Retro Fighters Retro 85 Review: Awesome Novelty Displays For Your Switch Games

The world of novelty game display and storage cases isn’t one that I am too familiar with, or really knew existed. Your average display box or cartridge protector is about as far as I have ever gone to protect my more valuable collectibles. Little did I know how intricate some of the options out there can get. That is, until our friends at Retro Fighters released their newest product: Retro 85. These mini NES cartridge replicas designed to house Nintendo Switch games have opened my eyes to a new world and I was quickly lost in the rabbit hole.

What’s In The Box

The Retro 85 comes in a fairly minimalistic box with the 8 NES cartridge replicas, storage case, and product name taking center stage. An example of what Switch cartridges will look like once placed in the Retro 85 cases is also on display, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t do the Retro 85 justice on how good things look once stored inside them. The back of the box has a brief description of Retro 85 and some key aspects of the product. Opening the box you have the Retro 85 cartridges stored in a hard case and a brief user guide.

Aesthetics And Build Quality

The Retro 85 cartridges are wonderful miniature representations of classic NES cartridge shells. Everything from the surface texture along the front, back, and sides to the number of indented lines is spot on for the real deal. The coolest aesthetic touch keeping Retro 85 in line with original NES games is the original caution labels being present on the back of the case! Seriously, it’s just fantastic to look at. Where the NES cartridge label would typically be is now an open window for displaying a Switch cartridge’s label. Switch carts slide in from the top and the Retro 85 features a spring locking device to keep them in place, making the whole thing feel even more premium.

Retro 85 cartridges are solidly built and are quite sturdy. The only area to watch out for is the top of the Switch cartridge port. To further protect the Retro 85 cartridges you can keep them stored in the included hard case. I gotta say the whole setup kind of reminds me of using old Game Boy cartridge cases and I love it! The hard case is also transparent so you can see what you are storing inside. Well, if you flip the Retro 85 cartridges around inside it, that is. I honestly can’t decide if I like the way it looks more when opened with all the games visible or by being able to see them on the outside.

Usage

Displaying your games with Retro 85 is where I personally find the most use and fun with the product. While more compact than trying to carry around 8 Switch games in their retail boxes, it can’t compete with the portfolios out there that can store 80 games in a relatively similar profile. But, for displaying your games it looks absolutely fantastic! I love putting in games like Mega Man 11 and displaying them on my shelf as if they were NES homebrew. Again, before the arrival of Retro 85, I didn’t realize just how big of a community out there was doing things just like this.

Thanks to the spring-lock mechanism I feel a lot better about storing my Switch games in these shells. They lock in securely and I haven’t been able to get them to come loose unintended. Well, outside of a really hard toss across the room. The shells also aren’t overly tight, letting Switch games slide in and out almost like the cartridge slot on the Switch console itself. The shell of the Retro 85 also ensures that the only visible part of the Switch cart, aside from the top when looking down on them, is the label itself. It just looks so clean! Have I mentioned how good it looks to put these up on a shelf yet? Because they do!

Verdict

While Retro 85 isn’t an ideal storage and transport method for Switch cartridges, it excels as an awesome way to display your games in a unique manner. I have a variety of Switch games that I own both physically and digitally, so I will be using Retro 85 to showcase those games on the shelf with my other collector’s edition boxes. At $14.99 for a set of 8, I can see many in the novelty display crowd hopping on board with Retro Fighter’s latest offering. And I just have to say it, I think Retro Fighters’ version is the best looking yet!