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Arcade "Burger Board" that plays killer instinct 1 & 2 - Let's check it out!

RetroRalph·video·13m 20s·analyzed·Sep 7, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

RetroRalph reviews Burger Board arcade emulation system; recommends against it.

Summary

RetroRalph reviews the Burger Board, a PC-based arcade emulation system with JAMMA interface running Windows 2000 on dated hardware (Intel Celeron 3200, 512MB RAM). The board contains 2000+ MAME ROMs organized into categories and plays games like Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads, and Killer Instinct with acceptable but unremarkable emulation quality. Ralph ultimately recommends against purchasing it, suggesting PC-based alternatives like LaunchBox/BigBox or standalone systems like Pandora's Box are superior options.

Key Claims

  • The Burger Board is an Intel Celeron 3200 CPU running at 2.4GHz with 512MB RAM, approximately 10 years old at time of review

    high confidence · Technical specifications stated at beginning of review

  • Streets of Rage 2 arcade version is the Sega Mega Play ROM, which used cartridges that looked like Mega Drive/Genesis cartridges

    medium confidence · Ralph explains arcade release history during gameplay section; acknowledges personal uncertainty about cartridge modifications

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade version on the board is the overseas release, possibly titled Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles

    medium confidence · Ralph states this during gameplay but notes uncertainty about differences from US version

  • The Burger Board has no aspect ratio correction capability and forces 16:9 output regardless of game requirements

    high confidence · Ralph observes this limitation during TMNT gameplay and states he hasn't found a way to correct it

  • There is a significant delay when inserting coins on the Burger Board

    high confidence · Ralph demonstrates and comments on the delay during Streets of Rage gameplay

  • The Burger Board experiences screen tearing on certain games

    high confidence · Ralph observes screen tearing during TMNT gameplay and calls it out explicitly

  • The review harness lacks buttons 5 and 6, limiting fighting game compatibility to punches and one kick

    high confidence · Ralph explains this limitation when discussing why he's not fully demonstrating fighting games

  • Killer Instinct arcade version runs on the Burger Board

    high confidence · Ralph locates and plays Killer Instinct 1 in the 'special' category, then shows Killer Instinct 2

Notable Quotes

  • “It is, for all intents and purposes, a PC that has a JAMMA interface that hijacks PC inputs.”

    RetroRalph@ 1:05 — Concise technical summary of what the Burger Board actually is

  • “Hard no. It's basically just a PC with a JAMMA interface on it and honestly if you're really that hard up to play Killer Instinct or Killer Instinct 2 just build a PC and put Big Box on it and call it good.”

    RetroRalph@ 11:45 — Clear final recommendation against purchasing; advocates for superior alternatives

  • “It's way more playable than some of the AtGames arcade cabinet versions I've seen of this game, where it's just like, oh my gosh, what the heck did they do with the audio?”

    RetroRalph@ 5:39 — Comparative quality assessment; critique of AtGames emulation quality

  • “The other thing that kind of interesting is the way I had to hook it up it is altering the quality of the video a tiny bit because my Elgato didn't like the video output.”

    RetroRalph@ 6:34 — Explains video quality limitations and setup complexity

  • “Those are all better options than this so I'm not going to recommend it but it was still fun to play with.”

    RetroRalph@ 12:25 — Acknowledges entertainment value while maintaining negative recommendation

  • “I at the time to have 2000 games on one system was insane but now with Pies and Pandora's boxes and Game Elves and all these other systems and building your own Big Box or even buying an older arcade PCB to play a game you love those are all better options.”

    RetroRalph — Market context; explains why the Burger Board is obsolete compared to modern alternatives

Entities

RetroRalphpersonBurger BoardproductKiller InstinctgameKiller Instinct 2gameTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesgameStreets of RagegameBattletoadsgameSega Mega PlayproductPandora's BoxproductLaunchBoxproductBigBoxproductGame Elfproduct

Signals

  • $

    market_signal: Burger Board is obsolete compared to modern emulation alternatives; Ralph cites superior options including Pandora's Box, Game Elf, custom PC builds with LaunchBox/BigBox, and dedicated arcade PCBs

    high · Final thoughts section explicitly states these are 'all better options than this' and recommends building a PC with LaunchBox instead

  • ?

    product_concern: Burger Board exhibits multiple technical limitations: screen tearing, coin input delay, forced 16:9 aspect ratio with no correction options, limited button mapping (missing buttons 5-6), and video output compatibility issues requiring additional upscaling

    high · Ralph demonstrates and documents each limitation during gameplay sections

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Ralph's perspective on arcade emulation hardware has evolved; acknowledges that when the Burger Board was new, 2000 games on one system was impressive, but modern solutions have made it irrelevant

    high · Ralph states: 'I at the time to have 2000 games on one system was insane but now with Pies and Pandora's boxes and Game Elves...those are all better options'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Burger Board relies on decade-old PC hardware (Intel Celeron 3200, 512MB RAM) running locked-down Windows 2000, creating setup complexity and performance limitations compared to purpose-built modern emulation solutions

    high · Ralph details hardware specs and notes setup complexity required for video capture/output

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.040

0:00
In this episode, we're going to review the burger board. We're going to get the first one. Just do it.
0:30
okay let's fire up the burger board so here's what you're gonna get it is not that fancy it's an Intel Celeron 3200 running at 2.4 gigahertz. It's about a 10-year-old CPU. It's got 512 megabytes of RAM. Not very impressive. That's all it's got, guys. It is, for all intents and purposes, a PC that has a JAMMA interface that hijacks PC inputs. Those inputs are going to be your character movements, your action buttons, A, B, C, D, E, F, and that's kind of it. And it's a locked down Windows 2000 operating environment that you cannot get to. So after it boots up, we'll show you some gameplay and I'll kind of go through basic 101 of the menu system. All right, the burger board has booted up and I know how excited you guys are. So when you first get into this menu, you're going to have on the top left, you have the category of the game. And on the right hand side here, you have sort of a snapshot of that game. Now when it first boots up and you're in this menu, you cannot move around until you put in a coin. So that's going to your coin button on your jama or select on your controller now i have this running through a super gun because i wasn't going to put it in an arcade cabinet to do the review so it does complicate things a bit but i will show you what that looks like so once you're all booted up and you put in the coin you can either go up and down and look through the games uh like that or you can change the category of the game by pressing the a button so the a button or the player one button one on your jama so as you can see it'll roll it'll scroll through the games you know as you do that or the game categories and you'll see the category change on the right i mean on the left i'm sorry but uh the categories are questionable as to how they're laid out some of them are good some of them make sense but like stage i notice is mostly side side scrolling beat-em-ups um you know it's games like battle tunes and things like that uh has tmnt uh we'll we'll play some games here in a minute um flying games are going to be your shoot-em-ups uh wrestling games which does have wrestling games and it has fighters you got immortal combat you got um killer instinct i believe is in here it's either in here or it's in it has a bunch of different street fighters which is awesome and uh yeah so that's kind of that's kind of what it looks like in here and then i will um go to the next category you got maze games you can be a tetris stuff like that vertical only has one game you have adult we won't spend time there we got sports games which you expect you know mostly all MAME ROMs hardly any consoles mostly all MAME Miscellaneous is just sort of random so you have to kind of play with it and see where things are you know like they have games like chiller in here which is a gun game which is a pretty disturbing gun game actually special which I believe this might be where killer instinct is see really quick I believe it's in here let's keep scrolling I don't know why they put it in special but that's I think that's where it is. Let's see.
@ 12:11
AtGamescompany
Windows 2000product
Elgatoproduct
3:42
Yeah, so there's Killer and Seek, 1 and 2. And there, go through trackball games. Mostly trackball, but there's some non-trackball games mixed in. And then back to stage, which is side-scrolling beat-em-ups and stuff. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play some games, and then I'm going to actually give you guys some other additional feedback and things about the board as I play. So, let's check it out.
4:05
Okay, the first game I'm going to play is actually Streets of Rage. This is really cool because it's actually the Mega Play ROM. So a lot of people probably don't know this, that there was an arcade release of Streets of Rage 2, and it was on the Sega Mega Play hardware. That hardware actually took cartridges that looked like Mega Drive and Genesis cartridges. I personally don't know if they were altered in any way, but it did take cards that looked exactly like that, so some people don't realize there was an arcade release. Anyways, we're going to play that. I'm pretty pumped up about being able to play the arcade version of this. I've played it before, but it's kind of neat that it's on here.
4:42
The other thing I'll tell you about the board is I'll press coin, and there's, like, a huge delay for some reason.
4:49
Maybe you can't notice it, but, yeah, see how it's, like... See what I mean? Weird. Anyways. It's still entering coins.
5:00
Alright. Let's just give this a shot, see how it plays, see how it sounds. I'm going to put the sound up a tiny bit more.
5:07
um i mean it looks all right uh it looks decent it doesn't seem slow to me or anything i mean I've played Streets of Rage a lot.
5:32
The sound's obviously not that awesome, but hey, you can play it, which is kind of cool. It's way more playable than some of the AtGames versions I've seen of this game, where it's just like, oh my gosh, what the heck did they do with the audio? It was so butchered. But anyways, I love this game, big fan of it, and yeah, you can play it on this. So we'll go on to another game. Okay, the next game we're going to check out is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the original arcade game. This is actually the overseas version, which I think was like Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles or something like that. But it's essentially the same game, I think. I never played the game all the way through to know if there's actually something different about it, but I don't believe there is.
6:14
Alright. See what I mean with the credits again? Super goofy. This game plays pretty well. The thing you'll notice about this board though is there's no way to force it into the correct aspect ratio so it's going to be 16.9 no matter what. At least I haven't figured out a way to do so. The other thing that kind of interesting is the way I had to hook it up it is altering the quality of the video a tiny bit because my Elgato didn like the video output So I couldn capture it without putting it through another upscaler So unfortunately it kind of affected the quality a bit So it does look a hair better than this. You know, in reality, if I'm looking at it on the TV that I have on the side of me, it looks a bit better there. But for all intents and purposes, it doesn't look that much better. So don't think it's like some crazy improvement, but it does look a tiny bit better than what you're seeing right here.
7:07
But again, overall, like it's okay emulation. It kind of, you know, does the similar job to like a Pandora's box. It's just, you know, is it worth the level of effort and, you know, how you have to hook this thing up to play these games when I can just simply hook up a Pandora's box pretty straightforward and pretty easy. You will notice on certain games there is a bit of screen tearing. I think I can see it a little bit there. So, for what it's worth, you know, you gotta at least take that into consideration if this was gonna be something you might possibly think about using. So, I'm gonna go to another game so you can check out a couple more, and then we will finish with Killer Instinct, and I'll give you my final thoughts. Alright, let's put our coin in, and let's get our Battletoads on. You're probably wondering why I haven't done any fighting games, and there's a reason for that. So the way this harness is connected, I don't have buttons 5 and 6, so I only have punches and one kick. So I just figured it'd be, you know, I don't have to show that. But it plays fighting games halfway decent, too. You know, it's got a good plethora of street fighters and things like that on it, which is cool. this game is fun but i'm still more of a turtles fan than a battle toads fan i will say this looks way better than any of the console ports of this game i uh i forgot about this game on the arcade side and it's funny i was talking to my buddy last night as i was testing this board out and i was like man battle toads looks so much better in the arcade than it did in like the original console ports they were so bad um so anyways but graphically it's kind of cool you know the sprites are some of the character sprites and the bad guys are are large and kind of interesting to look at so it's kind of cool but anyways it's that iconic music i will say i was definitely intrigued by killer instinct the music when it came out like um it was just the music the graphics like everything about it was super intriguing i don't know what it was it intimidated me about the game i think i was just a street fighter fan and i would i would see it in the arcade and I'd watch people play it, but I really didn't have any interest in learning it. So I don't actually know how to play and I didn't even look it up. So I can't fake the funk. It is what it is. I'm just going to show you the gameplay and you can see how you guys think it runs and put your comments below, obviously, as you will anyway. I think I can do okay with Felicius. I don't know why. I just think so. Yeah, that definitely looks brighter. Maybe not. Don't mess with me, dude. Now keep in mind, I don't have kick because I don't have that kick harness, so I can't do anything but punches. You know, I had to make do to make the video. Oh, wait a minute! What?! Oh yeah baby Oh I button mashing with glaciers Oh no no no no no no Alright I still in this I still in this
10:06
Uhhh, I was still in this. Maybe I'm not. Okay, hold on, I'm still in it, still in it. Come on guys. I know you're on my side, I know you want me to win here. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
10:20
Don't care, that's where I'm ending. beat one guy it's like I won the whole freakin game but anyways a I wrote you guys gotta put your comments below around this is I do not know whether or not this is playing even remotely the way it should okay so just keep me keep that in mind but I definitely see that the colors are definitely better now that I tweaked it a little bit it now I wanna keep playing if I suck at this game but thunder got a little lightning, got a little glaciers oh shoot. What movie was that from where it's like I think it's with the rock in it where he's like, you got a little thunder, you got a little lightning and he's showing his fists oh man, oh oh oh oh, can he do it, can he do it with the button mash not looking good What? Say it ain't so. Alright, anyways. I'm literally button mashing, guys. Like, I do not know what I'm doing. Okay, so that's Killer Instinct. Let's go to Final Thoughts.
11:31
Alright, guys. It is Final Thoughts time. This is actually Killer Instinct 2 running on this same board. Just wanted to show you that. I didn't do it in gameplay, but figured you might want to see it. Anyways, would I recommend this board?
11:43
Hard no. it's basically just a PC with a JAMMA interface on it and honestly if you're really that hard up to play Killer Instinct or Killer Instinct 2 just build a PC and put Big Box on it and call it good and there's plenty of tutorials to help you do that so that would be my suggestion this was just fun to play with and I had it in the archives so I figured why not pull it out and try it because I really didn't spend much time with it when I originally bought it I thought of it as oh wow like at the time to have 2000 games and one system was insane but now with pies and pandora's boxes and game elves and all these other systems and building your own big box or even buying an older arcade pcb to play a game you love those are all better options than this so i'm not going to recommend it but it was still fun to play with and i appreciate you guys hanging out so if you like the video please like it um consider subscribing to the channel um turn on notifications and please put your comments below i just want to know what you guys think of this like are you that hard up for killer instinct that you'd actually buy something like this because the level of effort to set it up would at least for this demo was kind of involved and and you know is it worth it i don't really think so so that's it for now guys i really do appreciate again you guys hanging out and we'll see you on the next one take care