THE RANT: The wonders of the far east will never cease to amaze me. Where else could you find a million different shadow companies slogging out the same product year after year? Every year like clockwork dozens (if not hundreds) of different Famiclones make their way out of small factories in China and the far east, to be sold to people who have been playing essentially the same game machine since 1983. It blows my mind.
But this is great news for collectors like us, because it means there's always new videogame crap to look for even in a dry year when no new systems come out. This thing is a famicom clone that has a Gameboy-like cartridge that has 76 built in games. Games are standard clone fare like SMB, Contra, Ice Climber, but also some Hong Kong Originals like Tekken. It's own screen (sadly) only plays an LCD version of Poonyan, and a crappy one at that. The unit has four buttons, although I don't know why because the Famicom only had two, so the other buttons probably are just turbo. So I saw one of these on some website a while ago and it looked intriguing, but after receiving the package I've got a mixed reaction, most notably because I can't get the goddamed thing to work on my TV. (1/31/05: I've since discovered that you need a TV that gets channels 1, or 95-99 to get Asian game systems to work on American televisions. Silly me.)
THE GOOD: Very cheap, only cost me $15.00. The system comes with unit, light gun, AC adapter (which has a standard American plug and not that weird European two pronged thingy, which makes me think I got sold a busted unit even more,) RF cables, and extra controller. Also has a "converter" that fits in it's gameboy sized cartridge slot and fits standard Famicom games. It would be nice to be able to hook this up so I could play all my import famicom carts on my TV instead of just my Game Axe (although I think you can hook that to a TV as well, but I don't know how.)
THE BAD: It's made of very cheap ass materials like all pirate stuff. It's so light that my brother didn't think there was anything in it and I had to stop him from prying the case open. I assume it has the "famicom on a chip" that you hear about so much these days.
THE UGLY: The light gun looks like you could hold up a liquor store with it.
