Not too long ago, I found what looked like new old stock for a plug and play TV game, one that I had never heard about until then, from a company named VTG Interactive. After looking into it a bit more, it turned out that three of these TV games were produced and I found out that two of them were versions of games that I had seen on those 16-bit Sunplus Wii clones with games developed by Waixing (see: Zone 40 and Reactor 32-in-1), which now had VTG Interactive branding in-game and removed the Chinese copyright registration numbers from the title screen, with the menus even being slightly different. The games also share a, let's say, similar sound design philosophy with Waixing's other generic plug and play games in general. The TV games in question are Virtual Baseball, Virtual Tennis, and Virtual Boxing. So far, I know that Virtual Baseball and Virtual Tennis are based on the Baseball game and Virtual Tennis game on the generic Wii clones respectively. I'm not too sure about Virtual Boxing, but from going by the screenshots on a picture of the back of the box that I came across, it might be based on the boxing game on the 16-bit Wii clones of the same name. I have since added as many pictures as I could find for the boxes of all three VTG Interactive games to
the respective BootlegGames Wiki article.
The VTG Interactive games are essentially simulated versions of real sports and would come with peripherals to emulate real world aspects of these sports with motion control (i.e., Virtual Baseball comes with a plastic wireless baseball bat and a wired mat you run in place on), with the games themselves being stored on cartridges. VTG Interactive would also sell their own proprietary console that you would connect the cartridge and peripherals to and play the games on. Someone named Furbland Channel uploaded a video with short demos of Virtual Baseball (named Live! Baseball on that version's title screen) and Virtual Tennis if you're interested in that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gM2Mb5nGM. The games themselves are surprisingly very polished presentation wise for generic plug and play games and surpass the quality of Waixing's typical plug and play output. There is currently very little information on VTG Interactive as a company and their exact activity, and trying to search for information on them or their known games brings up nothing outside of the BootlegGames Wiki page I created. What I discovered yesterday though was that out of stock Amazon listings for all three of the games are still up that aren't indexed well by Google, and the Virtual Boxing listing even has two reviews from people who presumably had the product, so at least one of the games were sold at some point. The listings are all dated November of 2006, meaning that these products pre-date the 16-bit Wii clones by a bit to my knowledge and definitely pre-date the generic versions of the games. The lack of information on the games as of current and the general low quantity of stock probably means that they didn't sell much when VTG Interactive was still in business. An interesting thing about the generic plug and play versions of one of the games, Baseball, is that in one of the stadiums you play in, a version of VTG Interactive's logo is partially visible (video showcasing this
here), which to me suggests that that the games were likely first developed by Waixing as a subcontractor for VTG Interactive before being repurposed for generic Wii clones. Waixing is known to have released many games specifically for plug and play systems of different types and even released units under their own name, but this is the first time I've heard of Waixing potentially working on unique plug and play games for specific companies.
The VTG Interactive games may not have been the first time Waixing dabbled in contract work for plug and play systems, either. In 2005, a Sudoku plug and play unit was released by SDW Games named
Sudoku - Do You Sudoku?. It appears to be very uncommon and was only dumped in MAME as of a couple months ago. It came with what I would consider a pretty advanced Sudoku game, with save functionality, hints, and the ability to mark numbers and clashes. Where Waixing comes into this is that a Sudoku game that is near identical to this one would be included on their 16-bit Wii clones, albeit modified to remove the SDW Games logo from the game as well as the hints, instructions, and options related to saving.
Here's gameplay footage of the SDW Games version running in MAME and
here's footage of the generic plug and play version. The generic plug and play version even has the exact same music, sound effects, and difficulty levels from the original SDW Games release (I assume the music periodically pausing in the former is just an emulation bug). Now, there's the possibility that someone else created the Sudoku game for SDW Games and Waixing simply licensed it and modified it for use on their Wii clones, and frankly I'm not too certain on Waixing having 100% developed this game either. It still intrigues me that something released as its own product not directly connected to Waixing would end up on their 16-bit plug and plays, though.
Lastly, something I just discovered today: a dedicated plug and play unit that appears to contain another game that I know is in at least one of Waixing's 16-bit Wii clones: Operation Cobra Strike (or "Operation: Cobra Strike" on the box of the dedicated unit). This one I also found from an Amazon listing, which I'll link here:
https://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Game-TV-Plug-Play/dp/B000LC0URK. This was also a release by SDW Games, although the Amazon listing lists VTG Interactive in the product info, which I'm not sure about the significance of right now. This particular game is on the TaiKee Interactive TV Games 49 in 1, and compared to the other games I mentioned I'd say the prerendered models for the terrorists look sorta similar to the models in Virtual Tennis (and Virtual Boxing if the pictures on the back of the VTG Interactive version are anything to go by). Doesn't seem like the version of Operation Cobra Strike on the dedicated unit is much different from the generic plug and play version going by the pictures in the listing, although I'd still be interested in seeing this unit documented if it actually got released. Unfortunately, it seems that this system is also very hard to find for sale, which suggests that it probably didn't sell too well (noticing a pattern here?). Generally speaking, from what I've seen in gameplay videos, Operation Cobra Strike seems like a solid game with interesting presentation choices, such as text crawls in the intro and level transitions that have a very "computer hacker"-style theme.
That's all I have to say on this topic for now. This is a very interesting subject that I've enjoyed delving into when I got the opportunity and I probably should have made a forum thread about this a while ago just to make my discoveries more accessible. I'll update this thread if I find any more potential instances of Waixing acting as a subcontractor for plug and play development.
