So for a long time, no one really knew what the "Namco Corporation" credited in Dian Shi Ma Li really was. There was speculation that it might have been Bit Corp using a fake name (as the game was obviously developed by the same people that made Bit's Jackpot and Sheng Hen Pao), but nothing was ever confirmed.

Until now!

A while back I'd done a little digging into "Fiver Firm", the publisher of the Game Boy Color game e'Fighter Hot (and not much else, that I knew of). I found a few Taiwanese trademark registrations for them, dating back as early as the mid-80s, but not much else. One was for the name "Namcot". Weird, but I didn't really know why they did it. Probably just some old pirate carts or Famiclone. And that's where I left it, for a while.

Until now! I just happened to come across my notes from back then, and googled their Chinese name, "五合企業有限公司". This turned up a page on boss.com.tw, a Taiwanese company directory which seems to hold basic info on just about every Taiwanese company, even those that are long gone. And that page gave their English name as "Namco Co., Ltd". Namco again! Weird!

At this point I was starting to think of that other unknown Namco. Fiver Firm had been around since the 80s, doing who knows what, so maybe this would make sense..

The final confirmation came via Google Books, which linked the same Chinese name to "..V Mary Bar" in a (tiny, badly OCR-d snippet of a) Taiwanese presidential office gazette.. surely not a coincidence? A bunch of digging later found a full copy of said gazette on the Taiwanese National Central Library website - which revealed the context for this was a copyright registration, to that same Chinese name, for everyone's favourite plumber-based slot machine game.

I wrote this article based on my findings here- http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Fiver_Firm

But knowing all this now opens up the greater mystery of just what the hell they were doing the rest of the time - they existed from at least 1985 (based on trademark registrations), but released one Famicom game in 1989, one Game Boy game in 2000 (ish) and nothing else? The only other thing I can find linked to them is a patent for some kind of cartridge converter. So either they had business interests outside of games, or they were doing a lot of underground/anonymous stuff.

So as brought up in this thread, there are a few variations of these mini (~15cm high) arcade machines doing the rounds at the moment, with mostly 16-bit Cube Tech games (originals and hacks) built in.. and they're quite interesting, so I thought I'd start a new thread for them!


These three all have 240 games - it may or may not be the same set, there are some variations in lists posted online:
Taikee Micro Arcade Machine: http://www.mymemory.co.uk/Gadgets/Taikee/Taikee-Micro-Arcade-Machine-with-240-Built-in-Games---16-Bit
Red5 Mini Arcade Machine: http://www.red5.co.uk/mini-arcade-machine.aspx (this is the one I have)
Lexibook Cyber Arcade: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lexibook-Cyber-Arcade-240-Games/dp/B00XW6CX4A (this one has a different design from the others, more Japanese-style)

and here's another version with 230 games (and a different menu, which resembles the one in the production-music-using Cube Tech DDR clone I mentioned in the previous thread)
SoundLogic XT Multicade 230 http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Multicade_230 / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jwTCe-Wj40


The hardware is something in the VT line - I'd guess a fairly recent model with lots of backwards compatibility, maybe VT369, since it's pretty much a greatest(?) hits(?) of Cube Tech, with their VT168 originals, VT03 originals, a ton of better-than-VT03 NES hacks, a handful of VT03 hacks, who knows what else, and a bit of Waixing/Nice Code stuff thrown in at the end. Unfortunately most of the games are missing their title screens though.


Here's a list of the games found on the Red5 version (transcribed by me from the system menu to avoid any discrepancies with documentation): http://pastebin.com/ZLaA5ADd


MyMemory's listing for the Taikee one suggests the Red5 unit has a few changes, probably mostly for copyright reasons - Galaga was renamed Galaxy Battle and bumped to the start of the Shooting section, and Zuma was replaced with Unwonted Space. Also a few of the target shooting games were renamed; there may be other changes on top of that. I haven't done a full comparison yet. I'm not sure, though, if these differences are actually represented in the Taikee machine itself, or if MyMemory were just given an early game list and the final ROM actually matches the Red5 one.

The Red5 manual actually seems to have been made at some point in between the two - it has Unwonted Space in place of Zuma, but still has Galaga midway through the list and the old names for the target shooting games.


DreamGear also have an 8-bit version, covered here: http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=10399086/1/#new
but it looks like they're also getting on board with their own 16-bit variation, the "Retro Arcade Machine X", containing 300 games: http://www.dreamgear.com/retro-arcade-machine-x-gaming-system-with-300-games/
according to the game list  on the sell sheet, it looks like they've supplemented *most* of the games on the 240-in-1 versions with a selection of their usual Nice Code games (some VT03). The games dropped from the 240 list seem to be almost entirely those that are either hacks or clones of too-well-known games - so, for example, the Donkey Kong Jr hack Jungle Max1 is gone, but so is the coded-from-scratch Frogger clone Cross River.

---

Oh yeah, and on the subject of the NES hacks found on this thing - as I mentioned they seem to be based on something better than VT03, I'm not sure exactly which part of the VT line supports these high-colour graphics on top of NES code, but .. that's what it is.

But interestingly there are also high-resolution versions of these hacks in existence, seemingly running at 2x the resolution of the versions seen on the mini arcade machines - in fact it looks like the graphics in those versions were downscaled from the high-res ones.

The high-res versions appear, for example, on a MiWi console I have (the same one that has production-music DDR), and I'm fairly sure they can also be found on this trapezoidal thing once seen on Cube Tech's site. I have no idea what hardware they are running on - some unknown high-res VT derivative? Something else entirely? But it's those high-res versions that are used, misleadingly, for the screenshots on the Mini Arcade box and the icons in its menu.

I'm looking for this plug & play console by Qi Sheng Long:

http://www.qishenglong.com/doce/product/details_392.html / http://www.qishenglong.com/doce/product/details_393.html

Mostly because it's the only thing I know of with 32-bit Nice Code games, and their later stuff is quite a bit more interesting than their 2004-ish NES games (which are unfortunately the ones that show up everywhere) so I'd quite like to track it down, document the games and whatnot.

but! it's very hard to find (whereas the earlier 48 in 1 version, with games by Shenzhen Niutai which I basically DGAF about, is everywhere); most Google results return Qi Sheng Long's own website and Alibaba page, and I would almost believe they had never actually made any if not for these two listings:

http://aukro.crimea.ua/igrovaya-pristavka-hd-032b-65-vstroennyh-igr-item3010628690.html
http://aukro.crimea.ua/sportivno-razvlekatelnaya-pristavka-wiwi65-hd-032a-item3392609821.html

Both from aukro.crimea.ua (which seems to be dead now, I guess due to recent events in the region), both from early 2013, for two different variations of the console. so perhaps it received some limited distribution in Crimea around that time? nonetheless this is slightly encouraging because it does mean at least some of them left Qi Sheng Long's production line at some point in the last few years.

However, apart from that, I've found no leads - I've tried contacting Qi Sheng Long directly, and they *are* willing to sell them, but they want a minimum order of 1000, which is a little out of my price range (and storage capacity).

so.. does anyone have any idea where I might be able to find one?

so a Mega Drive game has appeared on Yahoo Japan recently called 數字方塊 (Shuzi Fangkuai), the English title I guess is "Magic Number" judging from the background of the menu screen.
http://page9.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k170944524

its yet another MD game I've never seen before... and intriguingly it seems to reveal Chuanpu's English name as "Jam Port".