Unreleased handheld from 2005 found.

The story: Back in 2005 Shanda, a Chinese electronics firm ( not as shady as it sounds: for what it's worth, they're traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange) decided the time was right for china to enter the videogame market in a serious and legitimate way. It was announced that they were going to challenge Nintendo and Sony, and develop a home console and a handheld.

They apparently test marketed the home console, the EZ Station ($800 retail?), and claimed to have had a very positive response. Then with much fanfare Shanda's handheld, known as the EZ Mini, was shown at a electronics expo in late 2005. And then.....nothing. Well almost nothing. Records seem to indicate that Shanda was forced to pull the plug on their entire video game venture due to a conflict of interest with one of their corporate partners.

So recently I friend of mine in China actually found a pair of production samples for the EZ Mini, and I bought them. They arrived today and here are my impressions:





Each unit appears brand new. They are both white, with removable plastic film still covering the screen. They each have a custom wall charger. No box was ever produced, so they came in plastic bags and soft pink foam. A small barcode sticker is on the back of the system. These appear to be enabled with both BlueTooth and WiFi, but I have not yet tested these features. There is a slot on the top, between the speakers, that accepts SD and MMC cards. The unit has a touch screen, and a small retractable stylus is included. The EZ Mini takes a second for the load screen to activate. The main menu offers games, Music, video, ebooks, and downloads. These menus appear in a combination of Chinese and English. As you can see, the EZ Mini is about the same length and thickness as a DS Lite, in it's closed position.

*note: screen protector-film has not been removed in some pics.











Shanda planned to develop 1500 (!) games which would have been downloadable from an online store, through the EZ Mini's USB port. Since the "store" never materialized, and I have no technical "hacking" experience, I assumed that actually using a Production sample of a canceled handheld to play games was out of the question. Yet much to my surprise, I quickly discovered that mine had a small amount of pre-loaded software included.

Some of the text is Chinese, but I've found a Kirby/Zelda hybrid, a beautiful medieval hack-n-slash (koei-esque), and a fun space shooter, which prompts you to hold the unit vertically, wonderswan style Also is a much appreciated pack a Taito classics including Bubble Bobble, Space Invaders, and many others. (the Taito games all contain the proper copy-write credentials and seem like fully authorized ports).







Everything looks surprisingly professional and it seems a real shame that Shanda didn’t get the opportunity to push things past the test phase. Some of the load screens seem incomplete and during boot-up some raw code-gibberish can be seen briefly, but otherwise things are very polished. I'm optimistic that with a bit of translation help from my friend, I can unlock more of the EZ Mini's potential. In fact I just made the menu background flip to green instead of default red.


Here's some links:
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/portables/shanda_ez_mini.htm

http://www.digitalworldtokyo.com/index.php/digital_tokyo/articles/new_handheld_straight_outta_china/

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-144912833/shanda-beats-retreat.html

 

Wow what an incredible find. Thanks for sharing.

Kinda looks like a cross between a Coolboy, DS and a GP2X.

So weird and rare to see something so close to release and yet ultimately cancelled.

 

Wow :-0 That's really quite an incredible find. Thanks for sharing. :Rock:

It's even more impressive that you've actually got some games to play on an unreleased, download-only system. Any chance of some videos of the console in action please?

Regarding the EZ Station, do you have any further information or pictures of the unit itself or the controller? There must be some of those available in the wild if it made it to the test market phase?

:clap:

 

Wow that's pretty awesome,
what is the quality of the LCD in them?
Any ghosting or backlight bleeding?

 

All I could find was this....
http://thm-a02.yimg.com/nimage/0de152865a85aa6e

and this....

http://thm-a02.yimg.com/nimage/e0ee29da5b1da5b0

Seems to be a red-orange box that would sit on top of your T.V. I think it was also "download only", so media slot.

Now, Shanda says its trial run of selling the EZ Station was a success, but I've found at least one article (by a research firm) who questioned the potential of "download only" media to unseat cartridge/cd based products. And I can't believe they would sell one in China (or anywhere) for $800. Who knows.

Yes, I shot some video last night. I've never posted a video online ever, actually, so .....maybe. :shrug:

 

$800 is lunacy. Where did you hear that figure? It can't possibly be right, can it?

Thanks for sharing, anyway. Hell of a catch that it has games too, that makes it much more interesting IMO. Another to add to the glut of mid 00's "holy fuck there's a fortune to be made let's get in on it" gaming handhelds (Ngage, Tapwave, Gamepark 32, Gizmondo...) I guess.

 

800 Yuan in 2005 (according to xe.com) was just short of $100 USD.

 

3do m2 anyone :shrug:

 

That seem reasonable, but here's the reference source I attempted to site....
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-11192816_ITM

It's completely ridiculous. I'm sure it's wrong, but that's what it says. 6,850.00 Yuan. :clap:

 

That is an article for the "EZ Station", one of these:



Which seem to be some sort of PC which could conceivably cost $800.

 

Great pic. Thanks for digging it up. I really like the red one.

 

The emu handhelds (clone ARM chips etc) didn't really surface until a few years ago. The Dingoo is the most obvious one but it's only relatively recently that they started popping up. It would be interesting to know who made games for it, and how, either way.

 

I recall a couple of credit title screens for one of the games. I'll check it later.

We should work up a simple timeline of Emu handheld releases to see where this fits in on the tree. Still, I don't think the frame is a perfect fit, as at least conceptually it reflects more the current direction of handheld gaming, Ipod, DSi ware, etc.

 

How could you tease us and not at least show screenshots of the games

How did your friend come across something seemingly so rare you'd have to have very inside sources anyway? Does he work in the industry?

 

It a very cool find for sure. I can tell you that those space invader screens look identical to that of the Saturn Space Invaders collection. Could that game be a port of the Saturn collection or emulation?

 

Honestly I would imagine that even if they sold this system, people would just buy it once hackers figured out how to run emus on it. I mean that is what pushed psp sales for awhile.

 

nice find thanks for sharing looks pretty cool with awesome features might of had a chance to compete

 

Should disassemble one and look for some date codes.

For 2005 wifi, bluetooth, and non proprietary storage medium sounds like it would have been a winner. Its not too hard on the eyes either good find.

 

Incredible find, never heard of this thanks for sharing, more pics of the games running would be swell.