Last year I found this console in a second hand store. I didnt react until I saw the connections and batteryslots. It cost 1-2$ so even though I knew nothing about it wasnt a hard decision since I love this type of consoles. I have the zone/zone40 as well as a silvercrest handheld. But this one I have no idea who made it, if there are more of them or if its just some homemade thing. The games are 8bit and I think they all are without music(even though the menu have music). It has 14 games built in to it. Space war/High tide/Hurricane/Air force/Alien attack/Frontier fire/Bee´s attack/Shark/Ski/Road hero/Future soldier/Rescue/99 layers/balloon war Have anyone seen this before or perhaps recognize some of the games? More pictures can be found at http://www.photobucket.com/joystickconsole
The input options will generally be the giveaway. Are there select and start buttons distinct from the action buttons used for play? I agree that it's most likely an NES on a chip, but I wouldn't rule out an SMS at this point either.
Im not sure what you mean about the buttons. Theres Start/Select/Fire/unnamed trigger and the hatswitch(or the whole joystick) is used for movement. If you look at the picture below you can see the layout.
Most of the names are generic but "Balloon War" is almost certainly Balloon Fight, a mapperless NES/Famicom game. Road Hero will be Road Fighter which is also mapper 0. These games are common in pirate NES consoles and multicarts because they require little implementation. The names would've been changed and copyright information removed for obvious reasons. All signs point to NES... but hey, I could be wrong
Balloon war as you say looks like Balloon fight. Road hero however is definitely not Road fighter. Although it is similar in gameplay. Im sorry about the quality of these pictures, I only have my cellphone at the moment and the camera aint the best one.
Ok, not very surprising. Would have been cool if it had an input for a NES controller, since the joystick is very annoying to use(the hatswitch only works Up/Down/Left unfortunately). But its still nice to have, dont know why but I love the clones.
Yeah, I remember seeing quite a few with both controllerports and cartridgeslots. Im going to hunt some down in a month or so, my paycheck went to pay for some festivals this month. Is there a list of famiclones/other clones somewhere? Would be nice to have a reference of some sort before buying.
There's such an insane amount of Famiclones out there that nobody can list all of them. You can find some good Famiclone-related sites - that really only scratch the surface when it comes to all the clones out there - by googling.
Yeah, there's a bunch of data out there about famiclones but really the main fact is that they're built incredibly cheaply. As such, the video and audio on them is uniformly terrible, they all have compatibility issues to a greater or lesser extent, and they die pretty regularly. The advice, always, is that if you want to actually play games, go with a real NES + 60-72 pin adapter or an AV Famicom. In most places in the world a second-hand NES will cost you less than a new famiclone. I've said this so many times here I'm sure regular members are bored to tears of reading it by now. Sorry all The only real appeal in famiclones is the weirdness of them, so they're fun for collecting (I have a few myself). They can also be found dirt cheap second-hand. (Edit: also wanted to say that this example is one of the weirder famiclones I've seen and I'd definitely snag it if I found one for $1, no question.)
I have a NES, but Im drawn to these clones anyway. Not just clones, but any weird console is worth collecting to me. I only in the last year started collecting again though, sold of pretty much all of my collection years ago. So I dont have a huge collection yet, but theres always something I can afford every month . This month was steel battalion(love that game) so that together with festivaltickets was the whole budget and more, worth it though! edit: Yeah, its a pretty weird famiclone alright. Most of them looks like actual consoles so I just had to have this one. I had one shaped as a steering wheel as well, bought it in spain years ago but sadly it broke and got thrown away/lost somewhere.
Yeah, for me at least the weird shapes and sizes they come in is the real draw. I have one that has an LCD screen, but it's for functionally separate game circuitry, with some bizarre Tetris clone built in that adds shapes with more than 4 squares, and a very basic Mario-esque platformer. Standard famiclone when you use the A/V jacks. Strange bit of kit.
the manufacturer is Advance Bright Ltd, a Hong Kong based company (they used to be fairly prolific around the early-mid 2000s - some of their earlier consoles were sold in major retailers in the UK, usually complete with hacked games). this one is on their site @ http://www.advancebright.com.hk/V2_html/console_html/console.html as the "Air Blaster", model no. AB1000. I've never seen any of those games before though, and I've encountered tons of weird famiclones over the years.
Wow, thanks for the link ray:. Maybe(a big maybe) I will run into something else from them some day. Definitely a keeper link, thanks again.
The graphics in those pictures almost seem too 16 bit ish for a typical famiclone... If only famiclone makers had access to our resources. Untapped potential to be sure.
