I have been casually searching for a nice chiptune sound on and off for years. Never tried a Data Corruptor but heard some of those NES sounds in some demos, seemed close at least. Various bit crushers and octave fuzzes didn't quite do it for me. So the Hexe Sound Cartridge might be perfect.
He told me pre-orders should be up in October. Depending on price point, I might have to jump on it.
I read the website. they say they can mimic the sound. so that leads me to believe that it does not actually have the hardware. just an emulation. here is the real thing.
if you like the sound then I don't see anything wrong with emulation. to me it seems like a lot of work to emulate something that already exists. you can emulate a C64 SID but the filter will always be a little too emulated. pokey has a filter circuit so that is one possible way it might be different. I have no idea how good the emulation is. my theory is that failed emulations can also be new unique designs. the only way this could be bad is if no one likes the sound.
The big difference here vs what already exists is you can just plug a guitar or whatever into it and it'll track the pitch and spit out videogame noises. This is a big thing for a lot of people. Personally I'm not into guitar synth pedals because synths exist but some people love em