There is a recently-released mini arcade system known as the "Retro Arcade Gamer" by Kooltech (
https://unauthorizon.org/product/recOMTOhDmMDx0Zsh). The console immediately caught my eye: as one of my Classic Player hacks, Wakmole Revenge, is front-and-center as one of the included games. Looking at the full gamelist (via a source detailed below), Puffy's Paradise and Rope, two of my earlier hacks, are also present.
Thus far, this is the only time in which my hacks have been mixed in with a commercial Famiclone release. I've found that this is effectively customary across the industry; the plug & play manufacturers almost never use internet-sourced copies of the games, and their game sets remain relatively consistent with each other. The only exceptions to this are some much older 2000s hacks and homebrews (e.g. Blob Buster and Gradirs), which themselves are still consistent picks among dozens of plug & plays.
However, I found that there is a
second line of consoles using the same game set as the Kooltech one. Of all things, it is a series of Paw Patrol-licensed handhelds, released under ID "SG3000" by the company Sameo (
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nLkdRUGplbA). Given how many of these things I've analyzed by this point, I can tell that the game list is entirely comprised of internet-sourced ROMs - while still attempting to curate a Nice Code/Inventor-like game pool - which I have to imagine were pulled from ProjectPNP and this forum itself. The rule of consistency is simply not there with the games chosen, even past a few of my hacks being mixed in. As to why, one can only speculate.
While unrelated to the greater point here, I do have to highlight just how absurd the Paw Patrol handheld is. It appears to have 100 more games than the Kooltech one (500 compared to 400), yet the last ~175 games are all unhacked Famicom/NES games (including Pac-Man and Mario is Missing). And no, there is not a single cheap Paw Patrol-themed hack on the thing at all. Nickelodeon really must not care to put their name on this thing...
