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

[Beowulf]

61. Five Days

What a coincidence, we were just talking about this! It’s the original of Final Man. And no, nothing in the game indicates what the five days in question are; there’s no time limit or set five stages or anything like that. Maybe it’s a reference to something that got mistranslated or just sufficiently divorced from context?

62. Formation Z

AKA Aeroboto, the NES port of the Jaleco horizontal shooter.

63. Raid on Bungeling

The NES port of the shoot-em-up developed by SimCity creator Will Wright.

64. Penta Base

Another variant of Nice Code’s Final Man/Five Days. It keeps the “five” theme.

65. Resistant

Just in case you thought we needed more versions of Nice Code’s Space War/Gallagant, here’s another one. That’s seven, for the tally, and I’m pretty sure nothing’s going to beat it.

66. Silent Hunter

A Nice Code submarine game (originally called Sub Hunt) with weird controls.

67. Space ET

It’s just Space Invaders. It was on the Gamespower with the same name.

68. Strafe

A fourth variant of Nice Code’s Final Man/Five Days. No way that’s catching up with Gallagant!

69. Hobbs Voyage

One of Nice Code’s hacks of their port of Intellivision’s Night Stalker, and one we haven’t seen before. This feels very similar to Battle City to me, though with the annoying addition that your bullets run out after a few shots and you need to dodge your way to the reload icon that appears. It’s also an “endless” game where you and the enemies respawn infinitely and your high score is really just limited by your patience.

70. Millipede

The NES port of the Atari game.

And that’s all the Shooting! That was the longest section, and now we’re 110 games into this 270-in-1 handheld. I bet there won’t be any shooting at all in any of the other sections. I bet they kept all of the games with any shooting at all in this section to Protect The Children.

 

[Beowulf]

So now we’re onto a new section, and our next section is Sports! As we’ll soon see, they didn’t actually have enough “sports” games to really fill out this section (this device isn’t powerful enough to run the 16-bit Wii-clone games we saw on the Family Sport 220-in-1), so they clearly declared that racing was a sport and piled all the racing and driving games into this section.

1. Archery

Single-screen archery against a moving target seen on the FC500. Oddly, you press right on the control pad to fire rather than, like, the A button or something.

2. Road Fighter

NES port of the Konami racing game.

3. Hyper Olympic

The NES game AKA Track & Field in the US.

4. Lunation

A Nice Code racing game originally called Pobble. (Well, “racing” isn’t so accurate, more of a dodge-em-up. You’ve got a time limit to go as far as you can and crashing just slows you down…but this version doesn’t keep score or anything so it’s all rather pointless.)

5. Javelin

A piece cut out of Track & Field and made into its own game.

6. Lunar Ball

The Japanese version of the Billiards game Lunar Pool.

7. Badminton

Super Dynamix Badminton! This is a real game that I hadn’t heard of before; it’s got a lot of options and features. I feel like there are a lot of tennis games but badminton is a pretty under-served video game market.


And you can even choose to be a boy or a girl.

8. High Jump

Another separated-out Track & Field event.

9. Chase H.Q.

The NES version of the original Taito driving game about chasing down a specific car and ramming it off the road. The arcade version is a lot smoother, but I do feel like this delivers on the concept.

10. Hyper Sports

The Japanese version of Hyper Olympic ’84, the sequel to Track & Field.

 

[Violentvixen]

I feel like there are a lot of tennis games but badminton is a pretty under-served video game market.

I had never thought about this until now but so true. Maybe the physics is more difficult since there's some drag to consider?

 

[WildcatJF]

7. Badminton

Super Dynamix Badminton! This is a real game that I hadn’t heard of before; it’s got a lot of options and features. I feel like there are a lot of tennis games but badminton is a pretty under-served video game market.


And you can even choose to be a boy or a girl.

I've done some research on this for my books on women characters on the NES/Famicom. This was developed by Pax Softnica, who helped Nintendo with their Volleyball. It lacks the effort of that game, though; while you can choose your gender, it doesn't actually change the sprite. It's also a little lackluster to play, as it's built on the Volleyball engine but doesn't really feel like it accommodated the loss of teammates, even in doubles mode. It's a bit of a shame, as badminton has been neglected in video games for the most part.

 

[Beowulf]

That's neat, WildcatJF. I love it when I learn new things because of these threads!

11. Corridor

Nice Code’s Pobble, hack #2. In this version you’re in a plane, there are treasure chests to pick up, and crashing restarts you at the beginning rather than respawning in place (you also have limited lives).

12. Shoot

The skeet-shooting event from Track & Field, separated out.

13. Surfg Sport

One of the hacks of Nice Code’s port of U.S. Ski Team Skiing; though with the caveat that you’re clearly snowboarding instead of skiing.

14. X Racing

An Inventor hack of MotoRace USA, AKA Zippy Race. The wiki notes that graphics on levels 2 and 4 are displayed incorrectly in X-Racing, making this hack incredibly difficult. Frankly, I couldn't manage to get that far, but there's a Youtube playthrough video.

15. 100M Dush

A cutout piece from Track & Field; we saw this on the FC500 with the same misspelled title.

16. 10-Yard Fight

The NES football game published by Irem.

17. 110M Hurdles

Yet another Track & Field event.

18. Astro Fang

A Famicom racing/battle game called Astro Fang: Super Machine. On the faraway planet RS-121, life is impossible, but there remains a mysterious highway called the Black Line. An ancient legend is connected to this highway, and you need to blast the other cars off of it with missiles to find those secrets. There’s a video longplay of a translated version (that I think is a hack—this was only released in Japan) that gives you the full story. It has boss battles and everything!

19. Awful Rushing

Nice Code’s Pobble, hack #3. I believe this one made our top 10 list of Nice Code game names.

20. Devil Rider

Nice Code’s Pobble, hack #4. This one has you on a motorcycle, with the same time limit and utter lack of purpose as Lunation.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

13. Surfg Sport

One of the hacks of Nice Code’s port of U.S. Ski Team Skiing; though with the caveat that you’re clearly snowboarding instead of skiing.

... neither skiing or snowboarding is... surfg. Surfg is just an unused Homestar Runner gag.

 

[MetManMas]

Snowboarding is technically "what if surf(in)g on snow", though obviously there are significant differences in temperature and how frozen and non-frozen liquids interact with someone riding a board on them.

 

[Beowulf]

21. Discus Put

Another Olympic event; a hack using sprites from Caveman Games that we saw on the GamesPower.

22. Dream Way

Oh, wow, it’s another version of Pobble! (#5) I’d never heard of this one before—I don’t think it had made the bootleg wiki when I last did one of these projects. This one is apparently of the same lineage as Hot Speed, which is coming up.

23. F-1 Hero

So, this is an actual game that I hadn’t heard of, Satoru Nakajima F-1 Hero (known in North America as Michael Andretti's World GP). It’s apparently a noteworthy game for being more of a racing sim than a simple driving game, but the version on this is clearly glitched: The cars never move. If you play a race, none of the cars move. You can rev the engine and turn in place, but that’s all.

24. Goal Keeper

A rudimentary soccer game we’ve seen before. I believe this was one of the games Nice Code rebuilt from the version on Techno Source’s licensed "Elmo's World" plug & play.

25. Goal5 Soccer

So, this claims to be FIFA Soccer 97, Goal5 Soccer. It’s actually a hacked rom of Tecmo World Cup Soccer.

26. Hot Blood Basketb

We went down the rabbit hole of the “Hot Blood” games back when we saw pretty much the entire series on the FC500. The series that we got River City Ransom from was originally Nekketsu Kakutō Densetsu, roughly translated as “Hot Blooded Fighting Legend”. This is from that series, it’s Nekketsu! Street Basket: Ganbare Dunk Heroes.

27. Hot Blood High Sc

I believe this is Nekketsu Kōkō Dodgeball Bu: Soccer Hen (localized as Nintendo World Cup).

28. Hot Blood Story

The Japanese version of River City Ransom.

29. Hot Speed

Nice Code’s Pobble, hack #6. Nothing particularly noteworthy about it given that we’ve already seen Dream Way and Lunation, which are basically identical.

30. Pobble

Nice Code’s Pobble...the original! This one was actually a flying game with collectables, as opposed to the various car-driving games. Apparently the very first version of this game was called Fly On Cloud, using this style of gameplay, but with the Hot Speed variation built into its code.

 

[Beowulf]

31. Long Jump
32. Triple Jump

Both of these are hacked-together pieces of Caveman Games and Track & Field into individual events. We’ve seen them both before.

33. UFO Race

An Inventor hack of F-1 Race featuring 3D racing around a flat track, as a UFO in space.

34. Violent

An Inventor hack of Seicross (AKA Sector Zone). The speeder bikes are turns into motorcycles but the gameplay is otherwise pretty much unchanged.

35. Way Out

A hack of Nice Code’s Maze Maid, which is also known as Labyrinth, Robot, and Girl. We’ve seen variants before. In this version the character is a chess pawn, but the gameplay of moving automatically you manually turn or run into a sign is unchanged.

36. Billiard

An Inventor hack of Lunar Pool that changes very little; apparently there’s a version called “Billiard 2008.”

37. Motoboat

Nice Code’s Pobble, #8. It overtook Gallagant for the number of versions on this device!

38. Risker

We actually saw a game called Risker before, but was definitely not this. This is an Inventor hack of Excitebike with cars instead of motorcycles. I’m kind of disappointed we didn’t get the hack called Biky Bike.

39. Shot Put

And one last breakaway Olympic game bootleg.

40. Zippy Race

The Japanese version of MotoRace USA; we saw a hack earlier in this section.

And that's all of the Sports!

 

[Beowulf]

Next, we have our other really long section, Casual. It’s games specifically aimed at those filthy casuals.

1. Nuts Milk

The NES port of Hudson Soft’s Nuts & Milk, about rescuing Milk’s fiancée Yogurt.

2. Conte Enegy

Another Inventor hack of Lode Runner. I thought we already determined that lode running was Action!

According to the wiki, this was based on another hack of Lode Runner called Turtles. The enemies in Conte Enegy are replaced with sprite edits of one of the enemies from Tom & Jerry, and the player character is changed to Conte.

3. Diamond

This is an Arkanoid clone made by Nice Code. (I’d hoped it was one of several Tetris or Columns clones that used that name.)

4. Hoodle

An Inventor hack of Pinball—we actually saw this before, but the last time the games list called it “Hoodle” but it didn’t even change the title screen. (The wiki notes that this is a common occurrence.) This time we got the proper hack: The layout is changed and there are Lode Runners and the Russian dancers from Tetris on the playfield.

5. TNT

An Inventor hack of Bomberman. This features the player character from Inventor's Frog Prince hack. I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get the hack called Golgotha, which features Lode Runner blowing up tombstones in a graveyard.

6. Conqueror

An Inventor hack of Circus Charlie where you ride a dolphin.

7. Angel

A Nice Code hack of the Kaboom! clone Mad Xmas. This version, originally titled Mummy, features a mummy catching items dropped by an angel. How many Kaboom clones do we think we’ll see?

8. Deflower

This is a different Inventor hack of Lode Runner, in which you run around collecting flowers. I noted in the original post (where we first saw this) that the patch for it is apparently up on romhacking.net. (There is a LOT of Lode Runner on this handheld, upon reflection.)

9. Dragon

This is Inventor’s hack of the unlicensed snakes game Fire Dragon; we’ve seen other hacks of this before.

10. Bugbear

Nice Code’s 4-hole whack-a-mole game, originally Hit-Mouse. (Hit-Mouse itself was also up in the Action section. Is whack-a-mole Action or Casual???)

 

[Beowulf]

11. Falling Fruit

A Nice Code title where you need to match the falling fruit to the fruit on the pipe below. This was on the My Arcade Go Gamer as Fruitdish.

12. Pooyan

The NES port of the original Konami game we keep seeing bootlegs of.

13. Fish War

A Nice Code title we’ve seen a bunch of variants of, where you’re a slowly-growing fish and need to eat smaller fish but avoid larger ones.

14. Dice

Oh, wow, this is totally something we haven’t seen before! It’s a game where you need to flip the die along any axis to get it to match (and merge with) the other die. There’s a time limit, and later stages add “bomb” squares that blow you up if you roll over them. This is a Nice Code title we’ve never seen before, originally called Dice Legend. Other versions were called Snaffle and Play Dice.

15. Cub Adventure

A Nice Code title featuring a little white bear on an ice floe, and you need to collect all the hearts while avoiding the adorable baby whales.

16. Penguin

A Nice Code title where you’re a penguin, trying to jump from ice floe to ice floe. (We’ve seen several variations on this “jump up” game before.)

17. Pillar

AKA “Build Pillar”, the stacking game from Nice Code’s Brain Games compilation pack.

18. Plush Dog

Another version of Hit-Mouse, Nice Code’s whack-a-mole game, though one we’ve never seen before. This version has 9 holes, and you’re trying to whack...a dog? NOT OKAY!

19. Crypt Car

An Inventor hack of Dig Dug with spinys as the enemies.

20. Radish Field

Yet another version of Nice Code’s Assart, which we saw a couple of times over in Action. (There are no radishes; it’s all carrots.) They just don’t care about properly segregating Action from Casual games, do they?

 

[Johnny Unusual]

19. Crypt Car

An Inventor hack of Dig Dug with spinys as the enemies.

 

[Beowulf]

Johnny, that is significantly cooler than what the actual game turned out to be.

21. Binary Land

We saw an Inventor hack of this called Mars Man in the Action section. Poor curation alert!

22. Care Bear

A Nice Code Kaboom clone starring a bear. Who cares very much, thank you.

23. Bean Kids

A Nice Code game we’ve seen elsewhere as Gate and Teleport. You maneuver your character (a glowing dot in the original) around the maze through the teleportals, collecting the prizes and avoiding the dangers. In this version, you’re the disembodied head of a cabbage patch doll and need to escape the angry green blob things.

24. Bomb

I didn’t recognize this at first; it’s an Inventor hack of Chack’n Pop. I never really played the original (and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as an arcade cabinet). The way the bombs fall definitely takes some getting used to if you want to hope to kill anything.

25. Dada

An Inventor hack of Popeye, that changes the sprites but keeps the very distinctive theme song.

26. Destroy I

An Inventor hack of Wrecking Crew.


(It even keeps the “Mario Start” lines, despite removing Mario.)

27. Frantic Mouse

A Nice Code title where you’re a mouse, frantically trying to jump from cloud to cloud. (We just saw it as Penguin, too.)

28. Grot Kid

Another version of Nice Code’s Cub Adventure, above.

29. Happy Adventure

A Nice Code variant of their upwards-shooting game The Archer.

30. Inkfish

A variant of Nice Code’s Fish War, above. We’ve never seen this exact version before; it’s annoyingly hard to tell which fish you’re “bigger” than and takes a lot of trial and error.

 

[Beowulf]

31. Joust

NES port of the Williams electronics game. I had this for my Atari 2600 growing up, and found it mostly entertaining as a two-player game. I feel like the fact no one ever made an eight-player version of Joust is a gross oversight.

32. Small Dinosaur

A Nice Code Kaboom clone starring a not-large dinosaur.

33. The Farmer

The original Nice Code game we saw in the Action section as Arena; in this version you’re a farmer catching sheep.

34. Polar Bat

Meanwhile, this is the original Nice Code upwards-shooting game we saw in the Action section as Ghost Palace.

35. Rescue Kuck

An Inventor hack of Donkey Kong Jr. using some of the same sprites as Conte Enegy. We saw this before, but I remain in awe of the title.

36. Shrew Mouse

A Nice Code competitive snakes game originally released as Snafu. (The original only had one opponent; this version has three.) Noteworthy for the blackface mouse character on the title screen and also the fact the actual game has nothing to do with mice at all.

37. Small Mario

Whatever you were expecting from that title, you were going to be wrong. So, this is a Famicom port of Xiao Ma Li, a Taiwanese gambling game of the same name, developed by Nei-Hu Electronics and distributed by Idea-Tek. Mario doesn’t appear anywhere in the game; it’s a betting game and the later versions of it were called “Bingo”.

38. Super Arabian

The NES port of the Sun Electronics/Atari arcade game.

39. The Archer

The original Nice Code variant of their upwards-shooting game The Archer.

40. Transmission

Another variant of Nice Code’s Gate, which we saw as Bean Kids above. (The styling of “Trans-mission” on the title screen makes me think of the joke, “Why don’t robots have brothers? Because they have trans-sisters!”)

 

[Violentvixen]

37. Small Mario

I find this extremely amusing

 

[Torzelbaum]

36. Shrew Mouse

I read that as Shred Mouse at first.

 

[Beowulf]

41. Mad Xmas

Another Nice Code Kaboom variant starring Santa Claus.

42. Magic Place

One of Nice Code’s hacks of their maze-runner game Hallihoo, which we’ve seen several of on other handhelds. This version changes the player to a bouncing square that avoids bugs and spiked balls; the collectible bells are changed to stars.

43. Antiquarium

A Nice Code fishing game (we’ve seen several versions of) with ridiculous bait.

44. Bug's War

A Nice Code Battleship clone, though different from Depth Bomb. We saw a version of this called Undersea Arena on the My Arcade Go Gamer. This version has you blasting underground bugs.

45. Burger Time

The NES port of the Data East arcade game.

46. Chack 'N Pop

The NES port of the original Taito game, which we saw a hack of earlier in this run.

47. Crystals

And here we have the reason I keep looking for new cheap bootleg handhelds like this: Not only is it another completely new Nice Code title, but it’s a rabbit hole of them! This and several others we’re about to see are clones of levels from the PC game Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin. Aladdin himself is removed but a Nature Clan dude is added in; and apparently the “foot” icon that resets each game is new. This one was originally level 5, “The Vortex,” where you’re given instructions and need to put the correct number of crystals on the plate. (Unfortunately, the game needs to use a mouse pointer, so it’s a pain to control. I mean, it’s also a kinda badly-made clone of a mediocre educational game to begin with, but at least the original was a PC game so you had a mouse.)

48. Diamonds

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 8, “Bug Out.” You need to scoop up diamonds and distribute the correct number into each of the three bags at the bottom.

49. Door Door

The Enix puzzle-platformer game.

50. Dragon Den

A third Nice Code variant of their upwards-shooting game The Archer.

 

[Beowulf]

51. Eggs

This is a Nice Code Kaboom clone, but of a different lineage from most of the ones we’ve seen, and it features a robot that needs to carefully catch eggs dropped by a bird. The wiki noted this one as being particularly “infamous,” though I don’t think it’s notably worse (or better) than anything else in Nice Code’s collection.

52. Enchanter

Another variation of the Nice Code upwards-shooting game Polar Bat. The Archer and Polar Bat variations play very similarly, but apparently use a different code base.

53. Exist

This is a version of Nice Code’s Fish War, only with bugs. (Eat only bugs that are smaller than you!) Some background assets are taken from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters. It’s unclear whether Inventor was involved in the creation of this version; apparently this shows up on the list of “advanced” hacks.

54. Fruit

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 4, “The Monkey.” You’re given some equivalencies and need to figure out the final one logically. (Upon reflection, it’s interesting that the instructions in these games are in English. I wonder if they were specifically made for bootleg American hardware, rather than the Chinese market.)

55. Mahjong 4P

This is 4 Nin Uchi Mahjong, an official Hudson Soft Mahjong game made for the Famicom. My mom has gotten super in mahjong lately and we’re all delighted by it because, honestly, my mom needs to be kept busy to keep her out of trouble.

56. Maze Maid

This is the original Nice Code game that we saw in the Sports section as Way Out. This one has a maid in the maze.

57. Old Maid

A bootleg card game we’ve seen on multiple devices.

58. Paigow

Pai Gow Poker, which we’ve seen before on these handhelds but I’ve never seen played in real life.

59. Paper Boy

The NES port of the Atari game.

60. Rudder

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 6, “The Escape Tunnel.” You need to use the arrow at the top to navigate the Nature Clan guy to the correct square on the grid, and the number shown is how many steps away (but not which direction).

 

[Beowulf]

Four down, two to go. Let’s see what they have for our brains in Puzzle.

1. Jewelry

The Columns clone Magic Jewelry, made in 1990 by Hwang Shinwei and published by RCM Group.

2. Box World

A Nice Code collection of block-pushing puzzles set to Frere Jacques. The tinny music is actually less annoying than I remember from the last time I saw this.

3. Gobang

5-in-a-row played on a Go board. We’ve definitely seen this before, but the title had different syntax so it didn’t match my lookup (and I don’t think the version we saw had a title screen!)

4. Magic Bubble

A Nice Code Tetris clone. (Not to be confused with the Tetris clone of the same name that featured naked women as a reward for completing each stage.) The clear bubbles actually make it hard to see what you’re doing, and the drop speeds are inconsistent. Apparently Nice Code made a bunch of other versions of this called Russia, Triple, Shapes…and Tetris.

5. Memory Test

A 16-card simple matching game by Nice Code. This version changes the background design to be of a stack of playing cards on a red background. The exit icon is changed to a foot, similar to the Disney's Math Quest clone games, implying they were edited by the same team and/or for the same device.

6. Addition

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 2, “The Secret Brick.” You need to click on three blocks at a time to solve addition problems and make them disappear.

7. IQ Champion

Bet you didn’t expect this, but it’s a Nice Code clone of Buzz Bombers! (The bees turn into hearts when you shoot them.) That title makes it feel like it should be a puzzle game, though.

8. Bomb Sweeper

Not Minesweeper; this is a clone of the Game and Watch game from 1987.

9. Mathsort

The Final Fantasy boat puzzle! (Nice Code’s original version of this was called Puzzle and we’ve seen it before. Apparently Qi Sheng Long added the title screen to this version.)

10. Twin Copters

A Nice Code matching game we’ve seen before, this time with multicolored helicopters. (The original was Twin Fish)

 

[Beowulf]

11. Labyrinth

Nice Code’s Maze Maid again.

12. Pong

It’s Pong, the video game classic, but I can’t figure out which version it actually is.

13. Black White Chess

Othello, which we’ve seen labeled as “chess” before.

14. Pattern Maker

A version of Nice Code’s Fruit Gift (not to be confused with Fruitdish); this has shapes instead of fruits but the matching mechanic is the same.

15. Snowball

A snowman-themed version of Nice Code’s Box World.

16. Freecell

Bootleg card game; we’ve seen it before.


17. Warehouse Boy

AKA CKAAA No 18, it’s a Russian rom, which is another new surprise! (Though I’d swear I saw this before somewhere, or at least something labeled similarly, and I can’t find it in my notes.) I found a gameplay video of this, but wasn’t able to hunt down where it originated from before appearing on multicarts.


18. Othello

The proper HAL Laboratory version of Othello for the NES.

19. Twin Cards

A Nice Code matching game that isn’t the same as Twin Copter. There are half a dozen different versions of this called Twin Cards (some featuring Pikachu), plus versions called Two Cards and Brave Boy.

20. Twin Boar

A Nice Code matching game that IS the same as Twin Copter (just with pigs instead of helicopters).

 

[Purple]

31. Joust

NES port of the Williams electronics game. I had this for my Atari 2600 growing up, and found it mostly entertaining as a two-player game. I feel like the fact no one ever made an eight-player version of Joust is a gross oversight.

10-player even!

 

[Beowulf]

10-player even!

Hunh! That's pretty sweet. And it looks like there's a cabinet at the NYU Games Center in Brooklyn. Hmm.

 

[Beowulf]

21. Gate

The original Nice Code maze-running game we’ve seen several times before, including as Bean Kid and Trans-Mission.

22. Dominoes

A simple Nice Code dominoes game we’ve seen before; no frills and no music.

23. Goblet Tower

A Nice Code a Tower of Hanoi game we’ve seen before.

24. Hallihoo

The original of Nice Code’s Hallihoo, seen above as Magic Place.

25. Pyramid

A bootleg Tetris-style game using triangles that we saw back on the FC500.

26. Baccarat

A Nice Code card game that apparently first appeared on the Techno Source 15-in-1 TV Casino System.

27. Bokosuka

The Famicom port of the action-strategy game. Very cool as a trailblazer game; not a “puzzle” game by any real stretch and we also saw it on the FC500.

28. Bomb King

A variant of Nice Code’s Battleship clone, Depth Bomb. In this version, you bomb buildings instead of ships.

29. Chinese Chess

We’ve seen this exact game before, and I’ve subsequently learned that it’s Xiangqi or “elephant chess.”

30. Ghost Ship

And another variant of Nice Code’s Battleship clone, Depth Bomb. It has different ship graphics. Apparently there were versions called Submarine Bomb and Sub Attack, too.

 

[Kirin]

Catching up from a ways back:

18. Plush Dog
Another version of Hit-Mouse, Nice Code’s whack-a-mole game, though one we’ve never seen before. This version has 9 holes, and you’re trying to whack...a dog? NOT OKAY!

At least it specifies it's a *plush* dog. I guess they were going for the carnival prize idea.

In this version, you’re the disembodied head of a cabbage patch doll

We've seen a lot of random sprite edits, but that definitely has to be one of the weirder choices right there...

30. Inkfish
A variant of Nice Code’s Fish War, above. We’ve never seen this exact version before; it’s annoyingly hard to tell which fish you’re “bigger” than and takes a lot of trial and error.

At least the title screen has a very nice looking cuttlefish!

37. Small Mario
Whatever you were expecting from that title, you were going to be wrong. So, this is a Famicom port of Xiao Ma Li, a Taiwanese gambling game of the same name

Hmmm... looking at the title graphic, if you squint the first character looks like it could be a stylized "small" kanji, and then if the other two are phonetically "ma" and "ri" from the game name... you could stretch your way to seeing how someone decided on that title?

13. Black White Chess
Othello, which we’ve seen labeled as “chess” before.

Odd that this looks like it's an old Windows dialog box, but labeled "Apple" chess.

17. Warehouse Boy
AKA CKAAA No 18, it’s a Russian rom, which is another new surprise!

Title screen looks to actually be Cyrillic склад, "sklad", which does indeed just mean "warehouse".

 

[Beowulf]

31. Glommy Chess

This is Banqi, also called “Half Chess,” “Dark Chess” or “Blind Chess.” I can sound smart when we’ve seen these games before and someone else chimed in to identify them for me.

32. King Chess

This is another variation of a Chinese board game, but I don’t know what this one is, and we didn’t see it on another thread so I didn’t have anyone identify it for me. Any ideas?

33. Link

A solitaire variant we’ve seen on other handhelds.

34. Miner

A nice bootleg of Minesweeper; I’m pretty sure Nice Code made it.

35. Poker

Sachen’s The World of Card Games multi-game cart, which we’ve seen before.

36. Numbers

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 10, “Think Fast.” This appears to be a badly-designed high-low guessing game.

37. Robot

Another version of Nice Code’s Maze Maid.

38. Salver

Disney's Math Quest with Aladdin, level 9, “The Magic Number.” You get a row of number tiles and need to make each platform sum to the same number (shown at the top).

39. Solitaire

Standard Klondike solitaire, copied off a Windows machine and requiring a mouse pointer. Again, probably by Nice Code.

40. Texas Hold

Standalone Texas Hold’em poker game. Another Nice Code title appearing on the Techno Source 15-in-1 TV Casino System from 2004.

 

[Beowulf]

If you’ve been paying attention, you already noticed that we’re almost out of games as we go into our final section, Venture. Still a couple of new ones, though!

1. Adventure Island

The original adventure of Master Higgins. It occurs to me that we saw a ton of repeats of Adventure Island 2 and 3 on other handhelds, but very little of this one.

2. Mitsume Ga Tooru

The Natsume/Tomy Familcom side-scroller.

3. Chip & Dale 1

The excellent two-player co-op Capcom NES title.

4. Dig Dug

NES port of the Namco arcade game.

5. Altered Beast

The worst version of an excellent game. The graphics and controls are notably worst than any other version I’ve seen, and they couldn’t even manage the “RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE” sound clip.

6. Ninja Gaidem 3

The title is misspelled, but this is indeed Ninja Gaiden 3 and yes, playing it on a system that doesn’t have save states is just as hellish as you remember.

7. Gold Digger

An Inventor hack of Super Arabian; this features a Kirby-like character with the hair and face of Kevin McCallister from Home Alone. There’s apparently a second version called Lively Boy that replaces the main character with a proper human boy.

8. Circus Charlie

We’ve seen this simple Konami game so many times.

9. Antarctic Adventure

Konami’s pseudo-3D penguin dodge-em-up.

10. Jumping Kid

Nice Code’s original Circus Charlie rip-off Amusement Park Jumping Kid. There are apparently an assortment of hacks of this we’ve never seen, including The Training Camp of Worms, The Worms, and Shaun the Sheep 2.

 

[Beowulf]

11. 634 Ken

The Japan-exclusive Taito platformer Musashi no Ken, based on the manga and anime of the same name.

12. Angler Fish

A Nice Code dark maze explorer game. This was a hack of…

13. Burrow Explorer

The same Nice Code dark maze explorer game! (This was really hard to take pictures of because it’s just a light circle on a black screen.) There are also versions called Burrow (starring Santa Claus) and Labyrinth (starring the mouse from Little Samson).

14. Castlevania II

First time I’ve seen this on a cheap handheld! But yes, it seems to be the full proper rom of Simon’s Quest.

15. Chitei Tanken

I first thought this was a Dig Dug hack, but it’s actually a Japan-exclusive original title by Use.

16. City Connection

AKA Cruisin’, the Jaleco runner game.

17. Columbus

Columbus: Ougon no Yoake, a Japan-exclusive Famicon rpg. (Which is a bit of an issue on this handheld that can’t same sram or save states.) There’s a proper fan translation.

18. Jungly Guy

The original of Nice Code’s Jungly Guy

19. Pocky

An inventor hack of Ninja Hattori-kun, starring Bubby from Rainbow Islands. There are also hacks called Tinytoon (starring a rabbit who doesn’t really look like Buster Bunny at all) and Defiance (a title-screen hack of Tinytoon). We saw Tinytoon on another handheld.

20. Tiny Toon 4

A title-screen hack of Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout for the NES; otherwise unchanged.

 

[Beowulf]

And that’s the set!

Let’s round that out with some statistics:

There were 270 games on this device: 40 Action, 70 Shooting, 40 Sports, 60 Casual, 40 Puzzle, and 20 Venture.

Of that total 270, there were 81 NES/Famicom licensed titles, 117 Nice Code titles, 34 Inventor hacks, and 38 other bootlegs. The Action and Venture sections had a majority of licensed titles, while the Casual and Puzzle sections were majority Nice Code. The only section where all four sources weren’t represented was Puzzle, which didn’t have any Inventor hacks.

My labeling might not be perfect, but as far as I can tell 123 titles (46%) previously appeared on the FC500, 136 (50%) on the Gamespower, and 68 (25%) on the My Arcade Go Gamer. Accounting for overlaps, there were still 60 games (or hacks/variants) on this device that we haven’t seen before in one of these projects.

Note that unlike some other handhelds, we never saw exactly the same game twice—there were, in fact, 270 unique titles. That said, for most variants of the same game, we saw 8 versions of Nice Code’s Pobble, 7 versions of Gallagant, and 7 pieces of Disney’s Math Quest With Aladdin. There were also 5 Kaboom! clones and 4 versions each of Five Days, Maze Maid, Polar Bat, and Space Battle.

Overall, this isn’t a bad collection, but it’s not a great one, either. The six sections are kind of randomly distributed, with Shooting featuring a lot of repetition, Sports being dominated by racing/driving games, and Puzzle dominated by card games. This entire collection being recreated on a MAME device with the original arcade titles would actually be a much stronger collection (though it would be more than cut in half, because you’d take out the hacks and duplicates).

And the device itself, again like several of the other device, is shockingly comfortable to play on given the price. The buttons are responsive, the shape is reasonably ergonomic, and the battery life is very good (I charged it twice during this project, but it hadn’t actually run dry, so I probably could have done the whole thing on two charges instead of three). The analog stick is lousy, but you can ignore it and use the d-pad for everything.

Really, the issue here is that I paid $28 on Amazon for this thing, and for that price point (as you know if you keep up with my posts in the Retrogaming thread) you can do so, so much better on AliExpress. For less than $20 you can get the SF2000 (which has all the same physical benefits, also plays GB/GBA/Genesis/MAME, and lets you add roms and use save states), or for $30-35 you can get a Miyoo A30, Anbernic RG28XX, Powkiddy V10, or R36S; all of which offer you substantially more emulation power (everything on that list can play anything up to PS1 well and most of them can make attempts at the harder stuff with the right firmware) with full access to Retroarch options, fast-forward, save states, cheats, etc.

(For the record, you can also find the FC500 for FIVE DOLLARS with free shipping, in case you wanted to, say, build a throne out of handhelds.)

If someone would like this to fiddle with, just let me know. Otherwise, it’s going in the eBay box; I bought it because I wanted to see what they stuffed into it, and now that I’ve determined that I know I’m not going to pick it up again.

I’m going to do a different project for a while, and then hopefully come back with another handheld. Apparently I really like cataloging collections of bootlegs, who’d have thought?

 

[Violentvixen]

17. Columbus

Columbus: Ougon no Yoake, a Japan-exclusive Famicon rpg. (Which is a bit of an issue on this handheld that can’t same sram or save states.) There’s a proper fan translation.

Never heard of this. I thought for a moment it might be something similar to Colonization but based on this writeup you spend a lot of time in Europe building up your reputation. Sounds like it's not ultimately very fun though.

I’m going to do a different project for a while, and then hopefully come back with another handheld. Apparently I really like cataloging collections of bootlegs, who’d have thought?

Thanks for doing these, it's very fun.

 

[Kirin]

32. King Chess

This is another variation of a Chinese board game, but I don’t know what this one is, and we didn’t see it on another thread so I didn’t have anyone identify it for me. Any ideas?

This is Shoji, a Japanese game in the same family as western chess.