to an optical drive.

We've seen a slew of retro gaming hardware appear on the market in recent years, such as the popular RetroN 5, offering to play your original cartridge games upscaled to look nice and crisp on modern HD TVs. However, there is a big gap in the market. All the hardware released so far focuses on cartridge-based systems, but what about disc systems such as the PlayStation, Sega CD, and Neo-Geo CD?

That's where Polymega comes in. Formerly known as the Retroblox, Polymega takes the form of a modular retro gaming console allowing you to select which retro systems you want to use by plugging in the appropriate module. But importantly, Polymega ships with a built-in CD/DVD drive opening up access to a number of old disc-based games consoles.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ISW5ToWBc&w=740&h=416]

For now, Polymega is a work in progress, but one that promises to offer 1080p gaming for many old gaming platforms be they cartridge or disc-based. Those mentioned so far include the NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, PlayStation, TurboGrafx-CD, and most recently the Neo-Geo CD, which seems to be a focus as the video above demonstrates.

From reading the description on the Polymega website, it looks as though the console works in a similar way to the Retro Freak by detecting the inserted game and installing it on the system as a digital copy. As to how different systems are supported, Polymega uses "Element Modules." The base system includes the optical drive and you then buy Element Modules separately to plug in to the base to acces different gaming platforms.

Polymega retro gaming system modules

There's no word on pricing or when we can expect to see a finished and working unit, but a crowdfunding campaign in 2017 is mentioned. Hopefully it does make it to market as I can see this being a very popular system if for no other reason than it supports retro CD/DVD games.

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