Author Topic: TV Boy  (Read 2008 times)

Awesome Panda

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TV Boy
« on: September 13, 2019, 08:01:32 PM »
For the uninitiated, the TV Boy is a series of plug n play controllers which contain 127 Atari 2600 games of variable quality. It's actually the first plug n play TV game device that I'm aware of, supposedly being released as early as 1992 from what I've read. I've been curious about all of the different versions of the TV Boy in existence, as there seem to be more variations than I'd previously anticipated. Here's the ones I know of:

TV Boy (Europe) - Original big oval design, the one I've seen has a controller port the others lack but I've never seen a second controller for it to connect to
TV Boy (NICS Japanese NTSC version) - Different selection of games, different decal on the unit itself. Box claims to have 126 games but the series of videos I saw actually showed 127 ???
TV Boy II - Update to the original, supposedly replaces a few games (I don't have the original so I can't check that) and appears to swap the positions of the reset and select buttons
Super TV Boy - Different design, has controller separated from the rest of the system
Super TV Boy (alternate) - Different controller design seemingly based on the original Playstation controller, has the hardware built-in to it

(I remember there also existing a US NTSC version, though I could be wrong)

The Wikipedia page also claims that one version of the unit removes Defender (Game 91) and doesn't replace it with anything. However, the TV Boy II I own includes the game and the alternate Super TV Boy replaces it with Ski Hunt, but the other 126 games are the same. It's possible that such a unit exists and I haven't seen it in action, but I do remember seeing a video that refers to the game as a test program despite it working normally.