I'm pretty sure Nanjing is behind that whole series - they're all on their site here (http://en.sznanjing.com.cn/Default.aspx?PN=products&TypeID=8130&ItemIndex=0).
one of the earliest was a OneStation lookalike called the "Digital Dragon system" with Nice Code games built in and a generic multicart bundled, but they seem to have abandoned the Nice Code stuff entirely now. They all take the same type of carts (same as the FC-3000/OneStation Elite I think - just miniaturised famicom carts) but I've never seen anywhere that actually sells additional carts separately since the FC-3000 itself went out of production.
there's also this one (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/nj-pocket-2-5-tft-lcd-portable-game-console-with-tv-out-and-built-in-games-3-x-aaa-65514), the "NJ Pocket" which kind of gives the game away. although that one's 16-bit and it doesn't have a cart slot.[/quote]
And indeed, the GB Station and PVP Station are both listed on Nanjing's site.
But that's not all! Searching for the model number of the NJ Pocket, NJ250A, turned up this:
http://sznanjing.en.made-in-china.com/ (http://sznanjing.en.made-in-china.com/)
Which is... exactly what it looks like. An index of products being sold wholesale by Shenzhen Nanjing. This includes the NJ Pocket, the GB Station, and the PVP Station.
They also list several "Arcade Game Stations", which are... interesting. No, they're not Wii clones like the Wow (I'm surprised those
aren't listed on the site, actually)... these are PlayStation 2 lookalikes which can load movies and various consoles' ROMs from a flash card. Sounds very similar to the GameBox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogvEsLy8pVQ) reviewed by TweeterMan... except, y'know, this one's made by Nanjing and looks like an older-generation system.
Apparently some of these portables are based on the 32-bit SP350 chip (Sunplus?), at least if this Alibaba listing (http://sznanjing.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-212011288/SP350_32_bit_game_player.html) is to be believed.
I wouldn't be surprised if the GameBox itself was made by SNT and then distributed by San Bai or something like that. Seems to be the same thing in a different shell as far as I can tell.
- codeman38
- May 30 2011, 12:17:50 PM
Apparently some of these portables are based on the 32-bit SP350 chip (Sunplus?), at least if this Alibaba listing (http://sznanjing.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-212011288/SP350_32_bit_game_player.html) is to be believed.[/quote]Those SP350 ones seem to be generic media player-type things with emulators built in, so yeah it wouldn't surprise me if they were Sunplus.
oh and I found this one on Taobao a while back:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=10064696271 (http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=10064696271)
its the NJ-250, an 8-bit version of the NJ-250a/NJ Pocket. the top image mentions "more than 300 games to freely play at your option" and there are screenshots of Nice Code games in the listing but the actual text says 25000 8-bit games, which sounds an awful lot like the generic built-in stuff from their other consoles. so i suppose they originally planned to sell it with Nice Code games but ended up replacing them with the usual pirate copies of licensed games. because they could get away with it, i guess.
(incidentally I recognise most of the NC games in the screenshots but not the one in the bottom right - it looks a bit RPGish to me, anyone know what it is?)
the same seller also has a bunch of Gameboxes and variants (http://gtgame.taobao.com/?search=y&frm=&scid=322771959&queryType=cat&scname=R0FNRS1CT1ggtefK09b3u%2Fo%3D) including the ones listed by Nanjing, the one Tweeterman reviewed and more. so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were all made by the same company.
- taizou
- May 30 2011, 12:52:41 PM
the same seller also has a bunch of Gameboxes and variants (http://gtgame.taobao.com/?search=y&frm=&scid=322771959&queryType=cat&scname=R0FNRS1CT1ggtefK09b3u%2Fo%3D) including the ones listed by Nanjing, the one Tweeterman reviewed and more. so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were all made by the same company.[/quote]That seller's logo
is, quite literally, the same as the logo from gamebox.hk; the latter's logo even identifies them as "G-Team". So yeah, the two are definitely
somehow connected.
Incidentally, G-Team also has a website at http://www.gtgame.net/ (http://www.gtgame.net/) which is full of hilarious Chinglish. ("Let you fondle admiringly"!)
Oh, wow, guess what the 16-bit games on the NJ Pocket are? They're the same freaking ones from the Wow. (http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=10063796067&frm=) Of course!
One of the games on the 8-bit NJ-250 is very clearly Penrlty Kick... which, up until now, had only been seen on Waixing consoles. Hm. No, wait, I'm getting my soccer games mixed up-- that one is definitely whatever Nice Code's game is titled, and not Penrlty Kick.
Here's a video with the Gamelist for the NJ-250 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax6cPyAcrxY).
If I remember correctly, the menu theme is stolen from one of Capcom's games. I forget which one though. A bit odd that they'd put NES music on a system that (presumably) has 16-bit games, but it seems to be a PCM sample given the poorly-done looping.
And knowing what SNT are like, the background's probably stolen from an anime.
- Cheetahmen
- Jun 2 2011, 01:47:45 PM
If I remember correctly, the menu theme is stolen from one of Capcom's games. I forget which one though. A bit odd that they'd put NES music on a system that (presumably) has 16-bit games, but it seems to be a PCM sample given the poorly-done looping.
And knowing what SNT are like, the background's probably stolen from an anime.[/quote]Yeah, if it's VT168, it's got to be a PCM sample-- the VT168 does not appear to have any of the 2A03 sound hardware in it. And that is totally from
some Capcom game...I mean, just listen to the percussion! :)
I know I've seen the girl on the menu screen, too, but can't remember what anime and/or game that's from.
hey i just got one of these too. :D
quite a weird selection of games - game 3 and 33-60 are all either the same games from the Wow/that other Sport 6 in 1 or similar games. 5-32 seem to have been developed either by a different company entirely, or possibly by the same company at a different time - they all have the same pause menu which the other games lack, and mostly share the same few tunes (one of which is taken from a Mario game I think).
but the first few are the really odd ones - Virtual Tennis is Tennis Exciting & Baseball is World Series, as seen on various Wii clones copyrighted to Waixing. But Extreme Power Soccer is Cube Tech's from the MiWi, it even still has "YMK Software" and "Macro Win" in the background. I wonder why Nanjing didn't just use their usual sports games?
Personally, I'm kind of interested to see the games on there, mainly to see what games/resources they ripped off. Knowing SNT, they probably threw in Theme Hospital MIDIs and stills from Digimon or something. :P
Incidentally, I'm curious what the heck "Xzero" is. Another trademark of Nanjing's? The console is definitely theirs, and the games are also registered as theirs on the copyright database...so what's with the odd boot-up logo?
- codeman38
- Jun 2 2011, 04:20:02 PM
Incidentally, I'm curious what the heck "Xzero" is. Another trademark of Nanjing's? The console is definitely theirs, and the games are also registered as theirs on the copyright database...so what's with the odd boot-up logo?[/quote]Not entirely sure what you're implying by that, but I can't find any information on the console itself. :\ Maybe they pretended it wasn't theirs so that they wouldn't get in trouble with Macro Winners or YMK.
Well i did a bit of searching, its registered in Europe to "Handsfull Technology Corporation" of Taiwan, aka Vakoss. website: http://www.handsfull.com.tw/ (http://www.handsfull.com.tw/)
seems to be a distributor, this thing isnt on their website (but apparently theyre an official distributor for Nintendo in Poland, who perhaps wouldnt be too happy with them selling it). i'd guess that they had Nanjing produce a console for them with that boot logo, but Nanjing were too lazy to change the ROM for their own version. something like that anyway.
Just found this clone being sold on DealExtreme (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/nj-pocket-2-5-tft-lcd-portable-game-console-with-tv-out-and-built-in-games-3-x-aaa-65514) for about £13. What's odd though is that despite clearly showing the same title screen as the one Takashi has, the description says it includes games like Mario, Tetris and Donkey Kong. I'm betting that the description itself is erroneous and that it has the same games on the other one. (Or SNT went to trouble of ripping off those games)
well that's where I got it from :D the description doesn't actually say it includes Mario etc, its just giving those as examples of retro games. although there is a Tetris clone on here.
I put up a gallery with some photos of the circuit boards (https://picasaweb.google.com/114262786521102688839/NJPocket?feat=directlink) and screen pictures. Memory seems to be a 4000LOZBQO, a Intel 256Mbit 3V StrataFlash (well documented and in a nice little separate board, just as I like it). It will probably be part of my Summer of Dumping project.
As far as I can tell from those images, this thing was produced on January 11th last year. (Or November 1st, or January 10th this year. What date system does China use again?)
I think its YY-MM-DD. at least thats what they usually use on electronics. but the date on the centre PCB is 110111 which would be 11th Jan 2011 however you slice it, so its fairly recent.
Timetop uses month-day-year on their boards, so I'd say it's November 1st, 2010
but surely that'd make the date on the centre board November 1st 2011? which doesn't seem too likely to me. :D
110111 is 55 in decimal :)
- takashi
- Jun 2 2011, 09:14:44 PM
110111 is 55 in decimal :)[/quote]It might be, but I don't know what binary has to do with this whole date issue. :lol:
Also, I assume that you'd put up videos of some of the games in the near future like the Time Top Famiclone. /:)
And how would these games work on an emulator anyway? Would it be the VT168 mode in EmuVT?
- Cheetahmen
- Jun 2 2011, 09:21:13 PM
- takashi
- Jun 2 2011, 09:14:44 PM
110111 is 55 in decimal :)[/quote]It might be, but I don't know what binary has to do with this whole date issue. :lol:
Also, I assume that you'd put up videos of some of the games in the near future like the Time Top Famiclone. /:)
And how would these games work on an emulator anyway? Would it be the VT168 mode in EmuVT?[/quote]The whole silkscreen is GB055A(110111), what would be a hell of a coincidence.
I'll make some videos. I'll probably skip the ones that already have good video on Youtube, though.
As for emulation, we'll know when I'm done! Hopefully, it will run in VT168 mode in EmuVT. Since it's a large dump (around 32MBytes of data) it will be the last one I'll tackle.
- takashi
- Jun 3 2011, 06:00:45 AM
I'll make some videos. I'll probably skip the ones that already have good video on Youtube, though.[/quote]I think you're aware of this already, but Taizou uploaded videos of a fair few of them.
Anyone figured out what the menu music is from yet, incidentally? I was seriously going through all the Capcom NSFs in my collection and couldn't find it.
- codeman38
- Jun 3 2011, 08:37:58 AM
Anyone figured out what the menu music is from yet, incidentally? I was seriously going through all the Capcom NSFs in my collection and couldn't find it.[/quote]I haven't found it, but I have figured out that it's not one of the games on the Capcom 30-in-1. (Which is basically a collection of NSFs)
Found it! It's not Capcom. It's Natsume! (Which, admittedly, actually did cross my mind-- their music does often sound very Capcom-esque.)
"Shadow of the Ninja", a.k.a. "Kage" and "Blue Shadow".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgrhcho5tA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMgrhcho5tA)
I was kind of thinking that myself, but being the idiot I usually am I didn't bother to check.
In case you missed it, Takashi has started posting videos of some of the games from the NJ Pocket on his YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/takashioomoto (http://www.youtube.com/user/takashioomoto)
Observations so far:
- Yep, that's totally Subor's baseball game. Which would not surprise me if it was actually developed by Cube Tech, between the graphic design and sampled music.
- F1 Champion... actually doesn't look half bad. Now sound, on the other hand, is a different story, with that grating grinding noise... but it doesn't look half bad, anyway. Also, Cheetahmen is right-- that music is indeed sampled from Power Rangers, specifically the movie-licensed game for SNES.
- Game 6... to reference two movies at once, there is no Game 6, because the first rule of Game 6 is that you shall not talk about Game 6. :-p But seriously, as a commenter points out, the sprites are stolen from SNK's "Mutation Nation". I'm pretty sure that music is also sampled from some SNES game-- it sounds oddly familiar, but I can't place it.
something random i noticed - the HUD glitch in "Explosion" you can see here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlH7quK7VU) doesn't happen on this console. So either they fixed it or you were right about it being a PAL/NTSC issue.
- codeman38
- Jun 7 2011, 11:40:12 PM
I'm pretty sure that music is also sampled from some SNES game-- it sounds oddly familiar, but I can't place it.[/quote]I'm not entirely sure on that myself. If anything, it sounds like a bad MIDI file to me.
Just realized what the music was from in Fight Club thanks to the newly uploaded video of GP Racing. I was right that it was from an SNES game I'd played-- it's Wiggler's level from Tetris Attack!
For comparison's sake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTRAPG36qC0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTRAPG36qC0)
And yes, GP Racing also steals music from Tetris Attack, in this case the mode select theme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfU6UNyUvvE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfU6UNyUvvE)).
ah, Funny Puzzle also has Tetris Attack music - I knew it was from some Mario/Yoshi game but I couldn't quite place it.