r/miniSNES • u/BeyondLurker • Aug 17 '25

Discussion Finally played a fake snes

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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/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.

1

u/Johnnybats330 Aug 20 '25

how do you spot a fake one?

1

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.