Jakks Pacific Game Keys...What's inside?

[StephenJ]

Anyone ever open a Jakks Pacific Gamekey?

 

For those who are unfamiliar...

As indicated in this Fandom article, http://plugplaytvgames.wikia.com/wiki/GameKeyJakks Pacific marketed GameKeys that would add/or unlock games on GameKey-Ready Plug N Plays.

The whole thing flopped pretty bad and was discontinued in less than a year.

As a result, some GameKey-Ready Plug N Plays were sold without any compatible GameKeys ever being made.

 

Got me wondering...What's in these Gamekeys...additional games or just jumpers to unlock hidden games?

 

If anyone has ever opened a Gamekey...I'd be interested in knowing what you found.

 

All the best,

StephenJ

Edited April 4, 2017 by StephenJ

[onmode-ky]

Here's an excerpt of an e-mail exchange I had in 2010 with a developer who worked on a few of Jakks Pacific's TV Games systems in the line's early days:

 

Basically, a game key was a small cartridge that contained nothing more than ROM. Once it was plugged into the game key slot found on some Jakks games it would hard-switch the address lines from the internal ROM to the ROM contained in the key.

The failure of GameKeys at retail (in part due to resistance from retailers to even carry them on store shelves) led to several GameKey projects going unreleased. I have a section at my website that discusses unreleased plug-n-play projects, including a handful of GameKeys. If you scroll down a little farther, I have a chart of ESRB ratings for plug-n-play systems which were never released, including ratings for quite a few GameKeys. Since they were rated by the ESRB, that means development on them was already complete, or very nearly so; they simply never left the womb, so to speak.

 

In short, GameKeys really did contain separately produced software, software which in many cases never made it into actual GameKey cartridges.

 

onmode-ky

[StephenJ]

onmode-ky,

Thanks for the information. I'm disappointed to hear that there were actual ROMs in the Gamekeys and not just jumpers.

It would have been fun to try and unlock the hidden games.

 

Thanks again!

StephenJ

[PhileasJWhoopie]

Nice information. That Jakks Pacific Midway would have been fun. I did enjoy Bosconion a great deal, although it might be on a game key for a ms pacman or other unit. Those seemed rather robust, good for traveling, and for kids. Like the old Tiger handhelds, there should stil. Be a place for these items in the retail space.

[[d2f]Iggy*SJB]

Here's an excerpt of an e-mail exchange I had in 2010 with a developer who worked on a few of Jakks Pacific's TV Games systems in the line's early days:

 

 

The failure of GameKeys at retail (in part due to resistance from retailers to even carry them on store shelves) led to several GameKey projects going unreleased. I have a section at my website that discusses unreleased plug-n-play projects, including a handful of GameKeys. If you scroll down a little farther, I have a chart of ESRB ratings for plug-n-play systems which were never released, including ratings for quite a few GameKeys. Since they were rated by the ESRB, that means development on them was already complete, or very nearly so; they simply never left the womb, so to speak.

 

In short, GameKeys really did contain separately produced software, software which in many cases never made it into actual GameKey cartridges.

 

onmode-ky

 

Sorry for the "Necro-bump", but I don't come here as often as I should.

 

The Jacks Ms. Pac-Man PnP I got many years ago came with 2 game keys. I haven't played with it for quite a while, but I do remember being mindful of not losing those keys, as they contained games that were a lot of fun. Plus the joystick itself seemed rather sturdy.

 

With that in mind, did they ever really put out ANY other game keys? I would be quite interested if they had, You mentioned game keys that never made it to release, but is there a list of ones that did make it "out the door"?

[onmode-ky]

With that in mind, did they ever really put out ANY other game keys? I would be quite interested if they had, You mentioned game keys that never made it to release, but is there a list of ones that did make it "out the door"?

Sorry for the late reply, but while I never made an explicit list of what GameKeys were released, I did kind of record how many of each two-letter GameKey code were put out. See the GameKey Code Map section of my plug-n-play data website. In brief, I know of five GameKeys that were sold standalone at retail, and another half dozen that were only available in bundles with their host controllers.

 

By the way, I just noticed that our AtariAge member numbers are sequential; yours is mine + 1. In the 12+ years we have been here, I never noticed!

 

onmode-ky