Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
Weird this never made it to the Olympics.
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What’s on this $10 Handheld? Two: My Arcade Go Gamer Edition
- Thread starter Beowulf
- Start date
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- Tags
- find the law nice code
I’m going to be honest, this sports section has been one of the least interesting to me. I’ve never really been into sports—as I suspect is common for folks on Talking Time—but that carried over into a lack of interest in watching sports or playing sports video games. I’ve had to stop myself from cheating ahead to the Relax section, because there’s a Luxor clone in there that’s actually pretty decent.
11. Dodgeball
Humans versus aliens, and not following the rules of dodgeball as I learned them in elementary school! You need to pick up the balls and throw them (from behind the line) to hit the other side’s players, but instead of them going out it just decreases the team’s health bar. Occasionally the ball will turn red and throwing it will be a super attack. I think this is cloned off a Cartoon Network flash game that I was able to find Youtube footage of.
12. Beach Volleyball
So, first off, the title is a lie: This is in a city, not on a beach. Second off…it’s a really terrible volleyball game! You can press A to make your character make various motions, but they don’t actually seem to affect the way the ball bounces off your head at all. (And none of the CPU characters even both with the motions, they just slide back and forth.) You’re basically just playing modified Pong, and the character hitboxes are so big it’s almost impossible for either side to score. So that’s a thing.
13. Flag Match
Okay, so when the timer starts, the CPU character will start methodically planting flags. You need to also press A in each square to plant flags as fast as you can. You can replace the enemy’s flags and he can replace yours. From time to time, a wild boar will charge across the field, which will stun you for a few seconds if you get hit. The goal is to have the most flags when the timer runs out. Is this based on a real game? Somehow?
14. Japanese Sumo
I like the specification that this is “Japanese” sumo, unlike the other varieties. You can choose which wrestler you prefer. Then it plays like a slow fighting game, as you slap and headbutt your opponent back out of the ring. I think you can also deplete their health, but the ring-out was a much faster win.
15. Tanks PK
This is a “versus” version of the Castle Smasher game: You choose angle and power (and can slide left and right a bunch), and your goal is to hit the other tank. The castle itself is actually just set dressing and most of it doesn’t seem to be hittable. Power-ups drop from the sky for both sides, but it’s not clear what any of them do. I have vague recollections of a packed-in QBASIC game that worked like this, only it was gorillas throwing exploding bananas. Does anyone else remember that?
11. Dodgeball
Humans versus aliens, and not following the rules of dodgeball as I learned them in elementary school! You need to pick up the balls and throw them (from behind the line) to hit the other side’s players, but instead of them going out it just decreases the team’s health bar. Occasionally the ball will turn red and throwing it will be a super attack. I think this is cloned off a Cartoon Network flash game that I was able to find Youtube footage of.
12. Beach Volleyball
So, first off, the title is a lie: This is in a city, not on a beach. Second off…it’s a really terrible volleyball game! You can press A to make your character make various motions, but they don’t actually seem to affect the way the ball bounces off your head at all. (And none of the CPU characters even both with the motions, they just slide back and forth.) You’re basically just playing modified Pong, and the character hitboxes are so big it’s almost impossible for either side to score. So that’s a thing.
13. Flag Match
Okay, so when the timer starts, the CPU character will start methodically planting flags. You need to also press A in each square to plant flags as fast as you can. You can replace the enemy’s flags and he can replace yours. From time to time, a wild boar will charge across the field, which will stun you for a few seconds if you get hit. The goal is to have the most flags when the timer runs out. Is this based on a real game? Somehow?
14. Japanese Sumo
I like the specification that this is “Japanese” sumo, unlike the other varieties. You can choose which wrestler you prefer. Then it plays like a slow fighting game, as you slap and headbutt your opponent back out of the ring. I think you can also deplete their health, but the ring-out was a much faster win.
15. Tanks PK
This is a “versus” version of the Castle Smasher game: You choose angle and power (and can slide left and right a bunch), and your goal is to hit the other tank. The castle itself is actually just set dressing and most of it doesn’t seem to be hittable. Power-ups drop from the sky for both sides, but it’s not clear what any of them do. I have vague recollections of a packed-in QBASIC game that worked like this, only it was gorillas throwing exploding bananas. Does anyone else remember that?
16. Piggy Golf
You’re a piggy, trying to get the golf ball into the hole, as per usual for golf. Unfortunately, this course is very odd, the ball is very bouncy, and you are only capable of standing to the left of the ball.
17. Horse Racing
Choose a horse, and then you can control what “pace” your horse is going at but need to watch your energy meter so your horse doesn’t tire out before the race is over. I feel like there are dozens of flash games this could be, but I couldn’t find the right one.
18. Balance Ball
A variation on the old wooden labyrinth games; you need to maneuver a ball (that controls like Mario on ice) to the correct hole without falling off the edge or going into the wrong hole. The difficulty shoots up on the second level. This game I found online isn’t exactly the same, but it gives you a solid idea of what’s going on here.
19. Balloon Archer
The bootleg wiki specifically calls this out as a clone of Bloons. Your little cat has a limited selection of darts and you need to pop all of the balloons before you run out. I didn’t actually know that Bloons was a franchise until my son got really into Bloons TD 6; which to its credit is a very solid tablet tower defense game.
And that's the Sports section. There seems to be some good stuff in our last section, Relax, and then I'll be finished with the Family Sport 220-in-1 and can move on to the 300 games on the other My Arcade Go Gamer handheld. (Will they overlap? Will they be NES bootlegs? Will they be made by Nice Code? We'll find out!)
And finally, Relax Games!
1. Benthal Jewel
This is a straightforward clone of Columns, of which there are a decent number out there. (Including at least one Famicom clone that was in my other thread.) This one has are two jewels that are slightly different shades of purple, so that’s annoying, but other than that it’s perfectly cromulent. I have no idea where the name “benthal” came from. This is available for Android, from the looks of things.
2. Linking Pet
Tap matching pets to destroy them! Okay, that came out wrong. You need to match the pictures of pets, but they need to either be adjacent or connectable through open spaces (including the outside of the puzzle). The bar on the bottom fills up as you make matches and empties slowly with time, and then determines your bonus points at the end of each stage. This is another game that would really benefit from mouse or touchscreen. I found an app that isn’t exactly the same, but is very close.
3. Homeward Journey
A slower, more boring version of Return Capsule, in that you have to direct the sheep in straight lines and it’ll go until it hits something or goes off the board, and you want to get it to the red flag.
4. Find Fault
Examine the two pictures carefully to find the differences between them. There is zillion “spot the differences” games online; here’s one I picked somewhat at random. Sometimes, where I’m in the right mood, I play the point-and-click “hidden object” adventure games, and they often mix in these sorts of puzzles. I’ve played several dozen of those games that’s I’ve gotten from the “Cryptic Bundles” Fanatical used to have. They’re shovelware but often entertaining. They’re not great for eyestrain, though.
5. Pair Match
A match-3 game where the goal is to clear the squares in the back by matching symbols in front of them. The icons look vaguely Minecraft-ish to me, but I couldn’t find this exact game online. There are also plenty of shovelware games of this type on Steam; Jewel Venture was the first one that came to mind.
1. Benthal Jewel
This is a straightforward clone of Columns, of which there are a decent number out there. (Including at least one Famicom clone that was in my other thread.) This one has are two jewels that are slightly different shades of purple, so that’s annoying, but other than that it’s perfectly cromulent. I have no idea where the name “benthal” came from. This is available for Android, from the looks of things.
2. Linking Pet
Tap matching pets to destroy them! Okay, that came out wrong. You need to match the pictures of pets, but they need to either be adjacent or connectable through open spaces (including the outside of the puzzle). The bar on the bottom fills up as you make matches and empties slowly with time, and then determines your bonus points at the end of each stage. This is another game that would really benefit from mouse or touchscreen. I found an app that isn’t exactly the same, but is very close.
3. Homeward Journey
A slower, more boring version of Return Capsule, in that you have to direct the sheep in straight lines and it’ll go until it hits something or goes off the board, and you want to get it to the red flag.
4. Find Fault
Examine the two pictures carefully to find the differences between them. There is zillion “spot the differences” games online; here’s one I picked somewhat at random. Sometimes, where I’m in the right mood, I play the point-and-click “hidden object” adventure games, and they often mix in these sorts of puzzles. I’ve played several dozen of those games that’s I’ve gotten from the “Cryptic Bundles” Fanatical used to have. They’re shovelware but often entertaining. They’re not great for eyestrain, though.
5. Pair Match
A match-3 game where the goal is to clear the squares in the back by matching symbols in front of them. The icons look vaguely Minecraft-ish to me, but I couldn’t find this exact game online. There are also plenty of shovelware games of this type on Steam; Jewel Venture was the first one that came to mind.
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I wonder if that is a mistranslation of the benthic zone.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
The Incredible Bound: San in Lost Francisco
3. Homeward Journey
This selection is clearly for people who find faster-moving games relaxing.
6. Brick Blaster
A perfectly nice clone of Arkanoid. Standard power-ups, a variety of stage layouts. Nothing special, but pretty much on par with the original, as far as I can tell.
7. Minibee
And speaking of clones, this one is a clone of Space Invaders. The bugs move back and forth and you need to shoot them. Annoyingly, the corpses of the bugs fall after you shoot them—they’re harmless, but they can obscure other shots that can kill you and/or distract you. There’s no break between stages; the next wave just spontaneously appears when you kill the last bug from the previous one.
8. Cartoon Match
Each of the falling cylinders has a top or bottom cartoon head on it. You need to rearrange the stacks so that each head is complete so they’ll disappear. And you need to do it via point-and-click, which makes it much less fun.
9. 30 Degree
The name seems to correspond to the angle at which you’re rolling down the hill in this runner game. You can jump to avoid obstacles or grab powerups, but your jump is weird (and skips frames like it’s on a Game-and-Watch) and the hitbox for traffic cones is enormous. Your only other ability is to increase or decrease speed; and speed seems to automatically max if you grab a banana. (A well-known hazard of eating fruit while rolling down a hill.)
10. Paopao
Speaking of runner games: Paopao the ostrich never stops moving, and you need to make them jump over rocks and puddles and have them grab gems and stars for points. Each obstacle you hit costs you half a heart, whether that’s tripping over a rock or getting your feet slightly wet in a puddle.
6. Brick Blaster
A perfectly nice clone of Arkanoid. Standard power-ups, a variety of stage layouts. Nothing special, but pretty much on par with the original, as far as I can tell.
7. Minibee
And speaking of clones, this one is a clone of Space Invaders. The bugs move back and forth and you need to shoot them. Annoyingly, the corpses of the bugs fall after you shoot them—they’re harmless, but they can obscure other shots that can kill you and/or distract you. There’s no break between stages; the next wave just spontaneously appears when you kill the last bug from the previous one.
8. Cartoon Match
Each of the falling cylinders has a top or bottom cartoon head on it. You need to rearrange the stacks so that each head is complete so they’ll disappear. And you need to do it via point-and-click, which makes it much less fun.
9. 30 Degree
The name seems to correspond to the angle at which you’re rolling down the hill in this runner game. You can jump to avoid obstacles or grab powerups, but your jump is weird (and skips frames like it’s on a Game-and-Watch) and the hitbox for traffic cones is enormous. Your only other ability is to increase or decrease speed; and speed seems to automatically max if you grab a banana. (A well-known hazard of eating fruit while rolling down a hill.)
10. Paopao
Speaking of runner games: Paopao the ostrich never stops moving, and you need to make them jump over rocks and puddles and have them grab gems and stars for points. Each obstacle you hit costs you half a heart, whether that’s tripping over a rock or getting your feet slightly wet in a puddle.
11. Color Bead Loops
Strings of colored beads roll through, and you need to fire matching beads at them to clear that color. There are a few power-ups that give you wildcard beads or automatic explosions and the like. This is a clone of the Luxor series of games, which I have five of on Steam and I’ve played something like 16 hours of total. It isn’t as good as the originals, but it’s working with a good concept.
12. Magnet Boy
“This seems like a fairly normal platformer. Why is he called Magnet Boy?” Because he can stick to walls and ceilings! It’s a simple game of climbing up the tower and collecting coins while avoiding fireballs and lightning, but the controls are surprisingly smooth.
13. Cake Party
Fling cakes at the wall and see what sticks! It’s a match-3 game (including both horizontal and vertical connections), but you’re adding the cakes to stacks by throwing it from the left. It’s kinda hard to see which kind of cake you have in our active hand, but the NEXT section at the bottom is very useful. You need to get the target number of points before the timer bar reaches zero. I suspect the real meat of this is trying to set up chain reactions.
14. Super Porter
The Super Porter is trying to make Tetris-like lines of boxes by picking them up and moving them around. Unfortunately, he can only jump one block high, can only pick up from blocks his level or higher, and can only put blocks down at his level or lower…so it’s really easy to get trapped in many of the starting configurations. This plays like a poor man’s Wario’s Woods, and I adore Wario’s Woods, which makes it particularly disappointing.
15. Paper Planes
I’m 99% certain there was a Nice Cde version of this game on one of the other handhelds: You steer a paper plane down around the various platformers, trying not to crash, and your score is dependent on how far you get. This version isn’t exactly the same, but is very similar.
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
Magnet Boy looks and sounds a lot like Old Towers, a recent homebrew release for the Genesis.
segaretro.org
Old Towers
segaretro.org
Similar, but it lacks the dash mechanic.Magnet Boy looks and sounds a lot like Old Towers, a recent homebrew release for the Genesis.
Old Towers
Guess someone really liked that one game from WarioWare.
15. Paper Planes
I’m 99% certain there was a Nice Cde version of this game on one of the other handhelds: You steer a paper plane down around the various platformers, trying not to crash, and your score is dependent on how far you get. This version isn’t exactly the same, but is very similar.
16. Palace Guardian
Another variant of labyrinth puzzles: you’re the thwomp-like stone block, and you need to ram through all the little metal slimes and then to the lock-block, moving only in straight lines that stop when you hit things. The third level adds spike blocks that destroy you if you hit them, and you only have one life—death send you back to the minigames menu.
17. IQ Cow
Use the pointer to distribute the arrows and direct the cow to the trophy. Later stages add keys you need to pick up, blocks to push, and more obstacles you need to move around. There only appear to be ten stages.
18. Throw the Coins
You have a selection of gold and silver coins and also rocks, and you need to throw them into the fountain. You can choose angle and force, and you get more points for the bowl in the middle rather than the water. I'm not clear on what makes you "succeed" on a level; my best guess is there's an invisible score threshold you need to hit with all of your coins/rocks.
19. Air Defense
Another Space Invaders clone, this one with truly giant missiles (but without corresponding giant hitboxes) and the aliens are a bit more octopodal and drift down from the top more slowly (and don’t fire back at all).
20. Bubble Shooter
A mediocre clone of Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move that has too limited a range of motion to accurately shoot into gaps you really should be able to. Also, it doesn’t stop eliminated colored bubbles from showing up in your shooter. I was actually introduced to this style of games by Snood, which I played far too much of the free version of in early college.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
18. Throw the Coins
You have a selection of gold and silver coins and also rocks, and you need to throw them into the fountain. You can choose angle and force, and you get more points for the bowl in the middle rather than the water. I'm not clear on what makes you "succeed" on a level; my best guess is there's an invisible score threshold you need to hit with all of your coins/rocks
21. Colorful Box
A Tetris clone that only drops three, two and one-block pieces but still expects you to make lines. (Sometimes it randomly hits you with extra lines at the bottom or random extra blocks dropping in, like various two-player attacks in Tetris.)
22. Fish Killer
Another game that I’m certain has a Nice Code antecedent: You need to eat the small fish until you get bigger, then the medium fish, then the big fish. This is pretty good at showing your growth level (in the upper-left) and giving an indication which type of fish is your preferred snack at that point.
23. Pinball
A goofy pinball game made out of the most ridiculous collection of random clipart. Temporary balloons and stars are worth points, but so is bouncing off the permanent streetlamps, potted plant, and two roaming dogs. You get five lives.
24. Polar Bear
This is whack-a-mole. The "polar bears" pop out of the four holes in the ice and you need to bonk them with the hammer for points. Irritatingly, you need to move the hammer with the D-pad and then press A to hit, rather than just striking the four holes with the four directions, which would be logical.
25. Color Stone Loops
This is another clone of the Luxor series of games, though this one doesn’t seem to do chain reactions, which makes it fundamentally worse than any other version.
And that’s everything on the Family Sport 220-in-1! Which means we can move on to the My Arcade Go Gamer Classic, which claims to be 300-in-1. And just to whet your appetites: I did a first pass, and there are definitely a whole bunch of Nice Code classics on it!
First, a little summary:
This handheld did, as claimed, contain 220 unique games, though the 41 in the Education section were pushing it a bit. I don’t think there was a single game on here that I’d seek out individually, though there are some that strongly made me want to go play whatever they were copying. I divided up the games based on my thoughts as I played them into “10+ minutes of fun”, “Briefly entertaining”, “Needs a touchscreen”, “Inferior clone that makes me want to play a better version,” and “No good.”
I labeled 28 games, roughly 13% of the total as “fun”, and the majority of those were in the Puzzle section. The Puzzle section also had half of the 10 games I thought would be fun if there was a touchscreen to play them with. 76 games, roughly a third of the contents, got a “briefly entertaining” rating, a catch-all for things that I was amused by for a couple of minutes as I was cataloging. Most categories had representation here, but Action, Table, Venture and the main set had a majority fall into it. I put 48 games into the “bad clone” category, and the Sport and Relax groups accounted for more than half of those—the Relax section in particular made me want to go play better versions of games. Most categories had a couple of games that weren’t any good at all (58 games, 26% of the total), but the dominating factor there was that I dumped all 41 entries from Education into that bucket and felt they deserved it.
If you’re willing to sort through the dross or you know what you’re looking for, this device will absolutely get you $10 worth of entertainment. If I was able to edit it, I would actually reduce the number of games and rearrange the layout: Cut Education, the crappy platformers, and a bunch of the worst clone games entirely; so you’re down to 100-150 games but all of them are good for at least a couple of minutes of entertainment. Make the main menu the six “minigames” groups, re-sort the sports games together, move around some action and puzzle games so the categories make more sense; so it’s easier to find what you want to play. At that point, this would be great for waiting for a bus or sitting on the toilet, because 100+ options that are all pick-up-and-play is a distinct selling point.
Honestly, that’s the same real selling point for the other two devices I tried in the previous thread: You can go from “bored” to “playing a game” in 30 seconds without having to worry about long intros or save points or GameFAQs. And in a world without smartphones, I’d probably carry around one of these on my belt. (Though maybe I’m not the best example, since I do have a belt holster for my PowKiddy Q90 which I use on the subway and in waiting rooms.)
I can’t really see this appealing to a kid, especially when a bottom-of-the-line $50 Amazon Fire tablet will still play games starring characters they’ve heard of. And I canNOT believe the Wii-clone version of this ever made anyone happy.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
These are such fun summaries and I'm glad you do them! And the "this has made me curious to find the original/a better version" is a good outcome too.
I've played 2.5 hours of Luxor and an hour of Bust-a-Move this week!
(Thank you for the appreciation. I'm glad that people are entertained by this.)
Let’s see another system! I did buy two of the things, after all. This one was closer to $14, if I recall correctly, but you pay more on eBay when it’s new instead of used.
This is a new-in-box My Arcade Go Gamer Classic.
It claims to have 300 games and sports a lot of images of 8-bit games you probably don’t recognize on the box.
The device itself has a different color scheme but it otherwise identical to the My Arcade Go Gamer Retro. Same size, same buttons, same weirdly rounded D-pad. The buttons light up bluish-white instead of red. Also, I lost track if I noted this, but the power switch actually has three settings, and the one between “off” and “on” turns on the system but doesn’t light up the buttons. I’d imagine that’s good for battery life.
Like the other system, this takes 3 AAA batteries and has a problematic screw to keep the battery cover on.
The UI is much closer to what we remember from the Famiclone handhelds, just a list of games you scroll through. Here the Reset button is a lot more important: On the Family Sport, the Start button almost always brought up a Continue/Exit menu and let you go back to the menu. Here, Start is more likely to have an in-game function like pause (or do nothing at all) so the Reset button is what gets you back to the menu.
The screen is identical to the other My Arcade device, but feels brighter and more vibrantly-colored than the FC500 and GamesPower devices. There are definitely some 16-bit level games on this and even the 8-bit ones seem to “pop” more on the screen.
I did a tally of all the games, and there’s no obvious set of duplicates, which is a good initial sign. (There are several games with the same name, like “Fishing,” but it’s entirely possible those are different games. We’ll see!) A quick lookup determined that about 100 of the games are also in the FC500, and a partially-overlapping 100 are on the GamesPower. So we’re going to see around 170 games with new names, and at least a few probably won’t be hacks of ones we’ve seen before. Heck, the Curly Monkey games on the first page look new to me!
My suspicion from poking around the Bootleg wiki is that this device is running a VT03 or VT09 Famiclone chip, which is “Built on the NES core but with 16-bit/4BPP graphics.” Most of these were published by JungleTac and I suspect many were developed by Nice Code. As I go through the games I'll try to suss out their heritage.
This is a new-in-box My Arcade Go Gamer Classic.
It claims to have 300 games and sports a lot of images of 8-bit games you probably don’t recognize on the box.
The device itself has a different color scheme but it otherwise identical to the My Arcade Go Gamer Retro. Same size, same buttons, same weirdly rounded D-pad. The buttons light up bluish-white instead of red. Also, I lost track if I noted this, but the power switch actually has three settings, and the one between “off” and “on” turns on the system but doesn’t light up the buttons. I’d imagine that’s good for battery life.
Like the other system, this takes 3 AAA batteries and has a problematic screw to keep the battery cover on.
The UI is much closer to what we remember from the Famiclone handhelds, just a list of games you scroll through. Here the Reset button is a lot more important: On the Family Sport, the Start button almost always brought up a Continue/Exit menu and let you go back to the menu. Here, Start is more likely to have an in-game function like pause (or do nothing at all) so the Reset button is what gets you back to the menu.
The screen is identical to the other My Arcade device, but feels brighter and more vibrantly-colored than the FC500 and GamesPower devices. There are definitely some 16-bit level games on this and even the 8-bit ones seem to “pop” more on the screen.
I did a tally of all the games, and there’s no obvious set of duplicates, which is a good initial sign. (There are several games with the same name, like “Fishing,” but it’s entirely possible those are different games. We’ll see!) A quick lookup determined that about 100 of the games are also in the FC500, and a partially-overlapping 100 are on the GamesPower. So we’re going to see around 170 games with new names, and at least a few probably won’t be hacks of ones we’ve seen before. Heck, the Curly Monkey games on the first page look new to me!
My suspicion from poking around the Bootleg wiki is that this device is running a VT03 or VT09 Famiclone chip, which is “Built on the NES core but with 16-bit/4BPP graphics.” Most of these were published by JungleTac and I suspect many were developed by Nice Code. As I go through the games I'll try to suss out their heritage.
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
I have a MyArcade retro arcade cabinet which does this. When I fired up its Galaga clone, the game was a whole lot more colorful than Galaga had ever been on the NES. Neat, but also kind of jarring.
I don't know about a Nice Code ancestor but there are a lot of these "gobbler" games around (like the one in this video).
22. Fish Killer
Another game that I’m certain has a Nice Code antecedent: You need to eat the small fish until you get bigger, then the medium fish, then the big fish. This is pretty good at showing your growth level (in the upper-left) and giving an indication which type of fish is your preferred snack at that point.
But have you played any launcher games?
1. Curly Monkey 2
This is actually a half-decent platformer: You’ve got five lives, and you respawn right near where you died. The monkey has decent jump handling and a boomerang that flies consistently. There are a couple of neat innovations, like platforms that only appear when you kill an enemy or step on another platform. There are secret portals that take you back and forth to a second underwater stage. The problem is, I can’t figure out what the goal is. There doesn’t seem to be a stage end and you can navigate between the two areas indefinitely. There are a few stars hidden around—maybe you have to collect them all?
The Bootleg wiki says that Curly Monkey 2 was developed by Nice Code specifically as VT03 software. The wiki lists it as one of their “advanced titles,” which it notes are less common to see on multicarts. Many of these games are hacks of Dragon Co. titles, due to early Nice Code staff being from said company. Several of these were also released on actual Famicom cartridges by Nanjing; the Nanjing versions often add additional cutscenes between levels.
2. Beaver
This is more of a minigame than anything else: You have a time limit to flip and match all 16 leaves. If you do, you get a You Win message and then need to reset. I couldn’t find any mention of this on the Bootleg wiki; I’m guessing it’s a minigame pulled out of something else. Interesting that it ended up so far forward in the list, here.
3. Fast Running
This feels like there should be a lot more game than there actually is. You choose a runner and the CPU randomly chooses one of the other three. The two of you race, and you need to alternate A and B to run, which is actually really easy. (Even despite the race starting right after the screen loads, so the CPU always gets a head start.)
Then there’s a results screen that tells you your dinosour level!! And then you get booted back to the title screen and can do it again.
4. Thunder Man
This feels like a clone of the NES Batman game. Thunder Man has a slightly floaty jump that takes a split second to wind-up; and his primary attack is a series of close-range punches. He also has a boomerang subweapon. There are at least five levels and you get four lives, and when you die you restart the level, but there don’t seem to be any health-recovering items. So, at least in my case, I made it through one stage with each life as a battle of attrition. You just need to travel all the way to the right--There aren’t any bosses in the first four levels, and a relatively limited variety of enemies and platforms.
5. Commando
A Contra clone with only two stages, and a boss at the end of the second one. Though it displays five lives, you actually get 30 to start. And I needed exactly 30 to beat the game—I was in the respawn invincibility of my very last life when the boss died. I found it irritating that you can’t shoot diagonally or downwards, but there are some enemies who can. There are a couple of power-ups that give you “fire” shots, but you lose them when you die and everything except the boss dies from a single shot regardless. This is also a Nice Code VT03-only game.
6. Battle Plan
A fairly basic vertical-scrolling flying shmup, with at least a few powerups and enemy types. You only get three lives and the enemy bullets are very small. It’s by Nice Code and was originally released as Sky Wing, and apparently this is an “enhanced” version. (I’m guessing that means slight graphical changes for the VT03 engine.)
7. Champion Boat
Also by Nice Code and originally called Circle Racing, this is a top-down racing game in vein of R.C. Pro-Am, but with boats. It’s very hard to maneuver and if you hit enough obstacles or track walls you explode. (You can guess how I figured that out, and it wasn’t intentionally.) There’s a third version of this called Track Racing, too.
8. Curly Monkey
The first game in the Curly Monkey series; also by Nice Code and also VT03-only. It’s definitely a more amateurish endeavor. Your monkey can jump and throw the boomerang, but has no health bar—a single touch from any enemy kills you; and that makes a real difference in your ability to progress at all in the game. (I'm guessing they paid attention to that complaint when they made the sequel, because Curly Monkey 2 not only has a health bar but enemies also drop lots of healing items.)
9. Enchanter
You create summoning circles by pressing A or B, but it seemed randomized which button would create a
Note that this is NOT the other Nice Code game called Enchanter, which is a clone of The Archer/Polar Bat. But hopefully we’ll see that later.
10. Super Hero
You’re a Super Hero who, at least on the splash screen, looks a lot like Buzz Lightyear. On your first life, you have a vehicle that can shoot energy waves. After you get hit (and on all subsequent lives) you have the Super Hero himself, who can punch and hadoken. The goal is to cross the stage while collecting stars. The Bootleg wiki says that this is a hack of Dragon Co.'s Felix the Cat (itself an unauthorized sequel to the Hudson Soft NES Felix the Cat game). Apparently other hacks were The Cat, The Hacker and Little Blackmask. The Hacker version apparently starred Neo from The Matrix.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
7. Champion Boat
Also by Nice Code and originally called Circle Racing, this is a top-down racing game in vein of R.C. Pro-Am, but with boats. It’s very hard to maneuver and if you hit enough obstacles or track walls you explode. (You can guess how I figured that out, and it wasn’t intentionally.) There’s a third version of this called Track Racing, too.
11. Amusement Park2
Nice Code first released a game called Amusement Park: Jumping Kid; this is apparently the sequel. It’s basically a clone of Circus Charlie, as you need to jump through the rings of fire. You also need to jump to avoid the electrified floor. (You do get a health bar, so you get a few misses before you need to restart.) While there were VT02 versions of the first game, this one is VT03 only.
12. Back Gammon
Nice Code did a whole bunch of generic board/card games. If you don’t remember the rules of Backgammon—and I don’t—this is very obtuse.
13. Monkey King
This game was NOT by Nice Code! It’s actually pretty impressive: It has an opening sequence, and apparently a password system. You’re clearly playing as Sun Wukong, and you can throw some sort of projectile and stomp on enemies; and also grab ledges. You may have infinite lives; the monkey heads in the corner are actually a health bar. I found gameplay footage on Youtube. This game was a rare original game made by Inventor and apparently first published under the Shanghai Paradise brand.
14. Balloon Labyrinth
This is the Nice Code game originally released as Hallihoo, and it’s a variation of the one-screen maze where you need to avoid the obstacles and collect all the hearts. Apparently in the original you play as an owl. This was also released as Ghost Collector and Magic Place.
15. Star
There were actually three different Nice Code games called Star that this could have been. This one was originally released as Beach Ball – a game where you play as a bubble that needs to grow bigger by collecting water while avoiding obstacles. Instead, you are a star that needs to get bigger by collecting stars and eventually bubbles and slimes. It was also released as UFO.
And this becomes a very salient thing to quote.
16. Trounce
So, to start, this is a simple bouncing rhythm game (the D-pad controls the three bouncers) and it’s a clone of Popira, a Japanese plug & play. Here’s a full Youtube examination of Popira. This is one from a series of simple VT02 games that commonly appears alongside Nice Code's titles, but the games are not 100% confirmed to be from them. All of them have similar menu layouts, and use music from the Famicom game Parasol Henbee. Echo Chamber, Eeeck! A Mouse and Fruit Pig also fall into this category, and I think we’re going to see all of them soon.
17. Checkers
I still don’t think I’m actually very good at Checkers, but I keep playing computer versions where I win very handily. I like this version because it gives a “you win” message when you’re sure to win—you don’t have to chase down the last few pieces in the boring last stage of the game.
18. Chinese Checkers
I realized as I was playing this that I’ve never played Chinese checkers with all 6 players! It’s a radically different game than with two! There’s a lot more making use of your opponents’ setups and trying to guard against them using yours in the process.
19. Crazy Eights
The ongoing lack of manuals comes up again here: I don’t remember the rules to crazy eights. And unlike my usual “What does this button do?” approach, I don’t think I can figure them out by playing and I’m too lazy to go dig out my copy of Hoyle.
20. Defier
Our hero needs to climb up a series of ropes (or conveyor belts?) while avoiding the spiked balls that slide by. It’s basically a Frogger clone. But I can’t figure out how to actually win it—you can’t collect anything and there’s no goal at the top. The wiki notes that this is a VT03 only title; and that the player character heavily resembles Terry Bogard from The King of Fighters/Fatal Fury.
Got behind on this thread due to being offline for a week but finally caught up, good stuff. The new device you're on now is definitely one I saw on the shelf at CVS pharmacy, same packaging and all, but for like $20 or maybe even $25.
I like how some of the ones in this set have anime-style splash screen art that's just good enough to make you think "have I seen that character somewhere before?" but the answer is probably no (unlike the previous device which seemed to have more blatant sprite rips). Thunder Man really seems like he *could* be straight out of a retro a One Punch Man game though, and Enchanter looks like any number of 16-bit RPG characters.
I like how some of the ones in this set have anime-style splash screen art that's just good enough to make you think "have I seen that character somewhere before?" but the answer is probably no (unlike the previous device which seemed to have more blatant sprite rips). Thunder Man really seems like he *could* be straight out of a retro a One Punch Man game though, and Enchanter looks like any number of 16-bit RPG characters.
It's strange that $20-25 from CVS seems overpriced, but I'm perfectly happy to pay somebody on eBay $14 to mail it to me. (And when I'm done with this project, I'll presumably spend $5-10 to mail this to somebody else!)
The splash screen to Enchanter gave me a FullMetal Alchemist vibe. I suspect it's the combination of red cape and summoning circle.
21. Deformable
Oh, one of our favorite Nice Code titles. Originally released as Lightning, this is a clone of Street Racer for the Atari 2600, with identical levels. (And is theorized to have originally been an authorized Atari plug & play title that didn't make the final cut.) This was also released as Gallop (VT02), Road Hero, and Transform. I maintain that the Motorboat game from the Family Sport either grew from this or was an independent clone of Street Racer.
22. Distinction
Another variation of the game where you are shown two pictures side by side and have to spot the differences in both of them. Actually pretty decent, as these things go—the time limit is appropriately tight (but not impossible) and the pointer moves quickly but precisely. Also released by Nice Code as Difference and Difference Picture.
23. Dominoes
You randomly pick dominos (as does the CPU), then you lay them out and the computer scores you at the end. On one hand, having the computer remember the rules and tally up the scores is so much easier. On the other hand, the satisfaction of dominos is the click-clack of the tiles, and that’s missing.
24. Table Tennis
Remember the table tennis game from the Family Sport? This is absolutely the same game. It has the same one-button, invisible-player setup and the bootleg wiki theorizes that it was likely intended for Wii clones. It also has multiple game modes, difficulty settings, and characters; the Family Sport version was clearly cut down or grew from an earlier version…possibly the cut-down version that appears on Waixing systems called Table Tennis 2006. That one apparently removes all of the special features, but adds an opening intro advertising a Chinese table tennis tournament. Nice Code also released this as Ping Pong.
25. EEECK! A Mouse!
This is a standard four-hole whack-a-Mole game; very similar to Nice Code’s Hit-Mouse, though this is another “unconfirmed” Nice Code title. It has the sensible D-pad-only controls that Polar Bear did not.
The splash screen to Enchanter gave me a FullMetal Alchemist vibe. I suspect it's the combination of red cape and summoning circle.
21. Deformable
Oh, one of our favorite Nice Code titles. Originally released as Lightning, this is a clone of Street Racer for the Atari 2600, with identical levels. (And is theorized to have originally been an authorized Atari plug & play title that didn't make the final cut.) This was also released as Gallop (VT02), Road Hero, and Transform. I maintain that the Motorboat game from the Family Sport either grew from this or was an independent clone of Street Racer.
22. Distinction
Another variation of the game where you are shown two pictures side by side and have to spot the differences in both of them. Actually pretty decent, as these things go—the time limit is appropriately tight (but not impossible) and the pointer moves quickly but precisely. Also released by Nice Code as Difference and Difference Picture.
23. Dominoes
You randomly pick dominos (as does the CPU), then you lay them out and the computer scores you at the end. On one hand, having the computer remember the rules and tally up the scores is so much easier. On the other hand, the satisfaction of dominos is the click-clack of the tiles, and that’s missing.
24. Table Tennis
Remember the table tennis game from the Family Sport? This is absolutely the same game. It has the same one-button, invisible-player setup and the bootleg wiki theorizes that it was likely intended for Wii clones. It also has multiple game modes, difficulty settings, and characters; the Family Sport version was clearly cut down or grew from an earlier version…possibly the cut-down version that appears on Waixing systems called Table Tennis 2006. That one apparently removes all of the special features, but adds an opening intro advertising a Chinese table tennis tournament. Nice Code also released this as Ping Pong.
25. EEECK! A Mouse!
This is a standard four-hole whack-a-Mole game; very similar to Nice Code’s Hit-Mouse, though this is another “unconfirmed” Nice Code title. It has the sensible D-pad-only controls that Polar Bear did not.
26. Frontal Fire
This is a first-person turret game (I was first going to call it a tank battle game, but you can’t actually move, only rotate until you see the tanks surrounding you.) It has some exciting backstory: Nice Code is believed to have programmed officially licensed ports of Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and Intellivision games to the Famicom for use in plug & play systems. This started as their port of Battlezone, which was hacked to create Sudden Strike, Final Blood, Final Fighter, and this game. Due to Atari selling the Battlezone IP rights (in a 2010s bankruptcy proceeding), the original port is not found on the newer licensed plug & plays; but the generic hacked versions are apparently still very common on unlicensed multicarts and the like.
27. Fruit Boxes
I remember playing dots and boxes with my mom on vacations, particularly on airplanes or other places where I needed to be kept busy. Upon random reflection, I feel like this is another game that’s radically different with more than two players.
Anyway, this was originally called Lattice Winner and was also released as Boxes. And that’s definitely a slightly-modified Kirby graphic on the title screen.
28. Gallagant
Gallagant is a very generic, Space Invaders-style shooting game. And now that I think about it, it’s very much a Galaga clone, which is probably where the name came from!
This game was rereleased at least 18 times, with known variants including Aether Fighter, Alone, Archer, Crisis, Cryptic Base, two versions titled Defensive, Firebase (the very first Nice Code game to appear in my other thread!), Garden War, Jet Defender, Lunarian, Resistant, two versions titled Robot, and Space War. Some variants start at a different level of the game, and/or add bases that can protect the player's ship.
Trivia from the bootleg wiki: The original releases of Gallagant and Pobble feature two game variants inside of the coding; Gallagant's coding features Defensive, while Pobble's coding features Hot Speed. Due to this code, multicarts could theoretically run two games off of one file; however, very few multicart menus actually did this, instead just using two separate files (presumably as it wouldn't save much ROM space anyway). Despite the dozens of variants of Gallagant and Pobble, very few of the hacked releases feature a second game code (though leftover CHR graphics for the [unhacked] second game are generally present). There are two exceptions to this; Garden War is connected to Resistant, and Awful Rushing is connected to Motoboat.
29. Greedy
A snakes game. Supposedly the snake's body is made of money bags; I don’t know if I see it. There are two versions of this called Greedy, plus it was also released as Greedy Snake and One By One.
30. Stub Game
A tower of Hanoi game, where the gimmick is you need to move stacks of objects (screws, in the first level) with the magnet floating above. The bootleg wiki doesn’t have this on the main Nice Code list, but does attribute it to Nice Code when it appears on the Flying Tiger Slot Machine.
31. Heroes Mice
You control two mice holding a parachute that have to safely catch all the mice who are falling (or getting dropped? Or escaping?) from the cat. There are also sticks of dynamite that fall; you bounce those up to the top to explode, but they never actually seem to hit the evil cat. This was released as Mouse Hero and Mice Mission. The Mice Mission variation features Jerry from Tom & Jerry on the title screen.
32. Heroes Mice2
And the sequel! Once again, a cat is dropping mice from above, but this time you only have one hero mouse and no parachute. The hero mouse must put the falling mice on the ground (with B) and throw bombs up at the cat (with A). If you throw the mice back up because you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing (like me) it depletes your life meter. (This was apparently specifically a sequel to the VT03 version of Heroes Mice and it’s VT03 only.)
33. Homing Chicken
So, this was based on Danger Bridge (also released as Tadpole), and you can move the two sets of purple bridges with the D-pad, using up and down to switch which set you’re moving. I don’t think the game ever forces you to drown a chicken to save another, but I also didn’t play for that long and had to do some very quick movements in that time.
But that all ignores the most important note about the homing chickens:
Those are penguins.
34. Invincible Girl
Imagic made a game called No Escape! for the Atari 2600, in which you toss up bombs, bounce them off an Arkanoid-style destructible roof, and try to hit the swarm of enemies from the top down. (If you hit the bottom one, it just respawns.) Nice Code made a clone of this starring a mermaid called Ice Ocean, then re-released that as Icecap. Then the hacked it into this for the VT03 set. The girl is clearly invincible because of her ability to walk around in spikes…except she can be damaged and stunned if you bounce her bomb onto yourself.
35. Irrigate
Okay, so, it’s not often that I criticize the plots of Nice Code games, such as they are, but see: This was originally released as Hammer & Nail and we saw the version called Eidolon's Revenge on the other device. In those, you control a hammer and must hit nails when they hover over holes on the playfield.
But see, in this version you control the watering can, and need to water the jumping flowers in the right spots so they get squashed into the holes. And granted, Beowife is the gardener of the family, but I’ve picked up enough to know that this is absolutely not how gardening works.