whenever i think i've got these companies figured out something always comes along and throws a big fat spanner in the works. this time its ping pong.
now as pointed out by cheetahmen in his video
here this V-tac casino thing has the same music on its menu as is used in the Famicom Table Tennis, a game featured in various places with a Waixing copyright. and an early version of which is on a Techno Source 10 in 1 thingy. this was at some point suspected to be a Nice Code game but I don't think it is, personally. its only ever appeared either with a Waixing copyright or (in an early version) on that Techno Source console, and the same goes for a few other games with similar music, whereas other Nice Code games Waixing released all showed up elsewhere with different graphics. and Techno Source's Elmo plug & play was evidently developed by V-Tac so they seem to have connections there already.
now this game has a pretty similar title screen (but not gameplay) to the vt03 ping pong game listed on cube tech's website, which i have on a standalone ping pong console made by ABL. cube's vt168 pingpong is pretty different, but the one on my Wiii3 (some sunplus 16bit system i think?) 198 in 1 cart is basically exactly the same with higher quality graphics/sound. it has the same "(c) all rights reserved" text as all the other games on that cart, but a few things set it apart, like the fact that it still has the stolen 80s italo soundtrack so beloved of cube tech, and it still refers to the O button from the ABL console which isnt present on the Wiii. theres
yet another upgraded version on the 32-bit GC Pro.
in the Wiii3's tennis game (the one that was also sold standalone by Conny) during the intro you can see something that looks quite a lot like it says "V-tac". so its possibly coming back around to them again? BUT
V-tac's own site shows a very different pingpong game to either of the aforementioned versions. and Waixing has a 16-bit ping pong game with the same options ("Knocks Exercise" & "Smash Exercise") which is otherwise different.
so theres:
* cube(?)'s vt03 pingpong
* v-tac(?)'s sunplus 16bit pingpong
*
?'s 32bit pingpong
which are all basically the same game
* waixing/v'tac(?)'s famicom table tennis
* waixing's unknown 16bit pingpong
with a little bit in common with the above
but
* cube's vt168 pingpong
* v-tac's unknown pingpong
have nothing in common with any of them
so! what the hell.