Recently, I went to an estate sale in
Waxahachie, Texas. This place apparently belonged to an avid video game
collector. As you can see, they had quite a selection here and most of these
systems were $10 apiece. I ended up buying two original Nintendos
and some games but I also ended up with several of these little plug 'n' play TV
games that I bought for $1 apiece.
Plus, I already had a few in my
collection. For those that aren't familiar, these sort of games usually run on batteries and they plug straight into a TV or monitor and they're completely self-contained. Some of these are designed to emulate
vintage video games but others are more similar to the arcades. There are probably 30 or 40 of these that
have been on the market over the last 10 years.
So, I have like 9 of the more
popular units and I'm going to show you each one and tell you whether I think
it's junk or treasure. I'm going to start with the Atari 2600 Joystick. It was made in 2002 by Jakks Pacific and
has 10 built-in games. The Joystick very much resembles the
original joysticks that shipped with the Atari 2600, so it does have some of the more popular games of the era such as "Adventure", or "Asteroids", "Centipede", "Missile Command", and "Yars' Revenge".
These games look pretty close to the originals, but this thing does not actually have any Atari technology inside. Ironically, what it does have it is one of these. Yes, believe it or not, it actually uses
what's called a NOAC, or a Nintendo-on-a-chip. It's a single chip that emulates the
original Nintendo and somebody spent some time coding these games to look
very similar to the Atari versions.
It's almost convincing but not quite. For example, check out the victory scene
here in "Yars' Revenge". Now compare that to the authentic
Atari 2600 version. Now, I give this unit credit because it's
one of the first, if not the very first of its kind; however, it does lack a little bit of
authenticity but that's not even really the biggest problem with it.
I think
the biggest problem is that it doesn't really have any software outside of
Atari. Every game on here is from Atari. There's nothing from Midway or Namco or
Activision. Despite that, though, I am still gonna give it a thumbs up.
Next on the list is the Namco Pacman
game. It came out in 2003 and was also made by
Jakks Pacific. It only has 6 games on it but unlike the Atari, all of the games
on here are worth playing. So, you've got "Pacman", of course.
Now, keep
in mind this is not intended to mimic any specific game console but it does
mimic the original arcade pretty well. I've heard some people say that there
are slight variances in the behavior of the ghosts and whatnot from the original
but I do not believe the casual gamer will notice. So, it also has "Galaxian", and "Rally X", and "Dig Dug", and lastly is "Bosconian" probably the only game here that I don't personally care for. The joystick itself is actually built really well and can
take a lot of heavy use unlike the Atari Joystick and I
definitely give this unit a thumbs up.
Next on the list is the Commodore 64 DTV. It was made in 2004 by Mammoth Toys and DC Studios. It has 20 games on board. I could do a whole episode on this thing alone so I'll try to keep it short.
It starts off with a very 1980s BBS intro type look to it with your selection of games. So, this thing is a real Commodore 64
inside. Now what I mean by that is it actually executes the original code so
these games are more or less unmodified. That means they're extremely authentic.
Another great thing about this is it has
the 20 games it has are actually all pretty good, important games that were
very popular on the system. I won't show them all to you but here
are a few. This is "Cybernoid". "Impossible Mission" *Synthesized Voice*: Another visitor.
Stay a while. Stay forever! Which was always one of my favorites growing up, and I never actually solved the darn thing
but it's still fun to play. "Jumpman Junior". "Pitstop II" unfortunately no way to do a two-player on this one.
"International Karate" I spent many years
of my youth playing this. Someday, I may perform the music for this on my other channel. Here's "Tower Toppler", "Eliminator", "Cyberdyne Warrior", "Zynaps", "Speedball", and "Super Cycle". Now let me show you a neat trick: if you
wiggle the joystick on power-up it will take you to a fake BASIC screen and you
can select several more hidden games such as "Splatform", or "Minima".
Also, you can get a real BASIC prompt
with an on-screen keyboard. I imagine it would take quite a while to
write any software using this mode. Now, this thing is actually designed to be
hackable so that you can actually solder in a PS/2 keyboard and connect up a Commodore disk drive to it, at which point it becomes a full-fledged Commodore 64 system and then you can run any Commodore game on it you want. I definitely give this unit a thumbs up.
Next up is the Atari Paddle game. It was made in 2004 by Jakks Pacific; it
has 13 games on board; but keep in mind, all of these games are Atari 2600 games
that were designed to work with the paddle. So, I'll show you a few of them. So, you get "Breakout", "Super Breakout", "Circus Atari", "Night Driver", the original "Pong", although it's a single-player; "Warlords", although this looks too
sophisticated to be the 2600 so I think this is from the later console; and "Demons to Diamonds".
So, what can I say about this thing? Well, on the good side, the paddle actually is
very responsive and it works really well. The problem is mostly just the game
selection; there weren't really that many games on the Atari 2600 that supported
the paddle, and even fewer that were actually any good. As a result, I'm giving
this one a thumbs down just for the software aspect of it. Next up is the Sega Genesis.
It was made
by Radica in 2003. It has 6 games on board. It looks like a tiny Genesis console
with a pretty nice little controller attached to it. Now, this thing is extremely authentic in
that it actually runs the original Genesis code and so the games are
unmodified, very similar to the Commodore DTV.
In fact, if you take a look inside, you'll
see a ROM chip here and you can actually remove this chip and solder in a
connection for real Genesis cartridges and play them on here. Now unfortunately,
from the factory, the audio sounds terrible on this thing but in a previous
episode, I showed exactly how to fix that and I'll put a link to that down in the description. So, it has the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" obviously a popular game for the console. Here's "Golden Axe".
The graphics here just
scream of the 16-bit era, unlike all the others I'm showing you here which are
from the 8-bit era. Here's "Kid Chameleon", "Altered Beast", "Mr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine", and "Flicky". I definitely give this one a thumbs up due to the great construction, the authenticity and the selection of games.
Next up is the Space Invaders console. It was made in 2003, also by Radica.
It has 6 built-in games. This thing is very well made and as far
as comfort goes, it's the easiest unit to play due to the
larger base. The primary game is "Space Invaders" and
I'm not sure which system they're copying here, but it doesn't look like any game console, nor does it resemble the arcade version
since the aliens are all the same color.
It's very playable but the graphics are
pretty rotten. It would be one thing if they were emulating an Atari 2600 or
something but they aren't. So, the next game on the list is "Lunar Rescue" which almost looks like it was from the Sinclair or something. It really isn't all that fun.
The next game is "Colony 7" which is sort
of like "Missile Command". Next is "Qix" which was always a
favorite of mine on the C64 and this version is decent. I can play this for a while. The last game is "Phoenix" which is,
ironically, a clone of "Galaga", which is a clone of "Space Invaders" which is the
primary game and yet this one's actually better looking
graphics and more fun to play than the primary game.
So, what do I think? Well, as much as I
love the construction of this thing, I'm giving it a thumbs down based on
the selection of software and the poor re-creation of
the primary game of "Space Invaders". Next up is the Tetris game, made in 2003
by Radica. It has one game on board which is, of course, "Tetris". You can play one-player or you can connect the secondary
controller and play two-players.
The graphics are good, the music is tolerable and is the original
"Tetris" soundtrack. So from a software standpoint, this thing's actually pretty good but what really kills it is the controller. I mean, you know, "Tetris" requires a lot of left-to-right movement as well as a lot of rotation of the pieces which is easy to do on a Gameboy or just about any console.
These controllers are very stiff and require a lot of force to move them
and you have to rotate the knob to rotate the pieces. So, I consider myself,
like, a champion at "Tetris".
I could probably win some kind of tournament if
I were to ever enroll, but as far as this thing goes, I can't
play it very well at all. I'm giving this unit a thumbs down
for the controllers. Next up is the Ms. Pacman game.
This was made in 2004 by Jakks Pacific.
It has 5 built-in games. The primary game, of course, is "Ms. Pacman".
It seems very authentic to the original arcade. There may be some slight differences but
the casual gamer wouldn't ever notice.
Here's "Xevious". I used to play the arcade for
this in a restaurant that my family frequented back in the 1980s. I would also say it's very authentic; and of course, here's "Galaga"; and here's "Pole Position". Now here's a funny thing: I could not
figure out how to make my car turn.
I thought there was something wrong with
the game but after doing a Google search I found that you actually rotate the
controller like a paddle. Although it seems awkward,
it actually works very well, giving much better steering than using a
binary-style joystick. So, the game is very playable once you
figure that out. The last game is "Mappy" and I'll admit I've never heard of it and
I can't even figure out how to play it but overall, at least 4 out of the
5 games on this console are classic games and very desirable and the
construction is also pretty good.
So, I give this unit a definite thumbs up. And last up is the Atari Flashback. So, this is another one of those I could
do an entire episode on this thing. Now, let me start by saying there's
actually at least 6 different versions of this.
I happen to have two of them:
the Flashback 2 and the Flashback 4. What I can tell you is that the first unit
was a Nintendo-on-a-chip. The second unit was a real Atari that
ran the original code. In fact, this one can be modified to take original
Atari 2600 cartridges, very similar to the Sega Genesis that I showed you earlier.
From the Flashback 3 and newer, they're using some sort of ARM chip, I believe;
however, I think they may be running emulation of the original code
which works for me either way because it's pretty authentic.
All of the units can
use the original Atari or compatible controllers which is pretty cool. My Flashback 2 doesn't work; I bought it
broken and I have been meaning to try to fix it. There's an exploded capacitor inside. I think somebody plugged the wrong power
adapter into it but I'll show you a few games from my Flashback 4.
So, here's "Space Invaders".
Now, what's weird about this is that it's not
the 2600 version of "Space Invaders"; however, ironically, it is more fun and better
looking than the one that came on the actual Space Invaders console I showed earlier. Just for comparison, here's the Atari
2600 "Space Invaders". Now, here's "Yars' Revenge" and "Gravitar". So, here's the problem I have with all of
these Flashback consoles: they give you, you know, around 80 games on each one of these
consoles but 5 of them are pretty good games and 75 of them are just total
garbage.
Now, it seems crazy to me that they would produce this thing with
80-some-odd games in there and yet leave out all of the games that more or
less defined the console, such as "Dig Dug", "Donkey Kong", "Frogger", "River Raid", "Galaxian", "Montezuma's Revenge", "Ms. Pacman", "Pitfall", which is probably the most
iconic game on the platform, or "Pitfall II", which is probably the best game on the
platform, "Pole Position", "Qbert", "Spy Hunter", or "Xevious". So, of all of the most important and
defining games for this console, they give you like 4 or 5 of them and then like 75 rubbish games, so as a result, I'm giving this system thumbs down, except for maybe the Flashback 2 if you
wanna modify it to take the original cartridges. Well guys, thanks for watching.
Sorry
to have to rush through but there were quite a few systems to cover. Now, if
there's enough interest, I might come back and do a sequel and
cover some more of these systems that I did not cover in this episode, as well
as if there's enough requests I might do specific episodes on some of the
unique consoles that we talked about in the show. .
