Classic Max Pocket 30 in 1

[taizou]

got me one of these recently:

I've been looking for this for a while.. for some reason. it's a vertically oriented 16-bit (VT168?) handheld by Jungletac, but the first 17 games or so were developed by Nice Code. Some of them are pretty fun and everything.

The console itself is one of Jungletac's cheaper efforts so it lacks such niceties as a pause button, headphone jack or TV out, and the speaker is fairly shite. Which is a shame, because some of the games actually have decent music.

here's a quick run through of them:

1. Egypt Legend - a Tetris clone. perfectly competent and all, but nothing special.
also, the default high score names are Jason, Amy, Chris, Wayne and Who - I'm gonna post these when/if they come up just because I think they might be the names of Nice Code people who worked on the games.. I definitely recognise some of them anyway.

2. Dingle Hunt - a Twinbee clone. hunt those dingles! When I first saw this I thought the graphics were ripped from one of the legit Twinbee games but they seem to have been drawn from scratch, just... very similarly. At least the main sprite was. This one is legitimately pretty good though - they picked a good game to rip off.
High scores: Angel, Lucia, Jony and Wayne

3. Zodiac Dreamers - a zodiac-themed Breakout/Arkanoid clone. A lot of these games have pretty good (original?) artwork on the title screen, incidentally. Again this is perfectly serviceable, though probably a bit too easy.
High scores: Sting, Ann, Alex, Wayne

4. Space Craft - A Galaga clone basically, but the aliens bob and weave around a lot more and you have the freedom of the whole bottom half the screen instead of just moving left and right.
High scores: Angell, Lucia, Jony, Wayne

5. Gem World - A sort of fantasy-themed puzzle game, with selectable characters (corresponding to difficulty level) and pretty good music... pieces fall in 2s, made up of either coloured blocks or corresponding coloured other things (hearts, potions or some kind of coin/medal i think), and if you match up three of the non-blocks they disappear and turn all the surrounding blocks into non-blocks. Terrible explanation, I know, but it's a pretty nice concept. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if it's ripped off from somewhere.
High scores:  Peter, Sleet, Alex, Leo

TO BE CONTINUE ...

[Azathoth]

The layout on this is strange, do any games use both the A and B buttons? How much does it sell for?

[taizou]

yeah, it is a weird layout - most games only use one button or have them both doing the same thing, a few use them for different things but never in a way that'd require you to press both at the same time or move quickly between them. which would be extremely awkward.

I got mine used on ebay for $9.99 Canadian anyway, the original price seems to have been around the $30-40 mark maybe? Few more games!

From this point on, the games have a lot more in common with Nice Code's games on the Wiii3 7 in 1 cart, with similar music, fonts and such. Also none of these have high score tables.

6. First Defense - Space Invaders clone, with different alien formations and a few powerups and stuff.

7. Tiger Across - Road Fighter type thing, with pits you can jump over. It's better than Awful Rushing anyway.

8. Dragon Tower - Basically an update of "Climbing Climbing Climbing" from the DreamGear and various other consoles - I always thought that was one of their better NES games and I guess they did too. This adds the ability to attack with sword powerups which I don't think was in the original.

9. The Night Job - Unlike the others, the graphics in this aren't pixel art, they have a sort of Flash-cartoon kinda look to them. Puts you in the role of one of a pair of burglars trying to steal various files and videotapes from a building without attracting the attention of the French-looking policeman - your associate will appear at one of nine windows and you just have to winch down the building and grab it off him before the policeman appears behind him. Pretty simple, but its quite fun.

10. Knocking Now - one of these games where you have to knock out blocks from a stack without toppling the stack over.

11. Up to the Sky - press-A-at-the-right-time-to-jump-to-the-next-platform type game. With a monkey. Something like Frantic Mouse (which I think is on the DreamGear?) only it's not broken. And it has a monkey.