Plug-and-play TV games were a staple
of the early 2000s, and that was for good reason.
They were cheap and fun, and they made for great gifts.
It felt like everyone I knew had their own little collection of them back in the day.
You just pop some batteries in, plug the cables into your TV,
power it on, and there you go.
You really can't get much simpler than that.
All of the most popular plug-and-plays
focused on making retro games more accessible.
For instance, Namco had a whole line of them
that you could play their 80s arcade games on.
If you were in the mood to play Pac-Man, Galaga,
Mappy, at home, these things had you covered.
If you wanted to play Atari 2600 games, or even Intellivision games,
you better believe there was a plug-and-play for those, too.
The sort of retro throwback style of plug -and-plays is still popular even today.
Here's one that was made in 2018.
It plays the NES version of Double Dragon, and that's about it.
There is a market for an easy method to play nostalgic video games,
and plug-and-plays fill that niche pretty well.
But the plug-and-plays I'm going to feature today aren't quite so predictable.
There's nothing I love more than weird gadgets from the early 2000s,
and plug-and-play games scratch a very particular itch for me.
So let's look at some cursed and unholy plug-and-play TV games.
I'm gonna go from least weird to most weird, and I can think of no better
place to start than the Jakks Pacific SpongeBob plug-and-play from 2003.
This thing already would have been so iconic,
but the nose joystick really sealed the deal.
There are five games, let's start from the top.
For some reason, I really like Breakout clones,
and SpongeBob's Bubble Pop is no exception.
The physics can be a little weird, and hitting the barrels at the top of the
screen to clear the level can be deceptively difficult, but this game's just fine.
Sandy's Surf Adventure is a standard-issue arcade-style shoot-'em-up.
Invasion of the Hooks, you throw Krabby Patties at the hooks to save your friends.
But the real games are these two at the bottom.
Patrick and The Maze is great.
You explore the maze and try to find your friends while solving small puzzles,
collecting power-ups, and playing mini-games along the way.
But the final game is my absolute favorite.
It's the Super Chum Bucket.
It's a 2D platformer with stiff movement and precise jumps.
You just get to the top of each level while
dodging obstacles, and it's super satisfying.
But because you can't save, I haven't put in
the time to getting all the way to the end.
Someday I'll complete it.
The 8-bit sound effects and the lack of music may be disappointing, but when I was
a kid, it was just cool to see a plug-and -play with
original games instead of just another retro compilation.
I think they did a pretty good job with this unit overall. I think it's great.
And here's another Spongebob one from 2007.
Which is surprisingly late.
Like, this was after Steven Hillenburg left and the show got bad.
Like, the Nintendo Wii was out.
It's weird how late this one is.
And that makes sense because this is the most technically impressive plug-and-play
I have ever seen, and probably will ever see.
This unit has four games, starting with Jellyfish Dodge.
When you select the game, it asks you if you want to overwrite your save data.
And then it drops you into a level select screen.
This thing has a single-player campaign with linear progression and a save system!
It's just a plug-and-play!
You didn't have to go that hard!
You run around smacking a certain number of jellyfish to get the exit to open,
or you complete some sort of objective like surviving for 60 seconds.
And the next game, Guide and Collide, is a puzzle game where you place blocks to
direct jellyfish to Spongebob so that he can catch them.
For lack of better comparison, it's kind of like ChuChu Rocket.
There seems to be a lot of depth and a lot of moving parts here.
If I liked puzzle games more, I'd be all over this.
But I don't, so I'm not.
And the third game is Snowball Showdown.
It's a turn-based artillery game where you choose where to aim, how much power to
use, and you try to hit your opponent with snowballs.
This one's more multiplayer-focused, and you pass
the controller to your friends back and forth.
The final game is my absolute favorite: Sponge Pop.
It's a full remake of Spongebob's Bubble Pop from the 2003 unit,
but with better physics, better sound, better animations,
more power-ups, just overall better everything.
Am I engaging with plug-and-play fan service right now?
Is this Spongebob's Bubble Pop Rehydrated?
Okay, so let me put into perspective why these plug-and-plays are interesting, right?
So, at the time, in the early 2000s, if you wanted to engage with video games,
assuming you already had a TV, you had to buy the console, you had to buy
your controller, you had to buy a game, you had to buy a memory card.
Video games were not a cheap hobby by any stretch of the imagination.
And that level of buy-in was a pretty big investment.
But the compromise that plug-and-play TV games offered seemed pretty tempting.
For 30 bucks, you could throw some batteries in this thing,
plug it in your TV, and you get to play a Spongebob game.
Now, did it offer an experience that was on par with Battle for Bikini Bottom?
Maybe not. But that was the nature of the compromise.
You're compromising some quality in favor of accessibility.
But today, video games have never been more accessible.
It's not often that you really need to compromise anymore.
Especially when things like the ROG Ally X exist.
A big huge thanks to ASUS for sponsoring this video.
The ROG Ally X is a handheld Windows gaming PC,
and easily the best I've ever gotten my hands on.
So you can play the top-tier SpongeBob game,
the latest AAA games, and everything in between, wherever you go.
Out of the box, it's got 1TB of M.2 2280 SSD storage, which is already more than
enough for most people to fit all their favorite games.
But if you want more, the storage is upgradable.
But fast storage isn't as useful without fast RAM to get those loading speeds snappy.
So it's got 24GB of LPDDR5X 7500MHz memory.
That's gonna let you push more frames and higher resolutions.
It's got an 80Wh battery.
So you don't need to be constantly camping out next to a power outlet.
But when you do, it's got fast charge.
So it can go from 0 to 50% in just 30 minutes.
With the high refresh rate screen, with controls this good, for a device this
ergonomic, you're gonna want all the battery life you can get.
So check the link on screen or in the description
below, and check out the ASUS ROG Ally X for yourself.
I am truly amazed and flabbergasted that this thing is as good as it is.
But I've had enough fun.
I want to look at something horrible, and I'm gonna show it to you right now.
It's the Sleeping Beauty plug-and-play.
I can't blame her for looking so apathetic.
I wouldn't be very enthused either if all I had to
look forward to was being manhandled by a giant.
Because she is the joystick.
A very uncomfortable one, I'm sure you're surprised to hear.
I also hate to admit that it took me a very long time to find the power switch.
It's hidden right in plain sight, right here.
And don't even act like you would've found it
immediately and I'm stupid for not noticing it.
There are three games, let's start with Voice of the Forest.
You walk around the forest and you gotta find your animal friends.
And when you sing, a little icon appears that gives you a hint to where they are.
Once you find them, they follow you back to your
cottage and that's how you complete the level.
And you have to find more animals each time.
Next is Fairies in Flight.
You fly upward and blast goons with the correctly colored laser.
It's extremely basic and I got bored of it almost immediately.
And the final game is Birthday Celebration.
You have to stack the cakes like the arcade game Stacker,
but you have to make sure the color matches the layer below.
I like it, but once again it's very simple and didn't hold my attention for long.
For some reason these games read like a Game Boy Advance game to me.
Something about the presentation feels like it would fit perfectly on the GBA.
For a kid's game it's charming enough, but, wow, this joystick is horrible.
And whoever decided to add glitter that rubs off on your hands needs to be fired.
And next up we have...
Oh no...
No, but, like, okay, this is his face, right?
This is the face.
So this would be his head, right?
And then what's -- what...
Is he a unicorn?
What -- what is this?
Why -- why does it look like that?
[Laughs]
Something about this, I'm sorry!
There are five games, and if the music currently playing didn't give it away,
they are all absolutely dumpster tier.
First off is Streets of the City.
You web up goons and beat them up while collecting bags of cash.
This game uses all three buttons.
A to jump, B to web and punch, and the spider button to web swing.
The controls are so appalling and inconsistent
in a way that I can't even put into words.
All I can say is that it's frustrating immediately.
If you have one of these things, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Spider Training is the second game.
You shoot webs at the bad guys and don't shoot the good guys.
It is very one note.
Next is Venom's Vindication.
Venom will throw bombs down and you have to shoot a
web to catch the bombs before they hit the ground.
It's really annoying because goons will come from either side and start punching
you, but you don't have time to punch the goons and web up the bomb at the same
time, so you're just gonna have to take a hit one way or the other.
And they expect you to web up 30 bombs in a row.
Next up is Escape from the Sewers.
It's an old-school-style 3D maze game where you
have to web up bombs before they explode
and subdue The Lizard occasionally.
For five full minutes, I explored the entire maze and couldn't find the last bomb.
And the game just put me right back at the beginning.
Like, go on, do the whole thing again.
Why are these games designed to be as tedious as possible?
And finally, we have Vulture's Venture.
You have a little cursor and you press A to shoot a web and block the rockets.
It's very fun and very cool and I love it.
Well, that was absolutely dreadful, but we're
about to get a whole lot more dreadfuler.
I have somehow managed to go my entire life without seeing Spider-Man 3.
I would probably really like it, but I guarantee you I will not like this thing.
Or maybe I shouldn't speak so soon, because this title screen looks pretty cool.
The first game is Stop New Goblin.
It's supposed to be an arcade-style shoot-'em-up, but way more confusing
because Spider-Man is swinging vertically up and down,
but his depth isn't actually changing.
Like, he still shoots at the same height plane no matter where he is.
Trying to move around is frustrating because you have to build so much momentum.
It feels like dragging a sack of potatoes around.
Like, he's really heavy.
Making dodging anything next to impossible.
And it keeps flashing control prompts on the screen,
Like, DO THIS! Left and B, Right and B.
But you do them and then nothing happens.
I don't know why it keeps telling me to do that.
This game stinks and I never want to play it again.
Next is Symbiote Struggle.
You run around as symbiote Spider-Man beating up thugs,
and then you're instructed to web up to the rooftops
where you find the next set of thugs to beat up.
But the problem is when you're in the rooftop area, once you web swing,
you're locked into that web swing arc with
no way to correct yourself or cancel it or reorient.
So you just swing and you have to hope that you land close enough to where you're
supposed to, just to fight the same exact thugs over and over.
It's incredibly frustrating and tedious.
So the next game, Sandman Smash.
You fight some thugs leading up to a Sandman boss fight.
The fighting feels fine.
It's a little bit stiff, but not too bad.
The Sandman drops gems, and when you collect a certain number of them,
you land a finishing blow that blasts him through the wall into another area.
I initially thought the fighting didn't have much depth to it, but then I learned
that you can do this cool web throw move on thugs, and when Spider-Man gets his
spider sense, it means there's an item in the
background that I can pick up and bash into somebody.
I didn't like the last game's fighting because I was just fighting thugs over and
over, but having the Sandman as a focal point and then the bad guys just as like
fodder, it gave the whole thing like a sense of direction, like having an
immediate objective that I was supposed to focus on.
It's really sick.
I was very surprised how much I enjoyed this game.
And the final game is Construction Site Fight, where
you fight both Venom and Sandman at the same time.
The construction site acts like a labyrinth that you have to traverse
vertically to find either Venom or Sandman.
It keeps things moving.
You don't have to keep looking at the same backdrops over and over.
It's just a really exciting back and forth of fighting and exploring.
And the best part is, there are no goons.
The fights can be a bit confined to a tiny space sometimes.
And also, I ended up glitching the game and
getting stuck in a wall and I had to reset.
I still think Sandman Smash is slightly more enjoyable,
but both of these last two games were super fun.
Well, this thing really turned itself around, didn't it?
It started off really, really bad and then ended off being really good.
I'm super, super, impressed.
See you later, spider-ulator.
And hello, Cosmo Girl.
Very unique design to this plug-and-play here.
These little controllers dock onto the console magnetically.
You just pop them off and hand them to your friends.
The controllers work like a TV remote.
They have an IR blaster in there.
If it wasn't obvious based on the design, this is
a trivia machine built around Cosmo Girl magazine.
Cosmo Girl is essentially the kids version of Cosmopolitan magazine.
So it's chock-full of 2005 pre-teen girl fare.
I'm not so much interested in the content of
this thing as much as I am the design of it.
I just think it's a fascinating device.
I would have loved something like this when I was a kid.
Since we're on the topic of plug-and-play
games with weird designs, check out this one.
It's kinda weird, but it gets weirder.
This little port opens up, but what's it for?
Well, you've got this virtual pet that docks right into that little port.
It's asking me if I want to create a new virtual pet and I say no.
So it loaded up Dan.
Hi, Dan.
I love you.
Welcome to Giga Pets Explorer.
When you start a new game, you get to pick your pet.
I'm going to pick this doggy right here and name him Stonkle.
Obviously.
And when you dock the virtual pet to the console, it says "Press Zap to start TV mode."
When you press it, it uploads the data and then
Dan shows up on the TV to hang out with you.
In 2006, this would have blown my mind.
You meet up with the mayor and he gives you a tutorial mission where you have to
find some gems and then he sets you free into this absolutely massive world.
And there's no run button.
So you have to traverse it at walking pace.
It is very easy to get lost because like I said, the map is so huge and you would think
that the missions would give you a sense of direction, but no, the mayor will just
be like, oh yeah, find this person and then doesn't tell you where the person is.
So I'm just like, okay, I guess I'll just wander around until I find her eventually.
I was playing this on stream and the mission
where you try to find two different kinds of flowers --
It's impossible.
Like it's actually impossible.
The game will just place flowers randomly across the map.
You have to get all of the flowers and then go
all the way back to the barn in two minutes.
It is impossible.
I have 20 seconds.
I'm just going to have to hope that I find it.
Because, my god, I don't know where it is.
Oh, oh, oh my god!
Three, two, one.
Oh no! I have to go all the way back??
Is that a fail?
What do you mean??
I have to go all the way back??
Where's the last flower?
!!!!!!!
Five, four, three --
I can't make it back, there's no way.
Okay, okay. We're trying it again. We're doing it again.
So we're going to start up here.
Okay. Yes. Okay.
And then we're going to go straight up here.
Now I have 30 seconds to find it and get back.
So I'm going to just start heading in that
direction because there's only one way back.
That's it.
I already lose. I'm already too far away.
Like, that's it.
Oh my GOD!!!!!
WHY DOES IT SPAW--
Tell him no.
[Laughs]
No.
Well, that was pretty neat.
But up next, we have the Tele-Doodle.
I love the sparkly decal.
It has a surprisingly soft analog joystick that feels very nice in the hand.
But it is very inaccurate and very frustrating to actually try to draw with.
The cursor kind of just slides all over the place and
trying to draw a circle always leaves one side lopsided.
This released in 2004 and it's a painting program
where you can only use one color at a time.
No paint bucket tool either.
You can draw, and you can erase, and that's it.
You can change tool, which essentially just changes the theme.
For instance, chainsawing a log,
or drawing with rainbows in the sky.
It's cute, but there's absolutely no reason why they couldn't have expanded this more.
Mario Paint should not be running circles around this
thing when there's a 12 year gap between the two.
Yeah, sure. You can say "it's for kids".
But I can think of no situation where a kid
wouldn't prefer a piece of paper to the Tele-Doodle.
Well, that was dogwater.
But I have another drawing game here called Win, Lose, or Draw.
The video drawing game system. Plug-and-play! No cartridges required.
It claims to be America's favorite TV drawing game.
Look how much fun they're having.
Say no more, I'm convinced.
Let's get this thing out of the box and play some Win, Lose, or Draw, shall we?
It shows what you're supposed to draw on the little LCD screen up top.
But I immediately ran into an issue.
This is missing an essential feature for a drawing tablet.
There's no hover to show me where my pen is when it's not touching the pad.
So you just have to guess where your previous
lines were and continue your drawing from there.
And if it doesn't line up, that's too bad.
Your drawing is just ruined.
It has this really rough layer over the touchpad.
Like, I guess to try and give it some texture.
But it was really getting on my nerves, so I ripped it out of there.
And the sensitivity was immediately so much better when I removed it.
But then I realized, oh, right. It's just a touchpad. I can use my fingers on it.
So I came up with a crazy idea.
If I tape down the tip of the pen so it's always held down, put a piece of paper
over the pad and draw with a pencil on the pad,
will it just translate my drawing exactly to the TV?
It's a little jank.
But yeah, actually, it performed shockingly well.
Like, look at the comparison here.
Win, Lose or Draw is a super cool idea.
I love this gadget.
If it had hover and a slightly better tablet, it would be awesome.
Though, that being said, you'd be better off playing
this game around a table with a pen and paper.
Or even better, one of those transparency projectors that teachers used to use.
But if you specifically want to play a video game
with this concept, Game & Wario "Sketch" on Wii U
is one that I regularly go back to.
Okay, we are officially scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one.
This is the VsMAXX Video Extreme.
Now, there's a lot going on here.
So you have this joystick that only moves in this square gate.
Like, this is a gated joystick that only goes in this square, which is insane.
Then you have this circular plate D-pad.
Why?
I don't know why they did it like this.
I don't know why you would ever design a directional pad that looks like this.
And functions like this.
You have this little wheel thing, which, you know, this tilts back and forth.
This is just another D-pad. This just turns left and right.
There's no analog. It's just digital. I don't understand the point.
And then you have these egg-tastic buttons.
Look at these. This rivals the Xbox Duke.
Look at these. You cannot get more eggular than this.
There's your power switch there.
This is just, like, a lot.
This is a lot. This is an alien controller.
So there's 50 games on here.
I'm not going to look through all 50, probably.
I'm just gonna, you know, go through a bunch of them and just get the general scope of the thing.
Fast Runner.
The most basic overhead racing game I have ever seen in my life.
Rally Racer.
Is that the Speed Racer car?
The absolute bare minimum for a motorcycle racing game.
Bullseye.
An incredibly rudimentary shmup.
Space Warp.
The exact same thing, but horizontal instead of vertical.
Critters.
You swing a net at a butterfly, and when you catch it, it says,
"YOU GET IT" on the bottom.
Pipe.
You roll a ball around and try not to fall in the holes.
And when you do fall in the holes, it resets you back to the beginning.
Rollerboard.
You roll a ball into the star hole, and then you do it again.
Trackball.
You very slowly go along a track and, uh, get to the end.
Sky Patrol.
It's a reskin of the same shmup from earlier.
Race and Chase.
It's a very slow clone of Rally-X.
Jungle Protector.
It's another reskin of the shmup from earlier.
North Territory.
Another reskin of the exact same shmup.
Get Home.
It's a clone of Toypop, but you play as a penguin.
Solaria.
It's another clone of the same shmup.
Firefighter.
It's a breakout clone, but you throw the firefighter
at people to rescue them from a burning building.
I actually kind of like this game just because of how weird it is.
Speed Racer.
Okay, you can't use that image.
That's, like, definitely copyrighted.
Oh, it's just a reskin of the motorcycle racing game from earlier.
Okay.
Bounce.
It's a tennis game where you press A at the
right time and you will always hit the ball back.
Off-Road Racer.
It's a very, very slow clone of Bump and Jump.
In Challenge 100, you play as Keropi and you try
not to get squished by the top of the screen.
Crazy Hit.
It's, uh, yeah, it's whack-a-mole.
Dump and Go.
Oh, it's the motorbike racing game, but with a truck instead.
Okay.
Elfland.
You play as Casper the slug and you touch enemies the same color as you and they die.
Gears.
Okay, that's definitely Speed Racer.
You can't use that.
That's copyrighted.
How many times are they gonna reskin the exact same overhead racing game?
Rocket Rider.
Oh my god.
It's the same 2D racing game again.
Pro Tennis.
Nice artwork.
Oh, it's that mobile game where you try to line it up with the one above.
Okay, I've gone through half of them.
I'm not gonna look at the rest.
This is just Action 52, but more boring.
Because at least Action 52 is, like, funny.
This is just lame.
Now, if you thought 50 games were a lot, check this out.
The GameStation plug-and-play game system with 300 video games.
How many video games does one man need?
How many? 300? That might be too many.
In 2016, I bought this thing at a Barnes & Noble for $30.
Was it worth it?
Let's find out.
Let's just slide the whole thing out of here.
So we have the main unit right here.
We have the second player controller.
And we have a *table tennis racket.
Now, the first question that I have to ask is, what is that on the left?
Oh, don't worry.
That's just the select button.
Watch how it recedes.
They could have made this that.
They didn't.
Somehow, the D-pad is even worse than before.
Look how far it sticks out from the console.
Oh, look at the travel on that!
And if you look at the back here: USB port.
Now, my first thought was, oh, I'll stick a flash drive
in there and, I don't know, run some ROMs or something.
But no, that's just the second player controller port.
You plug the second controller in there, and then your friend can play too.
I don't know why you would want to bring your friends on to play this, but you can.
Now, on first glance, you might be like, oh yeah, yellow, white, red, whatever.
But what?
Why is this a USB?
We have two ways to power this thing.
You can power it with the batteries, or you can power it with the USB.
It's very nice to have the option, actually.
Very forward thinking.
I gotta give them some credit for that one.
So there actually are 300 games on here.
I'm not gonna bother going through all of them.
I'll just pick out some ones that look interesting and highlight them.
Heroes Mice 2.
Oh, I'm trying to punch the mice up.
I'm punching them back up.
I don't know what I'm gaining from this.
Invincible girl.
What could that be?
All right, here's the problem with this, right?
I have no idea what's going on.
I'm having a lot of trouble trying to summarize this.
Oh, I thought my objective was to break out, but now I'm not sure.
The thing that always baffles me every time I look at one of these is that
someone had to sit down and develop all these and make the sprites and make the art.
It had to go through some form of quality control.
It had to go through bug testing.
Just for me to look at it and be like, I don't understand.
I don't get it.
Mommy, can I play Repair Urgently, please?
Please, mommy?
I did all my homework.
Ah!
I have to Repair Urgently!
Oh, dear!
Uh, uh, uh, that one.
I want to play Magic Jony.
Magic Jony, yes!
Is that Pikachu in a wrestling mask?
Because nutrition sucked by all --
Wait, what? No, I wanted to read that!
No! It's going by too fast.
No!! [echoing]
[dramatic music plays]
This is the story of Magic Jony.
Magic Jony: Go that way, magic flower! Haha!
Magic Jony: I have come up.
Magic Jony: Magic flower, use your FART power!!!
Magic flower: [farts with reverb]
So Magic Jony's power is that he can spawn a giant rose that eats his enemies.
Okay, Magic Jony, that's a pretty good magic power.
Crystal Blast!
Yes!
Crystal Blast!
Let's go!
Stage 1!
Hit 'em!
Yes!
Yes. I have diamond blasted.
Aw, I missed that one. Hah.
Each one of these games offers like five seconds of entertainment value.
It doesn't have to be entertaining.
They already made the sale.
Like, if you got this far, you already paid for it.
Nature Clan Mirror Devil World!
Ah!
Uh, what do I do?
What am I supposed to do?
Ah!
Okay, I don't get it at all. Like, I don't understand. Even a little bit.
What is going on?
Nut Cracky!
I gotta see Nut Cracky.
What did that say?
"Sav n'... sis..."
[dramatic music plays]
[laughs]
Hello, princess!
I'm coming for -- Okay, that's it.
Well, this is terrible.
Pizza Boy.
Oh my god, this music!
I tried to deliver pizza and then she disappeared.
What's going on?
Wonderball!
Why do I get points sometimes and other times I don't?
I don't think -- I'm not controlling anything, it just kinda happens on its own.
I'm actually kind of blown away by how unbelievably confusing these are.
I'm pretty sure these games were made by actual
aliens because I am not interpreting any of this.
Let's try Lucky Ball.
Wait, what?
This is Nintendo Pinball.
Oh my god, this is actually a pirate game.
This is Nintendo Pinball for NES that they just reskinned.
Air Umbrella.
Wait a minute.
Is this gonna be -- this is Balloon Fight!
This is another pirated Nintendo game!
You can't do this!
This game might be literally 40 years old, but Nintendo will
still sue you for including it in a compilation illegally.
Penguin?
Oh my god, it's Nuts and Milk!
This is another pirated Nintendo game that they just reskinned to be penguins.
Why?
So they put just a bunch of homebrew crap near the beginning of the compilation and
then later on they were just like, Nah, we'll just
put all the pirated Nintendo games near the end.
No one's gonna scroll that far.
They're probably right, too, that's the funny part.
So about the little table tennis racket that it comes with, I tried it out on stream.
Here's a clip of me trying it out on stream.
For those wondering, it's just an IR blaster.
When you swing, it sends a button press command to the console.
Yeah, it's really simple, but it feels really nice.
They nailed the sensitivity.
Wha-how?
Why does this work better than the Go Go TV?
I'm furious.
So this thing has mostly original games, and then they
started getting a little illegal with it towards the end.
Now, some of these plug-and-plays show nowhere near that level of restraint.
Because the Mega Joy II is just obvious, blatant piracy territory.
I mean, look at this thing.
They're not even trying to hide it!
Like, this is just a Nintendo 64 controller.
Now, I'm not trying to sound like I'm anti-piracy.
Pirating from Nintendo is always morally correct.
However, let me make this abundantly clear.
I am not pro-bootleg.
Redistributing copyrighted assets for free for the sake of preservation is cool.
Redistributing copyrighted assets for profit or for personal gain?
Not cool.
Very bad.
It's fascinating, because this spawned an entire line of Famiclone bootlegs
that were so prolific that Nintendo took legal action against them.
This is one of many. I have three of them, and you will see them after this.
Before we boot this up and take a look at it,
I just want to show you the anatomy of this thing.
So you got your video ports here.
You got a power adapter slot there.
It's 6 volts.
You have this weird battery cartridge on the back.
So you're supposed to, like, open this up, place the batteries inside of this little
plastic case, and then that slots into the back here.
This one is so old that the battery slot thing doesn't slot in anymore.
It just kind of blasts out of there.
See? Like, it doesn't... like, it just pops out.
It doesn't work.
The reset button is here, so that sends you back to the menu.
Then you have your start and select buttons here, which is a crime,
because you know that on the N64 controller this is A and B.
But the A and B buttons are here.
There's B and A, and then there's Turbo B and A up here.
It's a very weird thing.
Let's go boot it up.
Look at this thing with all the cables coming out of it.
It looks like it's on life support.
So when you boot it up, it says, Fun Educational 8000 in 1.
So let's see if there's really 8,000 games.
Oh, my god.
Oh, my god!
How could they even put that many games on this thing?
They're using a really cool optimization trick called...
...lying.
There are only 76 actual games on here, and they
just repeat them until the number reaches 8,000.
So let's try out Mickey's Safari Letter.
I think I know this game.
This is Mickey's Adventures in Numberland.
How'd they get the rights to that?
They didn't.
They stole it.
They included Duck Hunt, Hogan's Alley, and Wild Gunman.
But you can't play any of these because there's no gun.
Like, there's no way to use the gun.
Look, here's Lode Runner, one of the most popular NES games ever made.
And it's just on here.
Look, here's Nuts & Milk, which for some reason is on every pirate console ever made.
I mean, good choice.
This game rocks.
I just think it's funny that for some reason Nuts & Milk
is the one Famicom game that's on all of these.
But yeah, look, it's Nintendo's Ice Climber.
There it is.
There's so many Nintendo properties on this thing, you'd think it's Super Smash Bros.
I mean, the problem with this thing is that it's just really uninteresting.
Just because it's all NES games that are unchanged.
And it's like, yeah, no, I know.
I know what NES games are like.
I play a lot of them.
But it's like, what am I supposed to say about this?
Like, I've said everything there is to say, so I'm just gonna move on.
And now for the Super Joy III, very obviously cut from the same cloth.
Look at these things!
A couple of major differences.
Namely, this fake joystick.
This is just hard plastic.
It doesn't move.
I don't know why it's here.
It is genuinely baffling to me.
Why didn't they just leave it out like they did with this one?
I mean, these are probably not made by the same people.
There are probably like 900 million different Chinese
factories pumping these things out back in like 2001.
But also look at this button placement.
How could they do this?
Look at that distance!
Second controller port.
Look, gun and joystick number two.
So look, they didn't forget the gun capability this time.
But also, prepare yourself.
They put an Entire Cartridge Slot right on the back!
And when you hold it, you can feel the cartridge slot with your fingers.
It really digs in back there.
It's very nice.
Okay, well this should look familiar.
We've seen this before.
But the difference is, when you press reset, it says:
FUN TIME!!!
Look at this.
They put the king of video games on here.
Just totally blatantly, straight out in the open.
This level of recklessness is what got these guys sued.
Because you can't just be going around putting Mario on your pirate console.
You just can't.
Okay, yeah, we've seen the whole pirated NES games thing before, it's nothing new.
But what is new here is, check this out.
I got my Famicom cartridge right here.
This is the iconic, the fabulous, Hudson Soft Nuts and Milk from 1984.
It just sticks out like that.
And here's how you have to hold it when you do that.
Like, you just have to hold it like that.
What other option do you have?
Turn her on, and look at that.
Nuts and Milk.
It's running straight off the real Famicom cartridge.
Finally, I can play Nuts and Milk using my real cartridge.
Okay, but jokes aside, this is actually really cool.
Like, this is a pretty convenient way to test my Famicom cartridges.
It's pretty good.
And then we have another one cut from the same cloth again.
The Power Joy.
This one's got a few weird differences to it.
Number one, check out this joystick.
It actually moves.
And it actually does function.
Although it's just an eight directional digital D-pad, just shaped differently, of course.
Now, why is it shaped like this?
Well, they put the gun right there.
It's just right in the middle of the controller like that.
That's really sick, actually.
And it feels very comfortable to hold.
Like, that click is nice, too.
And of course, you've got the second player controller port.
And it comes with a very crappy controller for the
second player with PlayStation buttons, inexplicably.
Yeah, whatever. We've seen this before. Who cares?
So let's get this thing booted up and see what it's like.
Power Joy with some MS Paint geese and some MS Paint roses.
Are these all shooting games?
Let's try Falling Block.
Falling Bricks.
I wonder what game this is going to be a clone of.
Oh, yep. This is pirated Tetri --
Oh, wew...
That ain't no Tetris like I've ever seen.
I hate this.
Oh, no.
This is Cursed Tetris.
Panzer Fly Car.
Okay.
A very barebones 2D racing game. Okay.
Okay, yeah. It seems like most of these are shooting games.
So we're going to have to do something a little drastic.
Oh, yeah.
It is definitely CRT time.
For those uninitiated, LCD screens don't work with light gun games.
You've got to get a CRT like this one.
So I've got the Power Joy right here.
I'm about to shoot at the screen like that.
All right. So I'm about to start off with Shoot Copter. Let's go.
Oh, it's a hack of Duck Hunt. Of course it is.
Okay. Hit that one instantly.
If it's not clear on camera, I'm probably like two feet away from the screen.
So not far, but I wanted to, you know, I wanted the gun to appear on camera.
This is working perfectly.
Absolutely perfectly.
So yeah, it's just a hack of Duck Hunt, but they
replaced the ducks with helicopters for some reason.
All right. We're about to get a perfect game. Let's see if I get it.
Yeah. Absolute perfect game.
Yeah.
This feels incredible.
It is like exact.
Okay. Let's try Shooting 600. Let's try that.
Oh, okay. This is the Duck Hunt shooting cans game.
They replaced the sprite with something.
They look like little birds or something.
I can't even tell.
No, not that one.
I think it doesn't know which one I'm aiming at sometimes.
There we go.
Okay. I was definitely aiming at the bottom one and I hit the top one.
Okay, I don't get that.
If anything, it's overly sensitive.
Like they need to reduce the sensitivity.
I'm guessing "Shoot Glass" is going to be clay pigeons.
Let's see. Yep. Clay pigeons. Okay.
Okay. Got that one. Nope. I ran out of shots.
So I missed the left one. Hit the right one.
All right. Cool. Got both of them.
Yeah. So this is really good.
It struggled on the cans game, but this feels perfect.
Wow. That feels really nice.
What happened to light gun games? We need to bring them back.
Well, that was really fun. This thing works pretty good.
I got to give it to them.
But there's still one trick it has up its sleeve.
Let's get to that now.
The Power Joy cartridge. PJ-008.
Ya shove this right into the back here.
Now this cartridge slot is --
-- it's really crunchy.
I'm sure you heard that, but yeah,
let's boot this up and see what's on the cartridge.
84-in-1. Okay.
Is this just going to be more pirated NES games?
Because I have had more than enough of that.
It looks like these are just pirated NES games.
You got Pac-Land, Lode Runner, Paper Boy...
Finally, I have a way to play Aladdin III.
Oh, it just goes right into it.
No title screen or anything, huh?
Okay.
I mean, we kind of all knew what to expect.
Pirated NES games, you know, they're, they're pirated NES games.
Very uninteresting.
Just like every trend, plug and plays were squeezed for
their every drop of potential for the sake of capitalism.
But even then it's weird to see how much range they had.
Some were simply retro game compilations.
Some were entirely original.
Some were trying to be game consoles of their own.
And some were just straight-up illegal bootlegs.
The concept of some game developers being tasked to make a SpongeBob game on what
was essentially 20-year-old system-on-a-chip
hardware at the time is fascinating to me.
Limitations breed innovation.
The modern day equivalent would be seeing what people can do with the Raspberry Pi,
Arduino, or FPGAs.
And I love all that stuff too.
So it should be no surprise that plug-and-play TV
games will always hold a special place in my heart.
Hey, thanks for watching my video.
I really appreciate it.
Here's the Patreon name scroll.
I wanted to talk about that real quick.
So if you go to patreon.com/clue and subscribe on any tier
you get invited to the clue's house discord server.
And there's a channel in there that's exclusive
for supporters called the Premium Blog.
And the people in the Premium Blog, they get to see
all of the cool stuff that I'm working on at the time.
So, you know, previews, early releases for like
game modding stuff whenever I decide to do that.
That kind of thing.
And it's really cool, you know?
I also wanted to ask you guys how you feel about this format.
Like I haven't done the "here's a bunch of interesting things"
kind of format in a while.
I used to do that a lot back in like the sort of i-Dog era.
I haven't done it in a bit.
So I wanted to bring that back.
But yeah, I just wanted to thank you again for your support.
It's something that I definitely don't take for granted.
And if you can't hop on the Patreon, that's totally fine.
Just keep an eye on my videos and hit the subscribe button and I'll be okay.
So, sayonara, space cadets.
I'll see you guys next time.