Another tiny TV Plug n' play console with 200 games.

[Raticon]

I was out of town today and stumbled into a kind of nerd-tech shop that sold almost every kind of gimmick and gadget under the sun. There i found something called simply the "Retro Games Controller", it's basically the same shell as that Sega Arcade Nano "keyring console" made known some time ago, but stuffed with 200 "retro"-styled games in 8-bit style. It was incredibly cheap and i had no real high hopes about it, and i was quite right. I playtested some 60 or so games in a row.
It has composite for video and mono audio with a 3,5mm plug into the console and power is supplied by 3 AAA-batteries. The graphics and sound match approximately those of mid-late 8-bit consoles like the Atari 7800 or early/cheapo NES games in both color and style.

Calling it 200 games is a bit of a stretch. Sure, no game was exactly identical to another that i could see, but there was a couple of themes prevalent. Different types of games where you are a submarine fighting ships or a ship or a plane fighting submarines, top-down 2D air fighting games a la "1942" and 2D side scrolling space shooters, simple platformers and 1-screen top-down games with you fighting creatures and picking up bonuses etc etc. and so many of them were blatand ripoffs of known arcade titles where they didnt even try.

One game was a direct clone of Desert Falcon on the 2600 with planes instead of eagles and whatnot iin the exact same weird perspective, but still in the desert. One game was just simply "Shark Shark" from the Intellivision with nicer graphics with the players fish eating other fish and growing, as with another game that was such a shameful clone of Astrosmash on the Inty that i couldn't bear to play it. The falling rocks even split in the exact same pattern when you shot them! There were clones of Space Invaders, asteroids and so much more. One game was balloon fight from the NES with fishes carrying the balloons underwater for some reason i can't fathom, and falling down to the bottom when they popped like they couldn't swim without those balloons.

The truly original games were there, but quite far between. Maybe i'm just damaged from years of playing older games that i see patterns that aren't there sometimes, but i think i am right.

All the games have title screens however, which is very nice. Some even have some lame backstory written in broken english appear with or without pictures to tell some kind of prologue.

Some pictures:


Console next to a Flashback joystick i had laying around. The whole unit is incredibly tiny.


Title screen of the first game, "F22 Raptor" with some gibberish copyright down below.


Picture from in the game. The enemy planes are not that blurry in the game, it's just my camera that sucks.

If you, Onmode-Ky read this and need some shots of the internals again just let me know. That was my review of the "Retro Games Controller"

[wolfy62]

I have never seen this before but it looks pretty cool!

 

I bought all those superjoy things in the past and they were for the most part pretty bad. Thanks for the info, I am going to try to find one!

[Raticon]

Glad to help. I will try to find the best games and perhaps the worst ones for shits n' giggles and post some more pictures from them tomorrow to show off more graphics as this thing is actually quite fun to play, despite the negative tone in my initial review up there. The thing that breaks it a bit is like most other consoles like these in that there is an incredible amount of boring games and just a few diamonds in the rough. These kinds of units sell with quantity over quality as evident by the box with the "200 GAMES!" plastered everywhere, but i guess it's worth it for the few good ones on there.

I didn't mean it like the clones were bad per se as both gameplay and graphics look the part, more like i was frustrated with the lack of originality of the creators. That Astrosmash clone sure is a sight for itself.

[wolfy62]

i will try to find it somewhere on line as well so I can play and review the games. Thanks for the info!

[akator]

This looks like it can easily provide at least a few hours of fun. After reading this thread I ordered one from Amazon

[retrorandy]

Coolness, I too have had my share of Superjoy I've bought from the thrift store. LOTS of NES titles and weird clones. But ya there usually was 1 or 2 games that made you smile/seemed quite original. I remember seeing these at the flea market too. Sometimes for $20 or $40 bucks.

 

I like the compactness of this one. Thanks for sharing.

Edited January 26, 2016 by retrorandy

[Raticon]

Okay, i sat down and had a go at some games that set the tone of the collection. I took pictures with my phone on my CRT hence some lines, shadowing and other nastiness but this is not representative of the graphics in the games.
I took out some games at random, some i love and some i hate. I pursposefully left out any sidescrolling 2D space shooters and top-down scrolling airplane shooters as all of you know how they look since there is millions of them out there.

This first one is called "Rabbit village" and is a very nice and fun little game. You are the rabbit on the top right and by moving the joystick up and down you hoist the "basket" up and down to pick up your bunny friends escaping a fire in their home. There must be some real fire hazards in there as the fires are spreading faster and faster the later in the game you get! The small plane up in the left is piloted by some devious enemy who is dropping bombs on you while you hoist the "basket" so you have to get the bunny friends before they are consumed by the flames while avoiding the bombs at the same time, also he drops small evil paratrooper gremlins to the left which has to exit the screen before you can release your friends, lest the gremlin kill/eat/destroy them when you release them at the top.


This one is great too, it's called "Pizza boy" and have you as the pizza delivery boy fetching pizzas from the restaurant in the bottom right and delivering them to people who stand around in the street at random. If they wait for too long they vanish and you have to get a new pizza for a new customer. There is also some kind of enemy showing up later that you have to avoid as well. Good, fun game.


This is a terrible picture, but it is supposed to represent a motorbike racer which name i forgot. It's basically Motocross for the 2600 or any other top-down racer of the 8-bit era. It's a decent racer as they come. Get as far as you can before the timer runs up and don't crash into other bikers or random shit like barrels or piles of tires on the road. I never quite understand why there is always so much junk, barrels and stuff on the roads in these old racers. If i were the one responsible i'd have the race postponed to clear the road first...


This here is called just "Lawn mower" or something and should be a familiar one. It's you playing as a lawn mower mowing what is apparently a jungle filled with diamonds. The dog at the bottom hates you and will trash your lawn mower if he gets you, but pick up the gas can filled with what is apparenty pure nitrous oxide and you get TURBO SPEED and can run over the dog which results in a hilarious animation where the dog gets flat like a paper and slowly floats back to the ground before regaining his physical form back. I think the spanners give some score, and the diamonds bring more. As the levels progress they become more elaborate and the dog gets faster each time, i believe there is more enemies in the later levels but i'm not sure.


This game down here is awful, and i had to bring it along as a representation of the bad games. It's called "Panzer assault" or something and has you as the tank in the bottom move to the left or right in a very slow fashion, fighting 3 stationary turrets who shoot fireballs also going extremely slow. It's extremely boring. There are more games like this, one where you are a tank on a pier fighting a battleship going slowly back and forth and it's equally dull and boring. Rule of thumb: if any game on here contain the words "Tank" "Panzer" or "Armored" it will suck. Point.


And last and certainly least, this has to be the worst game of baseball i've ever played. Home Run on the 2600 is a gem in comparison. It's called "Baseball New" in the menu but simply "Baseball" at the title card and combines everything that's wrong with old baseball games. There is no way you can pitch anything other than straight, left or right curved balls. No fastballs, no lowballs no nothing. The computer batter always hits way out in the field and your outfielders only go and fetch the ball once it's landed so there is no way you will "catch out" the opposing teams runners. Also the runners are running almost faster than your dudes can throw the balls back to base. Expect some ridiculous 35 - 2 losses every time. If you like baseball in 8 or 16 bits go way around this one and play "Extra innings" on the SNES instead, a game i love. Also, i have never played baseball myself nor have i watched any live matches as i live in a country where we don't have baseball so forgive me for using the wrong terms, but i still like the game and this is a perfect example of how it should not be. Yuck.


Tell me if you want anything else.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Raticon

[onmode-ky]

If you, Onmode-Ky read this and need some shots of the internals again just let me know.

Thank you for thinking of me. However, I actually stopped tracking the generic types of plug-n-play game systems a while ago, because there are just too many of them, with little in the way of clear differentiation aside from the number of onboard games. Besides, in all likelihood, the processor in this system is covered by an epoxy glob. When I asked about the ZX Vega, I already knew it wasn't a glob type.

 

dreamGEAR, the gaming peripherals manufacturer, offers a system with the same form factor, which you can see here at their website. I don't know if it's exactly the same, but it has 200 games as well. Elsewhere on their site is this 300-game "handheld" system shaped like an arcade cabinet. The company is one of the ones who continue to put out generic plug-n-play systems on the market, likely thanks to their Chinese manufacturing connections.

 

onmode-ky

[+MrBlackCat]

I have the Arcade Cabinet version of the DreamGear model with 200 games. I watched a video of the Plug-N-Play versions menu, and from what I could see, it seems to be identical to the Cabinet version. I have a couple of others with almost identical controls, but they have superior graphics/game quality to the DreamGear device. The other two devices share the same games. The Menu Systems all differ in the different brands I have.

 

Anyway, I hadn't noticed the new DreamGear "300" Game version... will likely get that one also unless they go up much on the price. Sure some of the games are pretty low quality, but my action figures don't seem to mind.

 

Here are images of the ones I have.

DreamGear Retro Machine (200), Lexibook: Arcade Console (230), and Multi-Cade by Sound Logic (230).

 

MrBlackCat

Edited January 28, 2016 by MrBlackCat

[jhd]

This looks like an interesting system. Was it expensive?

 

Based on the screenshot (and description) "Rabbit village" looks like it was inspired by Pooyan.

 

I have a Dreamgear console that I bought some years ago -- I was quite disappointed with the quality of the games included. I played it once or twice, and into storage it went.

[Raticon]

This looks like an interesting system. Was it expensive?

 

Based on the screenshot (and description) "Rabbit village" looks like it was inspired by Pooyan.

 

I have a Dreamgear console that I bought some years ago -- I was quite disappointed with the quality of the games included. I played it once or twice, and into storage it went.

It cost me the equivalent of between 20 to 25 USD. I think its a fair price for the couple of playable and fun games it came with.

[jhd]

US$25 is currently about $35 Canadian, so that is a bit steep for me. Of course, I already have enough Famiclones in my collection (about 5 or 6 different models) that I am reluctant to buy any more unless they are really cheap or otherwise unique (e.g. have a keyboard, motion controls, etc.).