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What’s on this $10 Handheld 4: Happiness Gift for Boys & Girls

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Yeah, I was bored and wanted to do some sort of project. (There’s only so many KEMCO games one can play before they start to blur together.) Fortunately, Amazon and eBay seem to have a limitless selection of cheap handhelds with a dubious approach to copyrights. I looked at a few, and settled on the wondrously-described:

Aojiao Handheld Game Console for Kids 3.0" Large Screen with Built in 268 Classic Retro Video Games Seniors Electronic Gaming Players Boys Girls Birthday (Blue)

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I mean, you’d be a fool to turn this down. Perfect for on-the-go entertainment! Easy to operate even for 4 year olds! Work 5-6 hours! Joystick Design and Colorful Appearance!

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…though I’m a bit concerned about this being a “Child’s Intimate Partner.”

I figured you’d also appreciate being able to read the official product description:
  • NOVEL DESIGN: This handheld game console features a stylish colorblock design. Free with preloaded 268 classic games.Join the joystick with the same function as the direction button, you can experience the fun of arcade.It's a great kid's birthday, Christmas gift!
  • USER-FRIENDLY DESIGN: Regardless of the screen size (3.0 inches) or the size and layout of the buttons, this game console fully considers the portability and practicality of the child. Parents are worried about their little cute excessive use of mobile phones or pads, easy to be affected by bad content on the Internet. This game console is a very good substitute. No matter whether your kids are on the road or at home, it is a reassuring partner.
  • RECHARGEABLE: Built-in a rechargeable lithium polymer battery, providing a steady stream of energy for your child's happiness. It also eliminates the parents from buying and replacing batteries frequently. Use the micro charging interface, compatible with most electronic product adapters. It only takes 1-2 hours to fully charge and you can play for 5 hours.
  • SIMPLE AND EASY TO USE: This handheld game console is an easy to use and portable gaming device that lets you play your favorite games on the go. With its comfortable and intuitive controls, even 4 year olds can enjoy gaming fun without having to worry about complicated buttons or controls.
  • KID'S FAVOURITE GIFT: This game console is suitable for birthday, christmas, and party gifts for both adults and children. This will be a big surprise for them. This game console is the perfect gift choice! Your child will love,and you'll love seeing their smile as they embark on epic adventures in the world of gaming.

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Also, this accurately describes what comes in the box. Handheld, battery, charge cable (micro-USB, we’re not fancy here), and a “manual” in more Google Translated Chiese-to-English.

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Let’s have a look at the real thing, shall we? The advertised 3” screen is actually 2.8” with a simply enormous bezel. It has both a D-pad and a weird sliding analog stick thing. We have all six face buttons plus the R (reset) button; and they don’t actually feel that bad. (Start and Select are very clicky, but the other buttons aren’t.) When we start playing games we’ll see that everything is using NES controls, so Y and X are just turbo B and A buttons.

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On the top, the shoulder buttons are lies—they’re just attached pieces of plastic that don’t depress. We also have a power switch, our micro-USB port for charging, a headphone jack, and a volume wheel.

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Turning on the device jumps straight to the selection screen, which gives us six categories of games in glorious NES-era pixelation: Action, Shooting, Sports, Casual, Puzzle, and Venture. I’m pretty sure we’re working with a Famiclone hardware variant, but one of the lower-end ones from the graphical quality of the games. From my first glance through, it look like we’re going to have a mix of real NES roms, NES bootlegs, and Nice Code originals at the very least.

There are 270 games total, none of the titles repeat, and my initial scan against the FC500, GamesPower, and My Arcade Go Gamer lists indicate we might have as many as 80 titles we haven’t see before.

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I’m going to be methodical and start with the Action section, which has 40 games. Our very first choice in the Action section is Bubble Bobble 2. And it is, in fact…
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
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1. Bubble Bobble 2

When I was a kid, I had a bunch of “How To Win at Nintendo Games” books that, in retrospect, I’m sorry I got rid of. It was probably a victim of a cleanout when I went to college or thereabouts. I remember relatively few of the tips provided—I actually remember some of them being bullshit, particular from the “How To Win at Game Boy Games” volume that I was able to test out, where the guy absolutely didn’t understand how leveling in Final Fantasy Legend worked. Anyway, though, I do remember that it had the tip for Bubble Bobble of almost beating the final boss in single-player, then pressing start on the second controller so the second player spawns and you get the best ending. That is, however, the only anecdote I have for this game—I actually think I’ve played bootleg knockoffs of it more than the original or this level-pack sequel.

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2. Legend Kage

This appeared on the Gamespower handheld properly labeled as “The Legend of Kage”; and clearly I’m going to have to do some manual cleanup to my spreadsheets to account for different labels for the same game. And misspellings, for that matter.

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3. Arkanoid

I suspect I’m going to condense my posts and try to concentrate on either titles I have something notable to say about, or that we haven’t seen before. I don’t need to take and format 270 pictures when a lot of them will be repeats from my other threads, and I doubt you care about seeing them.

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4. Snow Bros

Another NES arcade port I didn’t really know about until recently. Man, this plays just like Bubble Bobble, doesn’t it?

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5. Bomber Man

This game was mediocre on the NES, but the SNES version was THE best reason to own a four-player connector.

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6. Street Fighter VI

That gets us to our first new title! (At least, on a cheap handheld like this—I think I’ve seen this in various million-rom SD cards that come with more expensive handhelds.) The title screen identifies this as Street Fight “12 Peoples”, which is one of several variations of Street Fighter II Pro, an unlicensed port of Street Fighter II: Championship Edition, made by Cony Soft in 1993. Because there are only two buttons to work with, the controls are harder than the original and special moves are generally activated by button-mashing. (Well, moreso than usual.) Apparently, the original port was hacked many times in order to get to this version: There was first Street Fighter IV Pro 10, which added Balrog and Vega. Then Street Fighter V (20 Peoples), which changed the stages. Then Street Fighter VI (8 Peoples), which dropped back to the original roster. Then Street Fighter VI (16 Peoples) which duplicated each character with a different color palette. And finally, in 1996 we had this version, which removed Dhalsim and Zangief but kept the duplicates.

The bootleg wiki has an extensive page about this game, including a full moves list. There are also gameplay videos!

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7. Hit Mouse

A Nice Code 4-hole whack-a-mole game we’ve seen before. According to the bootleg wiki, several games clearly based on Nice Code NES/VT releases were produced by Shenzhen Niutai Technology on Sunplus SPG hardware; it is unclear if these ports were actually licensed by Nice Code or not. I bring this up because this is one of several titles on this device that are on the list. We might be seeing unlicensed ports of Nice Code games here!

8. Assart

And then we have some repeats I have nothing to say about: This remains a Nice Code “step on all the squares” game featuring a miner.

9. Lode Runner

The NES classic; run from the bombermans and steal the lodes.

10. Bird Week

The legendary terrible game of flying back and forth, catching butterflies for your baby birds and trying not to get caught by a bigger bird that slowly ambles by.

So yeah, I’m going to do this methodically but hopefully I’ll go fairly quickly. If you want me to go back and take pictures or talk about something I zoom past, just ask!
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Those first promo images up top sure are renders of the product shopped into stock photos, yessir.

Why on earth would you take Dhalsim and Zangief out of a street fight? I guess memory issues on some bygone hardware, probably.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Seeing the contents of these budget portables is always a fun time.
I think we all understand that I would, in fact, have a good time cataloguing a handheld that's all terribad variations of a Tetris ripoff...because I did that already.

Also, though almost half of them have moved on, I have played with 39 different handhelds at this point, waaaay more than you'd need to fill an Advent calendar with nothing but!
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Yeah that pic was originally done for a Christmas-themed advent calendar game on Switch featuring two dozen and one mediocre-looking mini games.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
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58. ASSART

Another variant of a Nice Code game we’ve seen before (as Miner1, #352), this is the one where you need to dig as many squares as possible but can only break three rocks. This doesn’t appear to be the original super-racist version, though.
So, Assart appeared on the first handheld I tested, and it's the same version that appears here. (Actually, it appeared several times on the FC500, as Miner1 and I think as Crystal, too.) It unfortunately does not include any art or asses. The Nice Code folks apparently were looking for good titles, went to their dictionary and found: assart (noun): act of grubbing up trees or bushes usually in converting forestland into arable land
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Yimothy, I feel like there's a "You don't know you're beautiful / that's what makes you beautiful" joke in there somewhere. Or maybe just, "My vacuum cleaner doesn't suck, and I can't figure out if that's good or not."

ANYHOO!

11. Double Dragon 1

The NES port of Double Dragon. I actually recently replayed this in two-player mode with a friend, along with a bunch of other arcade games, and have come to the conclusion that side-scrolling beat-em-ups, as a genre, have aged incredibly well. Like, they’re good, solid button-mashing fun, and if you’re playing emulated arcade versions (so you have infinite quarters), you don’t mind the difficulty curves.

12. Double Dragon 2

The NES port of Double Dragon 2: The Revenge. I continue to love the control scheme.

13. Double Dragon 3

The NES port of Double Dragon 3. This one’s the Japanese version.

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14. Double Dragon 4

The NES port of...Wait, what?

Apparently this is a hack of Target: Renegade that appears on a bunch of other 500-in-1 devices. You can see a slightly different version in action here—mine includes a high score list. This is the first I’ve ever heard of Target: Renegade, though the hack absolutely makes sense: It plays like a poor man’s Double Dragon.

15. Ikki

The NES port of the Sunsoft arcade game.

16. Mappy

The NES port of the Namco arcade game.

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17. Robot Maze

A Nice Code title that we’ve seen other versions of, most notably as Devildom Doom. This was created as part of a bulk-retitling of games featuring "violent" (or otherwise less child-friendly) words, likely developed for the European market. On the title screen, this version is credited to Powerjoy Ltd, so it was probably the rom made for the PowerJoy Classic TV Game or a related Famiclone console.

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18. Mortal Combat 4

Street Fighter not good enough for you? We’ve also got Mortal Kombat. This is a bootleg port of Mortal Kombat 3 originally developed by Hummer Team and published by Ka Sheng; then turned into MK4 (as a downgraded version that removed some of the characters and stages to save space) and re-released by ABAB Soft on a multicart.

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There are only 7 characters, but they repeat them a LOT to fill up that select screen. They all use the same three key combinations to do their special moves. Check out a gameplay video!

19. Ninja Turtles 1

The original TMNT for the NES; Japanese edition.

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20. Gundam

This is 1990 Japan-only Famicom game called SD Hero Soukessen Taose! Aku No Gundan that I’ve never seen before but seems pretty sweet. It’s a side-scroller with a Mega Man sort of feel to it. (I suspect a fan translation, or at least a manual, would make the experience easier, though. There are a lot of options and power-ups—possibly character-swapping?—and I was having a hard time figuring them out.) I found some video of this, too.
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
It may be an SD Gundam game but I see an Ultraman in that screencap of it.

But of course, SD Gundam is known for its crossovers, so...
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Were you doing the Bakuma Ryuujin Kyaku / Demon Exploding Dragon God Kick?
...I've only been doing Hurricane Kicks, like a chump!

It may be an SD Gundam game but I see an Ultraman in that screencap of it.

But of course, SD Gundam is known for its crossovers, so...
I think it's a crossover game? I found a stub about it on the Ultraman wiki. Unfortunately, I can't read anything in-game and there's relatively little about it that I can find on the English-speaking web. I'd welcome any details anyone else can find!
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
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21. Mars Man

This is an Inventor hack of Binary Land. Binary Land—which, amusingly, I was first introduced to by a romhack using Final Fantasy characters—always struck me as the sort of game I should like, but inexplicably don’t. Like, it’s an action-puzzle game that I just don’t quite grok. Does anyone else get that, where you feel like a game would be really fun if your brain clicked into solving the puzzles, but it just doesn’t?

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22. Bounce

This is very clearly a hack of Mappy, though I’m not 100% certain which one. My best guess is the Cube Technology Mappy hack that’s also called Bounce Robot. I missed capturing it in the picture I took, but one of the collectables uses stolen SMB1 fire flower sprites.

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23. Elevator Action

The NES port of the Taito arcade game.

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24. Rural Goblin

A Nice Code 12-hole whack-a-mole game we’re see before. This is one of several games that the bootleg wiki notes are credited to Power Joy Ltd., which means those particular games probably were first released on the PowerJoy plug-and-play.

25. Air Umbrella

This is an Inventor hack of Balloon Fight, starring an edited version of Meowkie from Mappy. Well, I guess Moewkie needed to go somewhere with the robot taking over in Bounce. (I always liked Balloon Fight; I suspect it’s because I played a lot of Joust on the Atari 2600 and so the physics always made sense to me.) This is another game we first saw way back on the FC500, right around the time we first see Assart, actually!

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26. Muscle

The NES wrestling game Tag Team Match: M.U.S.C.L.E.,

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27. Knock Time

...And this is just a hack of Rural Goblin, which we just saw. It changes the enemies to monsters and the flowers to a boy in a bear costume, but it’s the same Nice Code whack-a-mole game.

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28. Bubble

There are a number of games called “Bubble”, but this one is a Nice Code shooting upward game we haven’t seen before!

The original was called Falling, which designed to be similar to Astrosmash (but not actually based on Nice Code's Intellivision port). In the original, the player controls a military vehicle and must shoot at soldiers parachuting downward. (We’ve seen that game elsewhere.) That game commonly appears on plug & plays as Burbles, a title-hacked version. This, however, is a much more extensive hack that changes the player to a submarine that fires bubbles to trap fish and treasure chests.

Trivia: The original version of the game has an otherwise-separate game, Strafe, built into its code.

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29. Arena

Another Nice Code game credited to Power Joy; this is a hack of The Farmer where you are a knight trying to defend something by catching the other knights but avoiding the fireballs. The lives remaining screen is glitchy, though in an odd way that makes me wonder if it’s a resolution issue with this particular screen or emulation software. (Or it could be the rom; on this device there’s no way to actually tell.)

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30. Yie Ar Kung-Fu

This is one of the earliest arcade fighting games and I’m not sure I’ve seen it on a handheld before this—or at all! Playing feels like exactly what it is: The game that Street Fighter developed out of. This actually plays pretty smoothly and I’m going to go ahead and recommend it as an interesting piece of gaming history if you haven’t seen it before.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
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31. Santa Claus

Santa throws presents down and you need to catch them. This is another case where we might be seeing the Shenzhen Niutai port of a Nice Code game. This is based on Mad Xmas, in turn hacked from Small Dinosaur, a Kaboom! clone. I’m always entertained by bootleg-of-a-hack-of-a-bootleg-of-a-clone games like this.

32. Karateka

Another widely ported early fighting game, though this one we’ve definitely seen before. I think this version is glitched: There are no health bars, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop the first opponent from killing you in a single punch. (The attract mode shows the game playing properly.)

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33. Ghost Palace

A Nice Code title where you shoot directly upward; a hack of Polar Bat. Trivia: Nice Code was originally known as Nature Color Games, so apparently this is a particularly old rom.

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34. Lode Runner 2

AKA “Championship Lode Runner”, according to the title screen. It’s the NES port of the sequel to Lode Runner. More lodes, more bombermans trying to stop you.

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35. Ninja Kun

A little red ninja kid must make arcing diagonal jumps up a hill while throwing shuriken at other ninjas in his way. This appeared on other devices; I find the controls awkward.

36. Brush Roller

A bootleg clone of MakeTrax (the paint-all-the-spaces arcade game), developed by Hwang Shinwei. I feel like JungleTac got ahold of this version and made several bootleg-of-a-bootleg versions that were on the Lexibook handheld.

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37. Pathway

This is the original version of Nice Code’s step-on-all-the-squares game that we just saw as Assart. This device, as you might have guessed, was not terribly carefully curated. Pathway does, however, win for the best title screen. Actual game explanations! Who’d have thunk it?

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38. Street Fighter 20

Were 12 people not enough peoples for you? How about 20 peoples?

Except no, we are disappointed! It’s Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, the side-scrolling action game. We saw that way back on the FC500.

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39. Tactful

This is a hack of Nice Code’s Jungly Guy, and another game credited to Power Joy. In the original you control a Native American man, and must capture ducks in bags around the field while avoiding a round creature you can’t catch. In this version it’s military-themed and you’re dropping grenades. The wiki notes that this game appears to run on the same engine as Cub Adventure.

Apparently this version was made for a Firecore-affiliated game set, which is a Genesis-based system-on-a-chip. It’s an odd game out because it appears regularly on plug & plays from other manufacturers.

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40. Tactful Mokey
This is an Inventor hack of Championship Lode Runner, which stars the monkey from Circus Charlie and has badly hacked music. It otherwise plays identically to the original (#34).

I think we can conclude that while “Action” means fighting games, it absolutely also means lode running games.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
(SD Hero Soukessen Taose! Aku No Gundan)
I think it's a crossover game? I found a stub about it on the Ultraman wiki. Unfortunately, I can't read anything in-game and there's relatively little about it that I can find on the English-speaking web. I'd welcome any details anyone else can find!
Yeah, this thing definitely has a bunch of Ultraman and a bunch of Kamen Rider and a bunch of Gundam. It's kinda weird because the level select screen makes it look like you're picking a character, but that's just who you start with and you usually swap almost immediately. Seems like maybe there's a relatively common power-up that swaps you to a more powerful character from the same franchise, but then also sometimes you change franchises completely. I'm just going from a quick look at the gameplay video.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
And now we get started on Shooting games. This is the largest category; there are 70 of them. I’m going to restart the numbering for each section because A) that’s what the device does and B) I’m pretty sure I won’t need to reference other sections too much. We’ll see if I’m wrong!

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1. Tank A 1990

Tank 1990 is a hack of the Famicom game Battle City, developed and released in 1990 by Yanshan Software. It changes the levels of the original game. The original release was in the form of a multicart containing 14 different sets of level hacks, labeled from "Tank A" to "Tank N". Later releases—such as this one—only feature the Tank A mode, disabling the 14-in-1 selection menu.

2. Battle City

And then the original. Battle City and hacks of it appeared a LOT of the FC500 and Gamespower. Apparently hacking it was very popular in Japan for a while. I’ll admit, I honestly don’t understand why. It’s not a very good game and adding level packs doesn’t really make it better.

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3. Super Contra 2

The second Contra game for the NES, AKA Super C, AKA Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces. But this has a neat feature that we saw way back at the beginning of my first thread: Like the version of Contra on the FC500, this is a hacked version of Super C that gives you a wide variety of options at the start, including changing your starting weapon or starting number of lives, and a level select. (I’ve never seen either hacked rom on a device I could actually pull it from, but they would both deserve a place in my Ideal Rom Collection.)

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4. Super Contra 7

There’s an extensive entry on the Bootleg wiki about this bootleg Contra title developed by E.S.C. Co. Ltd (an alias of Waixing) in 1996.

5. Contra Force

The third real Contra for the NES. This is the English-language version.

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6. Bitha

This is an Inventor hack of Pooyan. Pooyan is another of those games with a lot of hacks out there, though that’s mostly because Nice Code cloned it and then made a dozen games out of that clone. The bootleg wiki notes that the enemy wolves appear to somewhat resemble Kevin from Ed, Edd 'n Eddy, though this appears to be unintentional. It also notes that the original version of the game features slightly altered/corrupted audio; while a later revision (possibly Waixing-affiliated) completely overhauls the music. It’s unclear which version I have here.

7. Mars

Vertical-scrolling outer space shoot-em-up that appeared on two other devices; my best theory was that it was a hack of Star Force made for the Gun Fighter plug-and-play.

8. Galaga

The NES port of the Namco shooter. I pumped so many quarters into the arcade version of this when I was 12. Why did a fancy version of Space Invaders captivate me so? The world may never know.

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9. Night Arrow

We saw this on earlier devices: This is an Inventor hack of Galaxian that presents you with a level-select and lives-select screen before you start, which is actually a really nice addition! Apparently there was a later, advanced version of this hack called Warship.

10. Gradius

The NES port of the Konami shooter.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Aojiao_Games_03_(12).png

11. Garden War

One of Nice Code’s many hacks of Space War (which we’ve seen before and I believe we’ll see again later). This version changes the enemies into bees in a rose garden, which is an interesting variation.

The original is a generic shooting game, where you control a tank that shoots upward at small planes. The enemy ships fly across the screen in straight lines, occasionally curving downward. The original version of the game has another game variation, Defensive, built into its code. The original more commonly appears on plug & plays as Gallagant, a title-hacked version; and at least 24 different hacked versions are known to exist (some of which are based on Defensive in terms of gameplay). There were 8 versions of this (including Garden War) on the My Arcade Go Gamer handheld; it was actually the record-holder for most versions on that device.

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12. Warpman

The updated version of the arcade game Warp & Warp; we’ve seen this repeatedly on other handhelds.

13. Exerion

The NES port of the Jaleco pseudo-3D Space Invaders clone.

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14. Bucky O'Hare

The NES game, which I’d seen ads for but never actually played. (This is the Japanese version, so I have learned nothing new about the plot. I’m not sure I ever actually watched the cartoon show, but the title theme has been stuck in my head since the 90s, probably from commercials for it.) The game feels very Mega Man-esque, especially since there are four planets you can visit in any order. I appreciate the fact that Bucky, unlike Mega Man, can shoot forward, up, or down. However, that doesn’t mean the game is in any way easy. I played until I reached the first boss, who instant-kills you by squashing you with a giant rock as his first move.

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15. Kage

Not to be confused with The Legend of Kage, this was released stateside as Shadow of the Ninja. The pouring-rain effect in the first level was a really impressive way to make this distinctive in a sea of similar sidescrollers.

16. Levin Action

An Inventor hack of Defender we saw on the Gamespower.

17. Man in Red

Another Nice Code “shooting up at enemies” game, where you’re the titular man in red. (On an earlier handheld, this was amusingly sandwiched between Christmas-themed games.)

18. Galaxian

NES port of the Namco arcade shooter.

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19. Future Tank

Another hack of Battle City!

20. Macross

Super Dimension Fortress Macross for the NES. We’ve seen this before; it’s got the transforming ship which makes for a clever addition to standard shmup gameplay.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
21. 1942

The NES port of the Capcom vertical shmup.

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22. Rifle Range

A change of pace for the “shooting” section, it’s sport target shooting. The only reference I can find to this is a game made by Nice Code for a Wii clone console produced by Qi Sheng Long. I’m wondering if it’s split out of a larger game of variety sports, but I don’t recognize it.

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23. Sea War

Another, somewhat more creative hack of Battle City! (Tank battles...as a squid!) This one can be specifically credited to Inventor.

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24. Space War

Interestingly, even though it shares the name, this is not what we just saw as Garden War! This is an Inventor hack of Exerion that allows a full range of movement around the screen as you shoot upwards.

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25. Star

A flying dragon horizontal shoot-em-up. This is an Inventor hack of Star Gate AKA Defender II. (Which I correctly identified before looking it, up, go me!)

Apparently in addition to being a graphics hack (the player is changed to a flying dragon; enemies are changed to other dragons and bats; the background is changed to purple marble structures) this hack blanks out the in-game HUD and score counter. The bootleg wiki thinks these were broken when it was converted from using one CHR banks (which was the case in the Japanese version of the game, which this is based on) to using both CHR banks (which the US version of the game did correctly).

The wiki also notes that this hack sloppily replaced the menu select screen with text reading "START" (blanking out all of its options in the process). The two-player and "Game B" modes can still be accessed by pushing Select.

26. Airway

An Inventor hack of Xevious with infinite lives.

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27. Atomic Blaster

This is another Defender II hack, built off of Star, which we just saw. This is apparently from a set of "advanced" Inventor hacks, which are connected to Nice Code and/or Waixing in some way that’s unclear. Especially since it’s credited to to Power Joy Ltd!

This is a further graphical hack, but also fixes a few of Star’s errors. The score counter is made visible, though it does not function correctly; only updating the score when a life is lost. The menu select text is fixed. It also adds a new music track that plays throughout the entire game.

28. Cannonade

A hack of Nice Code’s (real) port of Astrosmash, as opposed to the similar games that don’t share the actual (nice) code.

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29. Captain Planet

Okay, so, I know I’ve played this. Like, I have very distinct memories of the segments where you play as Captain Planet. But for some reason, when I loaded it up, I was convinced it was a hack or something because I had zero recollection of the horizontal shoot-em-up segments. You can swap the elements to get different types of projectiles, which is clever and I’m sure is fun if you’re good at it. I watched some on Youtube and was very impressed at how quickly they could adjust on the fly for what they needed to shoot.

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30. Crisis

This, on the other hand, is another Nice Code variant of Space War/Gallagant.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Not a lot of excitement today—I believe all ten of these appeared on earlier handhelds and I don’t have much new to add.

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31. Defensive

It’s yet another Nice Code variant of Space War/Gallagant.

32. Denger Zone

Actually “Danger Zone”, this is a Nice Code variant of Falling, where you need to shoot the baskets off of balloons (or maybe they’re the fuses on bombs?)

33. Field Combat

We’ve seen this (particularly weird one) before. Yes, it’s field combat, in that you’re in a UFO and trying to kill everyone on the field before they swarm you.

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34. Final Mission

This is the Japanese version of the NES game S.C.A.T. (Why did anyone ever think that was a good name?)

35. Firebase

It’s yet another Nice Code variant of Space War/Gallagant. I think it might have been one of the very first Nice Code titles we ever saw, appearing early on the FC500.

36. First Defender

We saw this twice on the FC500. Nice Code ported the Intellivision Space Invaders clone Space Armada and then hacked it into this.

37. Front Line

NES port of the Tatio run-and-gun.

38. Gallagant

The most common Nice Code Space War hack. That makes five on this device so far.

39. Lunarian

Oh, wait, there’s Space War/Gallagant number six.

40. Panzer Attack

One of Nice Code’s hacks of Polar Bat, which we saw recently as Ghost Palace. As was the case when this appeared on the My Arcade Go Gamer, in this version, your tank only moves side to side and there aren’t any obstacles that roll and require you to jump over them.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
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41. Scuba Hunt

A Nice Code title, a hack of their port of Buzz Bombers (and we saw Man In Red already, which was another), but we’ve never actually seen this one before. And this was NOT what I was expecting, as apparently you’re controlling a scuba tank and firing bubbles at fish (which flattens them, or something?). Now, granted, I hate swimming and so have never gone diving, but I do not think this is how scuba works.

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42. Sky Destroyer

NES port of the Taito aerial rail shooter.

43. Star Force

NES port of the Tekhan vertical shooter.

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44. Star Gate

The original version of Defender II, which we just saw several Inventor hacks of.

45. Star Soldier

The Hudson Soft shoot-em-up for the NES.

46. Surface Fire

An Inventor hack of Millipede that changes the title screen and a few of the creature sprites.

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47. Aether2

I’m not sure why this is listed as Aether2; it’s the Inventor hack of Warpman just called Aether (not to be confused with Nice Code’s Aether Fighter, Aether Cruiser, or Aether Captor).

48. Aimless

A nice code first-person shooter, originally titled Space Battle and hacked into this. And yes, I still delight in a shooting game that’s called “Aimless”.

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49. Sand Shot

A Nice Code original, created as Space Hawk and then hacked into Dune War, then re-titled into something more family-friendly. It still features a dude with a rocket launcher running around the desert.

50. Airial Hero

A second version of Nice Code’s Space Battle/Aimless. The title screen spells it creatively, too.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
51. Baltron

The Japanese-exclusive Toei horizontal shooter.

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52. Base

Another Nice Code hack of Space Battle/Aimless. This one is unusual because it retains the map screen from the original game, which all other variants remove. Apparently the original had a starscape as the background; it’s removed in this hack, making backgrounds appear blank and making it very hard to understand what’s going on if you’re going into the game blind. Also, the enemy ships use the same sprites as Close Quarters. This variant has no copyright notation—or much of anything on the title screen, as you can see.

(I’m going to toss out the theory that the title is “base” as opposed to “acid”, and those are little H+ ions you’re shooting down. Probably not true, but what is life without ridiculous headcanons?)

53. Burbles

This is Nice Code’s Astrosmash clone (also known as Falling), that we saw Bubble as a version of already.

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54. Close Quarters

And a fourth, less noteworthy version of Nice Code’s Space Battle/Aimless, which I just mentioned shares enemy sprites but not backgrounds with Base. This one is honestly more playable.

55. Coast Guard

Nice Code’s port of Atari’s Air-Sea Battle (Game B).

56. Cobra of Sky

An Inventor hack of Raid on Bungeling Bay. (The original is coming up.)

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57. Star Fighter

Another Nice Code hack of Astrosmash, just like Cannonade. (The differences between Astrosmash clones and Buzz Bombers clones are subtle to the player—mostly whether enemies pause at the top of the screen or just continuously come down at you—but it’s important to note which lineage each game comes from.)

58. Depth Bomb

A Battleship clone by Nice Code.

59. Dune War

The Nice Code hack of Space Hawk we just saw as Sand Shot. “Shot” is a much more family-friendly term than “war”, you see.

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60. Final Man

A Nice Code game with an immobile soldier who can shoot in five directions against the incoming hoards; I believe the original of this was Five Days.
 
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