Recently, I've been attempting to research a specific set of VT02 games from an unclear developer. The games in question are Fruit Pig, Eeeck! A Mouse, Echo Chamber, Trounce, and a Sudoku game. Since there's no clear development company, however - nor are there dozens of games to work off of, like the unknown JungleTac-affiliated developer - I can't really compile it into a wiki page or anything (it's currently just a footnote on the Nice Code Software article as "unconfirmed games", which I somewhat doubt the status of). As such, I thought I'd compile what I've gathered into a list here, so the information is at least out there:
-For a brief gameplay summary (save for self-explanatory Sudoku): Fruit Pig is a simple "catch the fruits" game, Eeeck! A Mouse is a Whac-A-Mole game, Echo Chamber is a clone of Simon (i.e. the board game), and Trounce is loosely based on the Japanese plug & play "Popira". All of them use music from the Famicom game Parasol Henbee.
-Fruit Pig is by far the most common, followed by Sudoku. Both titles appear on many multicarts from the mid-2010s onward (e.g. Super Game 360-in-1, CoolBoy 400-in-1), with Fruit Pig also appearing on the common 200-in-1 plug & play. The other three games are far less common, but sporadically show up on some later 2010s releases.
-With the exception of Sudoku, all of the games only use the d-pad during gameplay; not using the A or B buttons. This suggests to me they were designed for a Dance Dance Revolution mat or some similar special controller.
-Further indicating the above, the first version of the "Double Dance Mania" plug & play features Echo Chamber and Trounce (but not the other titles). The currently dumped revision of Double Dance Mania is the "Technolight Edition", however, which includes different games. Oddly, on the back of the back, the game screenshots are recreated with vector graphics (see
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lygAAOSwDiZk~LWv/s-l1600.jpg).
-There is a variant of Fruit Pig where the player is replaced with a penguin for some reason (see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jS2uOK52-A&t=385s). This may be a Cube Technology hack of the game.
-In my most bizarre find, there is a Russian handheld called the "Exeq Toy" that features what appear to be advanced VT368 hacks of these games. I was able to confirm a game called "Crazymouse" is a conversion of Eeeck! A Mouse (see
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ciqfovpXP_Y), but could not find clear enough screenshots/videos of the others. Presumably, going by the game list, "Sudoku 368" is Sudoku, "Fruit New" is Fruit Pig, and "Simon" is Echo Chamber; there's no obvious title listed for Trounce.
-The other unknown games listed on the Exeq Toy are Raptor Rage (port of a mobile game?), Winmine (Minesweeper?), Arameo, Funny Quest, IdolumMaze, Biomatch, and Angel. It also features a game titled "Angry Birds 368", which is a hack of the Super Angry Birds bootleg; as to if that indicates the unknown company made that game as well, who knows.
-Just by fate I suppose, there is a more common (?) revision of the Exeq Toy that features a generic VT02 menu without these games; so tracking a system down would be quite difficult.
-In a recently compiled list by Taizou, he labels the titles as possibly being "Spritemind" games (see
https://museum.12bit.club/viewer/ods.php?f=Subor_Q6_game_list.ods). I am assuming this refers to Shenzhen SpriteMind Software Co., Ltd., who is credited on some mid-2010s multicarts (namely the Super Game 150-in-1 with the Sonic splash screen). I could ask Taizou what makes him theorize Spritemind is the developer, but haven't as of currently.
-I have the source GIF that was used as reference for Fruit Pig's character sprite. No idea where the picture in itself is from, but the sprites were modeled after this character.
