At first glance this machine looks like another Chinese GB knockoff, but in fact it's a completely new system with all original internals. Well, original is a sparse word when applied to Chinese cloners... as you can see the casings from the OG and new versions are taken from the GBA and Sony Psp, respectively. Games are in black and white and look pretty primitive, and seem to be very small (although neat looking) and are about 128K in size, so we're not talking powerhouse here. Most of them seem to be "inspired" by classic GB and NES titles. Stiil a cheap retail price (about $40 for a system and 13 games package) makes it tempting.
The Game King II looks 100 times cooler and has a blacklit screen. Availible from Time Top's homepage (although it's in Chinese and doesn't seem to translate well, so good luck.)
The Game King III is a newer model with a color, backlit screen. Technical info on the machine is not availible, however from the Youtube video it looks to be the same as the Game King I and II. The games are backwards compatible and the older black & white games are automatically colorized. The Game King III comes with Galaxy Crisis built in.
Pics and info thanks to Brian Provinciano, who is an electrical genius and has created his own Game King dev hardware.
7/25/05:
So I've scored a Gameking and what do I think? Ummm... I think some people are going to be disappointed. The machine is neatlooking, but cheap. Real cheap. I mean it. Don't drop it for the love of God.
Console has two buttons, although most of the games only seem to use one. The "L" and "R" buttons at the top are actually just pieces of plastic and don't do anyting. Volume and Contrast on the bottom, headphone jack on top, one red LED that lights up when it's on, runs off of two AAA batteries. There's no AC adapter, batteries only. However I've been using it for the past few days and the batteries seem to be holding out fine. So we're not talking a lot of power here.
There's also a reset button on the front, but it's recessed enough to be inside the casing, so in order to hit it you have to use a bent up paperclip or something. So I usually just turn it off and turn it back on.
The screen has a resolution comprable to a T-88 graphing calculator, which means it looks like shit. The pixels are really big, although they can be displayed in the GB 4 shades of grey. There's actually very little blurriness going on though, and with good light you can see adquately.
The games are very primitive, look like ass, and sound like crapola, but we all knew that going in. The console has 3 games built in, Drifter (very simple platformer that tries to be like SMB but isn't,) 2003 (which is a 1943 clone,) and Mine Battle (Bomberman clone.) I'll get some screenshots up eventually. Since the games are imitations of games I already knew they were easy to play and pretty fun. But the horrible screen makes them hard to see.
13 other games came with the package, some of which are pretty interesting. Screenshots comming soon.
