:dance: My GF got back from china on friday and brought me back some lovely toys. One of the items was an iQue player (other was JXD301). While i've yet to play it (need to buy an AC adapter since the included one only takes 220v), i've got to say. I really like system design. The unit is quite well built and feels quite nice to hold. The analog seems near identical to the n64 (always seem different in screenshots) and the buttons are good. Only downside is the triggers seem little stiff (wish they pushed down a little more, will see better when I play) and the d-pad while cool is still strange to look at. Few downsides to my new toy. I think since it was kind of hard for my gf to get, I think mine was maybe a former display unit (like not actualy used but sat in a shelf with the system out). I say this since there is some noticable dust under the analog and little dirt in the front grill. I'm not sure what games are on it but suposetly the cart was loaded. As well I got a box/manual for Dr Mario (interesting, you can buy manuals but the games are entirely digital purchases on a special machine). Anyways I plan to post some pictures and hopefuly video (once I get an adapter) in the comming weeks.
Sweet, I found an old Linksys game adapter that was 5v, proper pin setup (neg on outside) and also fit perfectly into the ique power socket. So I got to play my iQue last night. First impressions is this unit rocks. It's got to be the coolest plug in TV system. The controller kind of feels like a dreamcast controller but with xb360 trigger buttons (not the triggers bu the ones above them). It took a few seconds to get use to the different placement of the Z button but after a few seconds it was quite nice to play with (unit is not all that heavy). Sadly I have some disapointment in my exact unit. It's not new at all. It was either a unit used in the store, a used unit sold to the store or an employies old unit he sold. I say this because besides Dr. Mario, there was zelda and it had about 3 saves on it (2 were pretty far in the game) as well the 3 demo were used up. This is another disapointment. It's not like the demo on iQue are a simple "Play for 1-4 mins then it resets." No it's actualy only lets you play for 1 - 4 min (maybe hour, not sure) and then the game is locked up for good. Waverace was & starfox were 1m/h and Mario64 was 4m/h. Still on the bright side at least my flash had Zelda in it (along with Dr. Mario which I got the game manual to). Anyways I'll get to some pictures of this thing sometime this week. Man I really hope by chance I can collect the other game manuals/box. As well maybe find someone who has an extra flash cart with more games on it.
I'm not supprised that the store owner re-sold the unit. Most of the stuff stores push now (for anything Ique related) is the NDS hardware. They probably had a leftover ique unit and just dumped it for a quick sale since its basicly a "dead" format. Somewhat blows, since the games (the kiosks anyway) arn't avaliable anymore and most of the collectors value comes from mint/new items.
Yep. It was hard enough for my gf to get it in the first place. The store nearest to her did not have any and they went to the store noted with an iQue Player PC icon in which the store had to "special order" it in but i'm not sure in what case (maybe it's they had it in storage somewhere and had to dig it out). Still even tho it's not new I think it will have some value as a collectors object since it's not something you're going to easly find so often (I'd almost go on a limb and say they're more rare then DD units). A rare thing to find tho would probably be more games or someone with a Game cart that has unused demos. Since the games are stored on flash and ecrypted. I would believe it's very difficult if not imposible to somehow get the demos to reset to a clean state. This is definantly something I am planning to keep around with my n64 & randnet DD unit. If I get the chance I think I want to try building up some more knollage on the system. There seems to be a few interesting things. Like on the back one of the zelda shots look to be from Majora's Mask but it was never released nor does any online archive (aka wikipedia) note it as a game that was posibly in development. Also I want to do a side by side comarison of zelda. It will probably end up identical but a few things seem a little different when playing last night. Since suposetly games had to be recompiled for the iQue, it's posible a few changes might show up (along with the fact the ique hw is a little different). -- edit -- I wonder if lik-sang store in HK still has iQue stuff (suposetly the store is still active after the site went under).
I have no idea if Lik-Sang carries it still, but a lot of brick-and-mortar stores still have old stock shown, while their electronic web counterparts do not. I suspect things like the Ique, Multi-player hub, and things like that can still be found/ordered, but because its so unatractive (Pirate wise), not many people care about it.
Did I miss something, I thought lik-sang closed down. I do wonder if someone will hack it, I guess it's not common enough.
An iQue is better thano no iQue, so consider yourself one of the lucky few who own one here in the West =) I m jealous! Any chance you ll open the baby up? Does it have standard gamebit screws?
Depends. Seems Dextrose has a few nice high res images of the guts and if so there is no real need to crack the thing open. I'm currious to look into the files from the crazynation site. They had a rather large dump file. --edit-- Trust me barc0de, I am beyond estatic to actualy have one of thies.
I m looking forward to the possibility of running homebrew or *other* code on it=) wonder if it follows the same domain-based structure and whether IPL4DEV would run on it natively!
I have this picture in my files, don't remember where i took it btw... Back in the day IIRC lik-sang did have some nice pic of the PCB but I don't seen to have save them unfortunately :S
This connector have usb on it but it's not a standard usb connector, iQue sell a usb cable in China to connect it to a PC and buy game online as an alternative to ique download station. here the software: IQue@Home
Seriously? I though it's purpose was purely for linking to the multitap box for multiplayer games. DarthCloud, One more question. Any chance you know what the 2nd/3rd option is in the ique root home? My unit has two but I saw a video of f-zero iQue on youtube that has 3 options in the menu).
What I would do, if you can, is to dump your cartridge. destop's crazynation site that was posted earlier has a pretty good explanation. I've seen that for some time but wondered about the format of the games. The flash card is basically a regular old NAND flash with industry standard serial interface. There's a very good chance you can swap it into an actual SD card pcb (some earlier, smaller ones use these kinds of chips) and just use a low-level disk utility to read/write it. I'm wondering if the demo/saved games are written back to NAND, or some flashrom inside the actual unit. This has interested me for quite some time but I have not been able to get one off ebay - little too pricey for me
