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So I was browsing the dollar stores on Mission Street in San Francisco the other day, as I am a collector with a special place in my heart for illegal, Chinese knock-offs of action figures and other sci-fi or superhero-related toys.

This one store happened to carry something I'd read about, a type of "plug-in TV games" device that's actually a copy of the Nintendo Entertainment System, with a whole ton of classic NES games built right in.

The price was a mere $20 plus tax, but they gave it to me for $17 even, 'cause that was all I had in my pocket.

This was the best seventeen bucks I ever spent! Compared to the officially licensed plug-in TV games, which tend to be priced from $15 to $30, this copyright-infringing gray-market import has got the legit merchandise beat hands down.

There've been at least two Atari 2600-themed TV games, both pretty slick in that one was styled like a miniature 2600 console, while the other manages to contain all of its components within a classic Atari joystick. It's my understanding, however, that their included games are not actual ROM images of the classic VCS cartridges, but are actually modern re-creations or ports of those games. Even if they're indistinguishable from the originals, that seems a little lame just on principle.

The NES knock-off, on the other hand, is presumably running the same, exact software that came in the original NES carts. Though the box art bosts of its having 88 games, the real number is well over 120.

When I got the thing home, I was pleasantly surprised to find a few more advantages. I'd assumed that -like the TV games- the faux-NES would run on AA batteries, which could be kind of a bummer if they started to run low in the middle of a game. Happily, it's powered by an AC adapter.

Better yet: I'd also assumed that, like the 2600 and Intellivision-based TV games, the NES clone would be limited to just the games hardwired from the factory. Upon discovering that the thing actually has an honest-to-goodness cartridge slot, I realized it essentially was an NES, capable of playing any vintage NES cart I might happen to stumble across!

In the proud tradition of weird merchandise from overseas knock-off operations, this game console is sold as the "Game Fillip," with the tag line, "Have a good time!"



Goodness knows what they were getting at when they named the thing. A friend of mine theorized that they were trying to call it the Game Flip, in reference to the fact that the cartridge slot is hidden by a flip-up door.

Or maybe it's a reference to the fact that the user can flip through the several pages of onscreen menu and choose whichever game he or she wants to play?

I said this thing was playing the exact, same software contained in the original Nintendo cartridges, but that's not technically 100% accurate. In true knock-off merchant fashion, the manufacturer has changed the titles and splash screens of several games so their names are similar to those of the pirated source materials, but different enough in spelling or wording that there's just the most vague, hypothetical implication that copyright is not being infringed.

The funniest example of this is, hee, hee...


Dongkey Kong!

Snicker, giggle...


<BUTTHEAD VOICE>

He said, "dong."

</BUTTHEAD VOICE>

Another thing I like about this console is that its included light gun provides a fine illustration of the difference between our marketplace and culture and the one in which the bootleggers operate. Over here, it's a crime to remove the big, dorky, safety-orange part that visually distinguishes any BB or airsoft gun from a "real" firearm, and toy guns are almost always colored and styled in such a way that police officers would not likely  mistake them for real weapons and shoot a kid brandishing one.

Such concerns don't seem to exist in bootleg land:




I guess maybe in China it is just assumed that children will not do stupid things, especially when there are cops around.

I could easily see myself robbing a bank or hijacking an ice-cream truck with that thing!

Heck, it's almost all plastic. Remove one or two screws, and I'll bet I could get it into a courthouse or onto an airplane.

I wouldn't last one week in China.

Last edited by Bren (2009-03-06 5:12 pm)