Independent gaming retailer DragonBox Shop has recently restocked the excellent Retrode 2, as well as plugins for the Master System, N64 and Game Boy. The versatile USB adapter had been out of stock for some time, and DragonBox is the main supplier having taken over production from Retrode creator Matthias Hullin some years ago. The main unit is €64.90 and the plugins are €25.00 each (or you can buy all three together for €65). If you want to get yours, click here to visit the Retrode product page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Retrode 2, it’s quite an exciting little piece of kit. The main unit is a USB device which is geared towards Mega Drive and SNES players, offering a cartridge slot and two control ports for each system. The Retrode reads your cartridges and produces a ROM file that can be used on popular emulators, allowing you to back up your carts and bypass illegal distribution. There are a number of benefits to doing things this way – not only can the Retrode read the ROM from your carts, it also dumps your old saves, it can write your progress back to the cartridge too. The control ports allow you to play using your original controllers as well.

With additional plugin cartridges, the Retrode 2 becomes even more useful, accepting games for the Master System, N64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. Early versions of the N64 plugin had control ports to allow for the use of Nintendo’s odd trident-shaped pads, but the current production run does not.

We’ve been using the Retrode with these plugins for a few years now, and it’s proven to be extremely useful as a way to connect our old controllers as well as providing the ability to save time by using our old save data. It has proven very user-friendly for 16-bit games, with a little more configuration required for the plug-in systems. Thankfully, the community at retrode.org is always willing to help.