European retro gaming outlet Funstock has announced a new dedicated retro gaming tablet called the BLAZE TAB. It’s available to pre-purchase right now for £99.99 on the Funstock store and will be available in Q3 2015.
The BLAZE TAB is an Android-based tablet that is built specifically for retro gaming in mind. As such, it has a quad core processor and a dedicated graphics processor capable of running games from the ZX Spectrum all the way to up the PlayStation One, N64, and Sega Dreamcast. It also has 16GB of internal memory for you to store the games you download.
Funstock say the BLAZE TAB can play games on: ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga, Atari 2600, Famicom, Super Famicom, NES, SNES, GameBoy, GameBoy Colour, Gameboy Advance, DS, N64, Master System, MegaDrive, Dreamcast, MAME, Final Burn Alpha, Colecovision, MSX, NeoGeo, NeoGeo Pocket, PSP, PS1 and “many, many more”.
The games can be played on the tablet’s 7-inch screen or you can hook it up to a TV through the HDMI output (you can also watch downloaded television shows and YouTube videos on your TV using this). One of the big differences between the BLAZE TAB and other tablets is that it focuses on physical controls rather than touchscreen—it has dual analog sticks, a d-pad, six face buttons, as well as start and select buttons along its bottom. Plus, it has a key remapping function so that you can use these physical controls with touchscreen games.
This might be necessary as, presumably, the games will have to be downloaded through the Google Play store and most of those on there, including the retro games, are built with touchscreen controls in mind. Still, many do also allow for gamepad support, so hopefully the BLAZE TAB can hook into that feature too.
