This Chinavision emulator handheld is like an iPod for retro console games. It plays Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance, and Neo-Geo games and has 4GB of onboard memory — probably enough to hold the entire library of one of those systems. If that’s not enough you can also stick a mini-SD card in a slot on the bottom for more space.

It looks like it came from an alternate reality, Steve Jobs decided to hell with copyright law and created an iPod for playing retro video game ROMs. In our universe, Jobs plays nice with copyright, so it’s up to a Chinese gadget manufacturer to create the device and sell it to the public for the low price of $87.31 — three for $83.82 each!

The CVFH-N03-4G Multi Platform Portable Gaming Entertainment Station — “often lovingly called the Delightfully Small (DS) gaming entertainment system,” as the marketing copy effervescently states — features about a bazillion features. It has a 2.8 inch QVGA screen, a proper D-pad with six action buttons, a mini-USB port, headphone jack, internal speakers, and can even output A/V to an NTSC of PAL TV.

The product description also encourages you to introduce this device to your kids — not can you “introduce your children to 8-bit and 16-bit gaming coolness and never hear another ‘I’m so bored’ complaint from them again,” but you’ll also be teaching them how to break copyright laws! Sounds like a win for everyone. If that’s not enough, the CVFH-N03-4G can play MP3, MPEG4, FLAC, and WMV files. An ebook reader with text-to-speech capability is also included — just so you can violate even more copyrights.

At 5 inches by 2 inches, and half an inch thick with a glossy white finish, the CVFH-N03-4G definitely looks like it escaped from a dark corner of an Apple R&D lab. In an Engadget post, reader TapTap comments that the device’s emulation support is a little half-baked, but really — this thing is gold! Maybe Jobs should think about partnering with Nintendo to develop something like this. I’d buy it.

Popularity: 3% [?]