R.I.P. FC Dual

A LOOOONG time ago I bought a system called the FC Dual.  It's a Chinese made multi-system that plays NES and SNES games.  At the time I bought it I was quite happy with it, it played the games I wanted it to play and I didn't have to shell out 10k+ yen for both individual systems.  However, I made a mistake because this fucking piece of shit just died on me for no goddamn reason.  After taking a moment to reflect on the system I have concluded that it's a huge piece of shit and I would have been better off just spending extra on the original systems.  Here's why

1)  It looks like shit, feels like shit and the controllers suck

This thing is obviously made stupidly cheap because this thing has worse build quality than some of the children's toys at the school I work at.  It's probably the cheap build quality that caused it to die because one moment it was fine and then one cartridge swap later and BAM, no more video output.

The controllers are also fucking atrocious with a terrible D-Pad and shoulder buttons that hurt your fingers after a while.  Everyone knows that the Xbox 360 had a fucking awful D-Pad but the FC Dual somehow out-sucks even that.  Also the black wire covers were coming off the controller and I have no idea how THAT fucking happened considering I treat my gaming collection with the utmost care.

2)  It treats carts like a dog that doesn't want to let go of a tennis ball

More true for FC games than SFC games but HO-LY shit the FC Dual is the system that just doesn't want to let go.  When you are taking a game out you have to pull really fucking hard, almost to the point where you want to stop out of paranoia that you might break the fucking thing.  I found that you could take them out calmly but rocking them left and right out of the slot but that took about a minute and a half to do which is bullshit considering that the original systems have fucking eject buttons.

3) Compatibility

So a while ago I bought Dig-Dug 2 from a retro shop near my house.  I take it home, pop it in and the fucking thing wont load up.  So I take it back to the shop and ask for a refund where they promptly shove it in a normal Famicom and the thing works absolutely no problem.  I have a couple of other obscure Famicom games that don't work in the FC Dual but will work completely fine in a regular system.  Once I realised what was going on with Dig Dug I started getting paranoid every time I bought something that the fucking thing wasn't going to work.

So there you have it, 3 big reasons why the FC Dual is a massive piece of cock.  I know it seems really cool to be able to play 2 consoles worth of stuff in one system but they are so cheaply made that it's almost not worth it.  Just shell out for a original system and you have something more reliable and you don't have to contend with shitty controllers or comparability issues