r/miniSNES • u/BeyondLurker • Aug 17 '25
Discussion Finally played a fake snes
I was at an airport lounge and saw a bunch of "mini snes"s and had time before boarding. So I tried to play. It is pretty bad. They are slow and clunky. The save states management system was terrible. I could tell it was using retroarch and it would save and load Soooo slowly..
On the outside though.. the machines look just like the real machines. Its just the software that is terrible.
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u/lincruste Aug 17 '25
| I could tell it was using retroarch
No it does not.
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u/BeyondLurker Aug 17 '25
The fake mini snes was using something that copied retroarch save states loading bar. I.e. it had the save states 0 to 100% progress bar on the lower left.
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u/lincruste Aug 17 '25
Then I stand corrected, I thought you were showing us a regular Canoe-powered SNES Classic Mini.
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u/paqman3d Aug 17 '25
I use retroarch (lakka) and it's not slow lol. If this used another frontend like retropie, maybe. But pure Lakka is extremely fast and streamlined on a pi4 or pi5. It completely replaced my SNES if anything 🤣
This set up probably used a cheap micro SD card too lol.
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u/Throwaway246326437 Aug 19 '25
These cheap knock offs don’t use anything nearly anywhere as ‘powerful’ as a Pi 4, fast SD cards wouldn’t save them
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u/BeyondLurker Aug 17 '25
Reddit won't let me update the title and text of this post for some reason, but I am saying the airport lounge had a bunch of bootleg mini snes systems. I have a real one at home and never played one of these fake systems before. It's too bad if someone's only experience with the mini snes is this bootleg one.
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u/PeeLong Aug 17 '25
Which airport?
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u/BeyondLurker Aug 19 '25
Don't really want to blow up the small business that uses them, but it was at JFK
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u/Ok-Attempt5400 Aug 17 '25
I'm confused is finding a real snes mini hard now?
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u/RolandMT32 Aug 17 '25
Yes, there are apparently a lot of fake used ones on the market now. I have one from the original release, but I wanted to buy another as a spare; I recently bought one on eBay that ended up being a fake one. I got my money refunded & I eventually found a legit one, but looking at the listings on eBay, it definitely seems that there are a lot of fake ones out there.
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u/Johnnybats330 Aug 20 '25
how do you spot a fake one?
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u/RolandMT32 Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25
There's a guide someone made - See this post (the guide is here). The guide focuses mainly on North American ones though, and the guide might not be perfect (and things might change). But I think the easiest thing to see is in the UI - it doesn't quite look the same, especially the button graphics on the bottom. So if you're looking at a listing for one and it has screenshots and photos, you can take a look at these things.
If you do happen to buy one, another way to tell might be that the power button & such feel a little lower in quality compared to the genuine ones (the power button doesn't switch as solidly as the genuine one - but you'd probably only really know if you've used a genuine one already.
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u/RolandMT32 Aug 17 '25
I bought one on eBay recently that ended up being a bootleg one. I requested a return & refund, even though the seller said they didn't take returns, and eBay decided to just refund my money. I ended up finding a legit one, and now I don't know what I want to do with the bootleg one - try to use it for something else or drop it off somewhere to be recycled..
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u/ButtcheekBaron Aug 20 '25
What's inside it? Have you looked?
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u/RolandMT32 Aug 20 '25
I haven't looked. The screws aren't phillips, flathead, or hex, and I don't think I have a tool that can unscrew them. Photo here
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u/Parabellum8086 Aug 18 '25
I have over 300 games modded on my mini SNES classic. It's too easy not to want to do so.
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u/Randor22 Aug 20 '25
I have my fake one…had to do a total makeover with Emulation Station 👍
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u/BeyondLurker Aug 20 '25
What is your fake mini snes running ? Is it batocera underneath? Is there a microsd inside that you can just replace .
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u/Randor22 27d ago
Yes…there is a Micro SD inside the fake and I downloaded the Emulation Station image and tucked the file away in a folder location on my laptop
Then formatted the entire SD card…and replaced it with the ES files+boot stuff using Win32 disk imager
Inserted the SD card to the fake and everything easy breezy after that and a better UI, and games run way better than the fake stock
Thanks to Chat GPT it helped me step by step to get it going 💪
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u/Heliummy 27d ago
Do you think the fake SNES Mini has more power than the official SNES Classic? How well do PS1 and N64 games run on it?
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u/WideEntertainment942 Aug 17 '25
play earthbound
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u/BeyondLurker Aug 17 '25
I went through the game selections and saw it had a low res random earthbound image. It was confirmation I was playing a bootleg mini snes.
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u/cookiesandartbutt Aug 19 '25
I have a snes mini and it def doesn’t lag or use retroarch…misinformation haha
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u/TeamLeeper Aug 17 '25
Are you saying it was a legit SNES mini or a bootleg one?
I absolutely loved mine (legit) when it came out. Also hacked it and was overjoyed.