Oh, yeah, speaking of Happy Biqi-- Tweeterman287's Vii has it as one of the built-in games, but he never actually played it. Maybe we should convince him to, if he still has the thing. :)
In fact, it seems to have pretty much all of these games we've never seen before - check out the menu at 4:32 in his playthrough video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fncXfqnftzY)[/quote]That menu seems to be more organised than I thought. I'm guessing games 1-6 are the cut-down versions of Waixing/Inventor games, 7-10 are the light gun game hacks/clones and the rest are Nice Code filler. There's a few games on that menu I haven't seen before, namely Back, Orchard, Airialhero, Hurry, Monster War, Free, Monster Brother, Bomb Time (probably yet another variation of their Bomberman clone), Defensive, Frogman (Frogger clone?), Hell (sums up Nice Code's games pretty accurately), Warrior, Tower, Blobman, Rocket Man, Lucky Time, Pinball (probably a hack of Nintendo's game), Panda (Panda Adventure?), Polk (I'd say it's a misspelling of Plok, but that game is far better than anything by Nice Code) and a few others. Also, I think the games near the end are VT-02 games, and Hell appears twice for whatever reason.
hmm. i just found this Subor lightgun famiclone - http://www.chinablog.nl/rare-dingen-uit-china-televisiepistool/ (http://www.chinablog.nl/rare-dingen-uit-china-televisiepistool/)
with the same five gun games from the Super Gun King (but not the other 20 regular ones, it has no standard controller). not too unusual really, theyre Waixing games, its Subor.
but the interesting thing is the pixel art dude on the Subor's box is also used on a cardboard background insert thingy in the Gun King. and he's not from any of the games so that would kinda point to them sharing a common package designer. so maybe Canhui Toys' stuff was actually manufactured by Subor and they just rebranded it?
edit: oh yeah, and one of the famiclones in the flash intro on Canhui's site is the weird Spongebob one listed on Waixing's..
uploaded another random video of a game from this thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yq7vdfi2VM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yq7vdfi2VM)
its a complete playthrough and it lasts 47 seconds. quality.
and three more. lightgun game hacks (i think, unless theyre really close clones)
Guard Farm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLnpLPgjARw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLnpLPgjARw)
Desert Gunman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8mJ7e7p9nY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8mJ7e7p9nY)
Police Skill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AV8vjk47Uo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AV8vjk47Uo) (forgot to cut off the beginning of this one. ahem.)
I know I've heard the music in those shooting games in other dodgy Famiclone games as well, though I can't remember whether they were Nice Code or Waixing-exclusive.
But yeah, all the little details that are identical to the originals suggest that these are probably hacks instead of rewrites-- things like the HUD setup in Hogan's Alley, or the (glitchy) end-of-level jingle in Duck Hunt. Even the message boxes are in the same setup, albeit translated into utter nonsense from the originals' perfectly good English. :)
I bet the text changes are a reaction to those older hacks (like on the Arcade Action) where they completely redid the graphics but didn't bother to change a word of text, which kind of completely undid all their efforts to disguise the games they were ripping off when the main character in "Destroy I", for instance, is still called "Mario" :D
so the makers of these games probably thought that to be on the safe side they should change *all* the text, even if it made no damn sense.
I'm still not sure about whether some of the other games on the Gun King are hacks though - I'll upload videos at some point (tomorrow probably), theres one called "Tank" which is very similar to Battle City but some little details are different, which makes me think its probably a clone rather than a hack - sound effects seem different, the tanks move slower, animations still play when its on pause, stuff like that. and another, "Square", which may or may not be a hack of Tengen Tetris..
Xmas Gift is another weird one too - my first instinct would be to say its just a modified version of Nice Code's Mad Xmas, since the concept and most of the sprites are the same, but the coding is clearly completely different.. its the exact opposite of the usual Waixing versions of Nice Code games, where they just change the graphics but leave everything else the same.
oh and I just noticed that pixel-dude on the packaging actually *is* from one of the games, he's in this version of Boxworld.
oh yeah, and i found some proof that Canhui Toys just rebranded Subor products - a HK distributor's Alibaba page showing a Canhui branded version of this Subor famiclone (http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=8456204/1/#new).. but the company seems to have completely vanished from Alibaba in the nine days since I found it. grr. you'd think I'd have learnt by now to save a local copy of anything interesting and pirate-related I find on the internet, they always disappear eventually.
so I suppose the reason they removed all their Famiclones from their website was that their relationship with Subor broke down for some reason or another. but frankly Subor confuses me anyway. if you google their Chinese name you get the websites of about five different companies all claiming to be Subor, I've no idea if they're all divisions of the same company or if only one of them is the real Subor and the others just ripped off the name. http://www.suborchina.com (http://www.suborchina.com) seems to be the one that makes game consoles though.
- codeman38
- Mar 18 2011, 08:02:04 AM
I know I've heard the music in those shooting games in other dodgy Famiclone games as well, though I can't remember whether they were Nice Code or Waixing-exclusive.[/quote]The VT03 versions were included on the Sudoku 49-in-1. Incidentally, Desert Storm and Highway Racing are on both as well.
Edit: Oh, and Police Skill's (horribly repetitive) music was also used in Table Tennis. (The Pong clone, that is)