GameKing is a brand of handheld game consoles , designed and developed by Timetop and manufactured by Guangzhou Panyu Gaoming Electronics Co., Ltd, (also known as GZ Daidaixing Tec.Electronics Co., Ltd.) in 2003, for the Hong Kong consumer market. The brand has three consoles, the GameKing I , the GameKing II and the GameKing III . A fourth console, the Handy Game , was produced by Timetop and shares some branding, but otherwise has little to do with the GameKing franchise.
89-502: The original GameKing console is an 8-bit handheld game console released in September 2004. It is based on a 65C02 CPU running at 6.0 MHz . It is fashioned to look like Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and comes in a wide array of vivid pastel colours, either opaque or transparent , and uses two AAA size batteries. The console has above-average sound circuitry capable of multi-channel music and digital sound playback, but
178-482: A bullet train , saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Starting in 1980, Nintendo began to release a series of electronic games designed by Yokoi called the Game & Watch games. Taking advantage of the technology used in the credit-card-sized calculators that had appeared on
267-407: A clone is hardware or software that is designed to function in exactly the same way as another system. A specific subset of clones are remakes (or remades ), which are revivals of old, obsolete, or discontinued products. Clones and remakes are created for reasons including competition, standardization , availability across platforms, and as homage . Compatibility with the original system
356-413: A touchscreen was the Game.com released by Tiger Electronics in 1997. The Nintendo DS , released in 2004, introduced touchscreen controls and wireless online gaming to a wider audience, becoming the best-selling handheld console with over 150 million units sold worldwide. This table describes handheld games consoles by generation, with over 1 million sales. No handheld achieved this prior to
445-561: A USB cable from a PC. The GP32 was redesigned in 2003. A front-lit screen was added and the new version was called GP32 FLU (Front Light Unit). In summer 2004, another redesign, the GP32 BLU, was made, and added a backlit screen. This version of the handheld was planned for release outside South Korea; in Europe, and it was released for example in Spain (VirginPlay was the distributor). While not
534-602: A backlit screen was released in some regions around the same time. Along with the GameCube , the GBA also introduced the concept of "connectivity": using a handheld system as a console controller. A handful of games use this feature, most notably Animal Crossing , Pac-Man Vs. , Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles , The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures , The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker , Metroid Prime , and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle . As of December 31, 2007,
623-560: A bug. Since the start of the video game industry, clones of successful concepts and games have been common. The first influential first-person shooter , Doom , led in the 1990s to the creation of a new genre dubbed as Doom clones . In the 2000s, the open world action-adventure Grand Theft Auto inspired the creation of many Grand Theft Auto clones . Remakes of software are revivals of old, obsolete, or discontinued software. A good share of software remakes are fangames of computer games and game engine recreation made by
712-598: A calculator, using LED (light-emitting diode) technology." The result was the 1976 release of Auto Race . Followed by Football later in 1977, the two games were so successful that according to Katz, "these simple electronic handheld games turned into a '$ 400 million category.'" Mattel would later win the honor of being recognized by the industry for innovation in handheld game device displays. Soon, other manufacturers including Coleco , Parker Brothers , Milton Bradley , Entex , and Bandai began following up with their own tabletop and handheld electronic games. In 1979
801-590: A commercial success on a level with mainstream handhelds (only 30,000 units were sold), it ended up being used mainly as a platform for user-made applications and emulators of other systems, being popular with developers and more technically adept users. Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003. It was designed as a combination MP3 player, cellphone, PDA, radio, and gaming device. The system received much criticism alleging defects in its physical design and layout, including its vertically oriented screen and requirement of removing
890-480: A comparably low quality non backlit grayscale LCD screen, only supporting four shades of grey and having a very low 48 x 32 pixels resolution. Games can be compared to some of the earlier built-in cell phone games (pre Java games), while their playing speed (scrolling etc.) and audio is far superior (multi-channel music and digitized samples and voices are quite common in GameKing games). The GameKing (GM-218)
979-549: A cost-cutting move rather than hard plastic cases that Japanese and European releases were shipped in may have also hurt US sales. The WonderSwan Color is a handheld game console designed by Bandai . It was released on December 9, 2000, in Japan, Although the WonderSwan Color was slightly larger and heavier (7 mm and 2 g) compared to the original WonderSwan, the color version featured 512 KB of RAM and
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#17327901148201068-471: A dearth of compelling games, and Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign, and despite a redesign in 1991, the Lynx became a commercial failure . Despite this, companies like Telegames helped to keep the system alive long past its commercial relevance, and when new owner Hasbro released the rights to develop for the public domain, independent developers like Songbird have managed to release new commercial games for
1157-655: A flight simulator, included a "head-to-head" dogfight mode that can only be accessed via TurboLink. However, very few TG-16 games offered co-op play modes especially designed with the TurboExpress in mind. The Bitcorp Gamate is one of the first handheld game systems created in response to the Nintendo Game Boy. It was released in Asia in 1990 and distributed worldwide by 1991. Like the Sega Game Gear, it
1246-463: A laptop computer), as well as a frontlit color display and rechargeable battery. Despite the smaller form factor, the screen remained the same size as that of the original. In 2005, the Game Boy Micro was released. This revision sacrifices screen size and backwards compatibility with previous Game Boys for a dramatic reduction in total size and a brighter backlit screen. A new SP model with
1335-475: A larger color LCD screen. In addition, the WonderSwan Color is compatible with the original WonderSwan library of games. Prior to WonderSwan's release, Nintendo had virtually a monopoly in the Japanese video game handheld market. After the release of the WonderSwan Color, Bandai took approximately 8% of the market share in Japan partly due to its low price of 6800 yen (approximately US$ 65). Another reason for
1424-546: A lot of power, they were not battery-friendly like the non-backlit original Game Boy whose monochrome graphics allowed longer battery life. By this point, rechargeable battery technology had not yet matured and so the more advanced game consoles of the time such as the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx did not have nearly as much success as the Game Boy. Even though third-party rechargeable batteries were available for
1513-444: A major feature of the Game Boy line, since it allowed each new launch to begin with a significantly larger library than any of its competitors. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell 118.69 million units worldwide. The console is capable of displaying up to 56 different colors simultaneously on screen from its palette of 32,768, and can add basic four-color shading to games that had been developed for
1602-701: A major leap in innovation, particularly in the second half with the release of the DS and PSP . In 2001, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance (GBA or AGB), which added two shoulder buttons, a larger screen, and more computing power than the Game Boy Color. The design was revised two years later when the Game Boy Advance SP (GBA SP), a more compact version, was released. The SP features a " clamshell " design (folding open and closed, like
1691-600: A million units were sold in the US. As of March 31, 2005, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined to sell over 118 million units worldwide. In 1987, Epyx created the Handy Game; a device that would become the Atari Lynx in 1989. It is the first color handheld console ever made, as well as the first with a backlit screen. It also features networking support with up to 17 other players, and advanced hardware that allows
1780-490: A much higher resolution, and can display 64 sprites at once, 16 per scanline, in 512 colors. Although the hardware can only handle 481 simultaneous colors. It has 8 kilobytes of RAM . The Turbo runs the HuC6820 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16 MHz . The optional "TurboVision" TV tuner includes RCA audio/video input, allowing users to use TurboExpress as a video monitor. The "TurboLink" allowed two-player play. Falcon ,
1869-399: A program's appearance and behavior. The reasons for software cloning may include circumventing undesirable licensing fees, acquiring knowledge about the features of the system or creating an interoperable alternative for an unsupported platform . GNU , a clone of UNIX , was motivated by a need of the free software movement for an operating system composed of entirely free software . In
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#17327901148201958-621: A third GameKing machine, called the 'GameKing III' or GM-220 sometime in 2005. While early advertisements showed the GameKing III with the same "false color" background picture as the GameKing I and II, which indicated that the system was black and white like the previous GameKing models, the GM-220 is full colour. Another distinction of the GM-220 is that unlike its predecessors, the Gameking I and II, which were promoted and marketed worldwide,
2047-534: A touch screen and stylus. However, Tiger hoped it would also challenge Nintendo's Game Boy and gain a following among younger gamers too. Unlike other handheld game consoles, the first game.com consoles included two slots for game cartridges, which would not happen again until the Tapwave Zodiac, the DS and DS Lite, and could be connected to a 14.4 kbit/s modem. Later models had only a single cartridge slot. The Game Boy Color (also referred to as GBC or CGB)
2136-499: A variety of video displays such as LED , VFD , or LCD . In 1978, handheld electronic games were described by Popular Electronics magazine as "nonvideo electronic games" and "non-TV games" as distinct from devices that required use of a television screen. Handheld electronic games, in turn, find their origins in the synthesis of previous handheld and tabletop electro-mechanical devices such as Waco 's Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe (1972) Cragstan's Periscope-Firing Range (1951), and
2225-436: Is The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition . A database clone is a complete and separate copy of a database system that includes the business data, the database management system software and any other application tiers that make up the environment. Cloning is a different kind of operation to replicate and backup , in that the cloned environment is both fully functional and separate in its own right. Additionally,
2314-589: Is Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy and was released on October 21, 1998, in Japan and in November of the same year in the United States. It features a color screen, and is slightly bigger than the Game Boy Pocket . The processor is twice as fast as a Game Boy's and has twice as much memory. It also had an infrared communications port for wireless linking which did not appear in later versions of
2403-401: Is a redesigned version of the original Game Boy having the same features. It was released in 1996. Notably, this variation is smaller and lighter. It comes in seven different colors; red, yellow, green, black, clear, silver, blue, and pink. It has space for two AAA batteries , which provide approximately 10 hours of game play. The screen was changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than
2492-620: Is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the console, screen, speakers, and controls in one unit, allowing players to carry them and play them at any time or place. In 1976, Mattel introduced the first handheld electronic game with the release of Auto Race . Later, several companies—including Coleco and Milton Bradley —made their own single-game, lightweight table-top or handheld electronic game devices. The first commercial successful handheld console
2581-413: Is always available through a series of cloud servers. Unlike remote management software, clone computing has no dependency on the host computer. Disk cloning is the process of copying the contents of one computer hard drive to another disk or to an "image" file. Typically, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded with the contents of
2670-414: Is from the GM-220 design, with the "A" button being distinctly larger than the "B" button, but the overall form is obviously inspired from Sony's PSP design. Several colors are shown on the back of the box, green and orange for example, however only two colors, a black edition and a white edition are confirmed to exist. GameKing III machines have a built-in game: At the moment the only known game carts for
2759-464: Is usually the explicit purpose of cloning hardware or low-level software such as operating systems (e.g. AROS and MorphOS are intended to be compatible with AmigaOS ). Application software is cloned by providing the same functionality. Commercially-motivated clones are made often during a competitor product's initial successful commercial run, intentionally competing with the original and trying to participate in their success. When IBM announced
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2848-556: The GP2X , use standard alkaline batteries . Because the mAh rating of alkaline batteries has increased since the 1990s, the power needed for handhelds like the GP2X may be supplied by relatively few batteries. Nintendo released the Game Boy on April 21, 1989 (September 1990 for the UK). The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch system, as well as
2937-557: The IBM PC in 1981, other companies such as Compaq decided to offer clones of the PC as a legal reimplementation from the PC's documentation or reverse engineering . Because most of the components, except the PC's BIOS , were publicly available, all Compaq had to do was reverse-engineer the BIOS. The result was a machine with similar performance and lower price than the machines cloned. The use of
3026-735: The Master System , which gave Sega the ability to quickly create Game Gear games from its large library of games for the Master System. While never reaching the level of success enjoyed by Nintendo, the Game Gear proved to be a fairly durable competitor, lasting longer than any other Game Boy rivals. While the Game Gear is most frequently seen in black or navy blue, it was also released in a variety of additional colors: red, light blue, yellow, clear, and violet. All of these variations were released in small quantities and frequently only in
3115-579: The Nintendo Entertainment System games Metroid and Kid Icarus . The Game Boy came under scrutiny by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi , saying that the monochrome screen was too small, and the processing power was inadequate. The design team had felt that low initial cost and battery economy were more important concerns, and when compared to the Microvision, the Game Boy was a huge leap forward. Yokoi recognized that
3204-471: The Sanyo MBC-550 and Data General/One , while not infringing on copyrights and adding innovations, tended to fail some compatibility tests strongly dependent upon detailed hardware compatibility (such as ability to run Microsoft Flight Simulator , or any software that bypassed the standard software interrupts and directly accessed hardware at the expected pre-defined locations, or—in the case of
3293-559: The fan community as part of retrogaming , to address e.g. compatibility issues or non-availability of the original, e.g. a shutdown server gets substituted with a server emulator . Since the 2000s there has been an increasing number of commercial remakes of classical games by the original developer or publisher for current platforms as the digital distribution lowers the investment risk for niche releases. When enhanced in some way (audio, graphics, etc.) new releases might be called "high definition" release or "special edition"; an example
3382-479: The "pea soup" monochromatic display of the original Game Boy. Although, like its predecessor, the Game Boy Pocket has no backlight to allow play in a darkened area, it did notably improve visibility and pixel response-time (mostly eliminating ghosting ). The first model of the Game Boy Pocket did not have an LED to show battery levels, but the feature was added due to public demand. The Game Boy Pocket
3471-517: The Asian market, possibly as late as 1994. The total number of games released for the system remains unknown. Gamate games were designed for stereo sound, but the console is only equipped with a mono speaker. The Game Gear is the third color handheld console, after the Lynx and the TurboExpress; produced by Sega. Released in Japan in 1990 and in North America and Europe in 1991, it is based on
3560-458: The Asian market. Following Sega's success with the Game Gear, they began development on a successor during the early 1990s, which was intended to feature a touchscreen interface, many years before the Nintendo DS . However, such a technology was very expensive at the time, and the handheld itself was estimated to have cost around $ 289 were it to be released. Sega eventually chose to shelve
3649-541: The GBA, GBA SP, and the Game Boy Micro combined have sold 80.72 million units worldwide. The original GP32 was released in 2001 by the South Korean company Game Park a few months after the launch of the Game Boy Advance. It featured a 32-bit CPU, 133 MHz processor, MP3 and Divx player, and e-book reader. SmartMedia cards were used for storage, and could hold up to 128mb of anything downloaded through
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3738-412: The Game Boy needed a killer app —at least one game that would define the console, and persuade customers to buy it. In June 1988, Minoru Arakawa , then-CEO of Nintendo of America saw a demonstration of the game Tetris at a trade show. Nintendo purchased the rights for the game, and packaged it with the Game Boy system as a launch title . It was almost an immediate hit. By the end of the year more than
3827-424: The Game Boy, such as the Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Color was a response to pressure from game developers for a new system, as they felt that the Game Boy, even in its latest incarnation, the Game Boy Pocket, was insufficient. The resulting product was backward compatible, a first for a handheld console system, and leveraged the large library of games and great installed base of the predecessor system. This became
3916-509: The GameKing II has a fixed color background picture for its LCD screen, only visible when the backlighting is switched on. This is probably to give the false impression of having a colour LCD screen, as implied on its box. The picture may vary between various GameKing models, however it has a mostly negative effect on screen readability when the backlighting is turned on. This background picture can also be removed or replaced simply by opening
4005-447: The GameKing III are: A distinct Timetop console exists which uses NES compatible hardware rather than the proprietary hardware of the other Gameking consoles, and also has an integrated TV output. While early mockups indicated this handheld was considered part of the Gameking line, Timetop eventually removed the gameking branding from this edition prior to its release, replacing it with "Timetop LTPS Handy Game" ( ironically, "handy-game"
4094-514: The GameKing, most GameKing games heavily rely on bitmap rather than tile-based rendering of the screen, e.g. most levels in its platform and shoot 'em up games are in reality large 4-colour bitmaps, instead of using the most common method of graphic tiles and tile maps, like in most other game consoles and arcade games. This was probably done for economic reasons (the CPU alone can handle all graphics easily, at that resolution) and easy development of
4183-519: The Gameking III was not distributed outside of Asia, making it much less common than the earlier models. In 2005, many websites initially reported the device as "coming soon", and it is not known why Timetop eventually decided to offer only a limited release. The resolution doesn't seem enhanced compared to an original GameKing, and "classic" GameKing cartridges are automatically colorized, while games especially developed for it allegedly make use of
4272-531: The Gameking line, and therefore one would expect more advanced hardware, it is in fact a redesigned Gameking II with the back-light removed (notice however that the box for the GM-221 and GM-222 both show exactly the same false color screen shot, despite the two machines vastly different capabilities). It is not known why Timetop chose to release the GM-222 in this fashion, although renderings exist that show this design
4361-526: The LCD-based Microvision , designed by Smith Engineering and distributed by Milton-Bradley, became the first handheld game console and the first to use interchangeable game cartridges. The Microvision game Cosmic Hunter (1981) also introduced the concept of a directional pad on handheld gaming devices, and is operated by using the thumb to manipulate the on-screen character in any of four directions. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi , traveling on
4450-613: The MBC-550 for example—wrote diskettes which could not be directly interchanged with standard IBM PCs). While the term has mostly fallen into commercial disuse, the term clone for PCs still applies to a PC made to entry-level or above standard (at the time it was made) which bears no commercial branding (e.g., Acer , Dell , HP , IBM). This includes, but is not limited to, PCs assembled by home users or corporate IT departments. (See also White box (computer hardware) .) There were many Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clones due to
4539-539: The Neo Geo Pocket Color was dropped from both the US and European markets, purportedly due to commercial failure. The system seemed well on its way to being a success in the U.S. It was more successful than any Game Boy competitor since Sega 's Game Gear , but was hurt by several factors, such as SNK's infamous lack of communication with third-party developers, and anticipation of the Game Boy Advance. The decision to ship U.S. games in cardboard boxes in
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#17327901148204628-523: The United States, the case of Lotus v. Borland allows the functionality of a program to be cloned so long as copyright in the code and interface is not infringed. Yet, the public interface may also be subject to copyright to the extent that it contains expression (such as the appearance of an icon). For example, in August 2012, Electronic Arts , via its Maxis division, put forth a lawsuit against Zynga , claiming that its Facebook game , The Ville ,
4717-530: The WonderSwan's success in Japan was the fact that Bandai managed to get a deal with Square to port over the original Famicom Final Fantasy games with improved graphics and controls. However, with the popularity of the Game Boy Advance and the reconciliation between Square and Nintendo, the WonderSwan Color and its successor, the SwanCrystal quickly lost its competitive advantage . The 2000s saw
4806-537: The battery to change game cartridges. The most well known of these was " sidetalking ", or the act of placing the phone speaker and receiver on an edge of the device instead of one of the flat sides, causing the user to appear as if they are speaking into a taco . The N-Gage QD was later released to address the design flaws of the original. However, certain features available in the original N-Gage, including MP3 playback, FM radio reception, and USB connectivity were removed. Clone (computer science) In computing ,
4895-446: The battery-hungry alternatives to the Game Boy, these batteries employed a nickel-cadmium process and had to be completely discharged before being recharged to ensure maximum efficiency; lead-acid batteries could be used with automobile circuit limiters (cigarette lighter plug devices); but the batteries had mediocre portability. The later NiMH batteries, which do not share this requirement for maximum efficiency, were not released until
4984-499: The cloned environment may be modified at its inception due to configuration changes or data subsetting. Since 2010, clone computing, in the sense of replicating a session on a host computer in a virtual instance in the cloud , has been introduced. This allows the user to have access to a copy of their PC's desktop on any other computing device such as a tablet computer , a personal computer running any operating system, WebOS, smartphones , etc. The clone computer replicates, runs, and
5073-401: The emerging optoelectronic -display-driven calculator market of the early 1970s. This synthesis happened in 1976, when "Mattel began work on a line of calculator-sized sports games that became the world's first handheld electronic games. The project began when Michael Katz, Mattel's new product category marketing director, told the engineers in the electronics group to design a game the size of
5162-462: The fourth generation of game consoles. This list does not include dedicated consoles , such as LCD games and the Tamagotchi . The origins of handheld game consoles are found in handheld and tabletop electronic game devices of the 1970s and early 1980s. These electronic devices are capable of playing only a single game, they fit in the palm of the hand or on a tabletop, and they may make use of
5251-643: The full color palette, which for the moment remains unknown. The site claimed a total of 12 carts for this system. If the built-in game is included, 8 titles are known as of 2010. A new design for the GKIII was placed in April 2006 at the Timetop site, and later removed (see GM-221, below). A second design for the Gameking III also exists which combines elements from the GM-219 with the GM-220. The Button design and layout
5340-512: The games, apart from the objectively low resolution of the screen. While such a scheme seems to work, it has the disadvantage of using cartridge space inefficiently, so that e.g. most platform games are limited to three levels. The GameKing II (GM-219) released in October 2004, on the other hand, is fashioned to look like Sony's PlayStation Portable , comes in more sober colors (either black , grey , white or aqua - and although not shown on
5429-546: The idea and instead release the Genesis Nomad , a handheld version of the Genesis , as the successor. The Watara Supervision was released in 1992 in an attempt to compete with the Nintendo Game Boy. The first model was designed very much like a Game Boy, but it is grey in color and has a slightly larger screen. The second model was made with a hinge across the center and can be bent slightly to provide greater comfort for
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#17327901148205518-469: The image. A cloned drive can replace the original, rather than simply containing backup copies of files. Cloning software replicates the operating system, drives, software and patches of one computer for a variety of purposes, including setting up multiple computers, hard drive upgrades, and system recovery in the event of disk failure or corruption. In computer programming , particularly object-oriented programming , cloning refers to object copying by
5607-477: The late 1990s, years after the Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and original Game Boy had been discontinued. During the time when technologically superior handhelds had strict technical limitations, batteries had a very low mAh rating since batteries with heavy power density were not yet available. Modern game systems such as the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable have rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries with proprietary shapes. Other seventh-generation consoles, such as
5696-465: The machine and removing the small plastic transparency behind the LCD. Removing it makes using the backlighting much more effective. This model would also be the last in the Gameking line to have the text "3in1" stamped above the screen. The GM-222 was released in 2006 and sports an original design, which does not borrow much from previous models. Even though it is sequenced later than the other consoles in
5785-490: The market, Yokoi designed the series of LCD-based games to include a digital time display in the corner of the screen. For later, more complicated Game & Watch games, Yokoi invented a cross shaped directional pad or "D-pad" for control of on-screen characters. Yokoi also included his directional pad on the NES controllers, and the cross-shaped thumb controller soon became standard on game console controllers and ubiquitous across
5874-453: The original Game Boy ones, with a typical size of 128KB, although 4-in-1 cartridges are available, containing 4 normal GameKing games plus a selection menu, and have a maximum size of 512KB. Both the GameKing and GameKing II come with three built in games. Here follows an incomplete list of known games. Please note that many GameKing games use the same program altering only graphics to create "new" games e.g. 2003 and 2004 are essentially
5963-596: The original Game Boy. It can also give the sprites and backgrounds separate colors, for a total of more than four colors. The Neo Geo Pocket Color (or NGPC) was released in 1999 in Japan, and later that year in the United States and Europe. It is a 16-bit color handheld game console designed by SNK , the maker of the Neo Geo home console and arcade machine. It came after SNK's original Neo Geo Pocket monochrome handheld, which debuted in 1998 in Japan. In 2000 following SNK's purchase by Japanese Pachinko manufacturer Aruze,
6052-444: The other, for an early 3D effect . In 1983, Takara Tomy 's Tomytronic 3D simulates 3D by having two LCD panels that were lit by external light through a window on top of the device, making it the first dedicated home video 3D hardware. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the beginnings of the modern-day handheld game console industry, after the demise of the Microvision. As backlit LCD game consoles with color graphics consume
6141-512: The packaging, yellow ones do also exist), and uses 3 AAA size batteries, of which only 2 are used to actually power up the GameKing's hardware, while the third one serves to power up both its built-in audio amplifier (a bit more powerful than the one on the original GameKing) and its backlit LCD screen (which can be turned on and off at will, depending on external lighting conditions, thus saving power). The unit can still work with 2 batteries, only with no sound and no backlighting available. Also,
6230-533: The popularity and longevity of the Nintendo Entertainment System . Examples for hardware remakes include recent home computer remakes. A special kind of hardware remakes are emulators which implement the hardware functionality completely in software. For instance, the WinUAE emulator software tries to behave exactly like a physical Amiga . Software can be cloned by reverse engineering or legal reimplementation from documentation or other sources, or by observing
6319-734: The same game with minor differences. Also, many games have major inconsistencies between the box, manual and in-game title. E.g., Lanneret becomes Hawk in the game title, Feichuan becomes "Shenzhou Liuhao" in the game, or Carlo Adventure Legend becomes Caro in-game. Notes: The two previous titles are the only motor or sports games available on the GameKing. Games are generally sold in separate cartridges, but there are 4-in-1 cartridges holding 4 distinct games. Later games seem to be only available in this manner. Also, each 4-in-1 pack comes numbered and higher numbers seem to provide games that are more refined in presentation. Some of these games found in 4-in-1 cartridges are: TimeTop quietly released
6408-605: The system every year until 2004's Winter Games . The TurboExpress is a portable version of the TurboGrafx, released in 1990 for $ 249.99. Its Japanese equivalent is the PC Engine GT . It is the most advanced handheld of its time and can play all the TurboGrafx-16 's games (which are on a small, credit-card sized media called HuCards ). It has a 66 mm (2.6 in.) screen, the same as the original Game Boy, but in
6497-493: The term "PC clone" to describe IBM PC compatible computers fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of machines it now describes are simply called PCs, but the early use of the term "clone" usually implied a higher level of compatibility with the original IBM PC than "PC-Compatible", with (often Taiwanese) clones of the original circuit (and possibly ROMs) the most compatible (in terms of software they would run and hardware tests they would pass), while "legitimate" new designs such as
6586-545: The units' manuals. The GameKing requires 3V DC, while the GameKing2 requires 4.5V DC with the peculiarity of needing to keep at least one battery in the unit in order to have sound and backlighting. The console has a small selection of known games (38), being 3 built in and 35 in carts, although 37 games were said to be available by TimeTop. Most games are clones of famous NES , C64 or Atari 2600 titles, with heavily dropped graphics. The games come in cartridges resembling
6675-447: The user. While the system did enjoy a modest degree of success, it never impacted the sales of Nintendo or Sega. The Supervision was redesigned a final time as "The Magnum". Released in limited quantities it was roughly equivalent to the Game Boy Pocket . It was available in three colors: yellow, green and grey. Watara designed many of the games themselves, but did receive some third party support, most notably from Sachen . A TV adapter
6764-607: The video game industry since. When Yokoi began designing Nintendo's first handheld game console, he came up with a device that married the elements of his Game & Watch devices and the Famicom console, including both items' D-pad controller. The result was the Nintendo Game Boy. In 1982, the Bandai LCD Solarpower was the first solar-powered gaming device. Some of its games, such as the horror -themed game Terror House , features two LCD panels , one stacked on
6853-419: The zooming and scaling of sprites. The Lynx can also be turned upside down to accommodate left-handed players. However, all these features came at a very high price point, which drove consumers to seek cheaper alternatives. The Lynx is also very unwieldy, consumes batteries very quickly, and lacked the third-party support enjoyed by its competitors. Due to its high price, short battery life, production shortages,
6942-547: Was Merlin from 1978, which sold more than 5 million units. The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges is the Milton Bradley Microvision in 1979. Nintendo is credited with popularizing the handheld console concept with the release of the Game Boy in 1989 and continues to dominate the handheld console market. The first internet -enabled handheld console and the first with
7031-634: Was a direct clone of EA's own Facebook game, The Sims Social . The lawsuit challenges that The Ville not only copies the gameplay mechanics of The Sims Social , but also uses art and visual interface aspects that appear to be inspired by The Sims Social . The two companies settled out of court on undisclosed terms in February 2013. Examples of software cloning include the ReactOS project which tries to clone Microsoft Windows , and GNU Octave , which treats incompatibility with MathWorks MATLAB as
7120-536: Was available in a large variety of colors with some faceplaces containing very elaborate designs. Colors included silver, black, green, yellow, and pink. The NES-clone version of the GameKing III has its own selection of games, most of them being pirated or unlicensed NES games or variations. These come multi-carts with combinations such as 26in1, 49in1, and 72in1, etc. No HandyGame carts are compatible with any previous model. XGP Handheld game console A handheld game console , or simply handheld console ,
7209-549: Was available in both PAL and NTSC formats that could transfer the Supervision's black-and-white palette to 4 colors, similar in some regards to the Super Game Boy from Nintendo. The Hartung Game Master is an obscure handheld released at an unknown point in the early 1990s. Its graphics fidelity was much lower than most of its contemporaries, displaying just 64x64 pixels. It was available in black, white, and purple, and
7298-623: Was frequently rebranded by its distributors, such as Delplay, Videojet and Systema. The exact number of games released is not known, but is likely around 20. The system most frequently turns up in Europe and Australia. By this time, the lack of significant development in Nintendo 's product line began allowing more advanced systems such as the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the WonderSwan Color to be developed. The Nomad
7387-551: Was horizontal in orientation and like the Game Boy, required 4 AA batteries. Unlike many later Game Boy clones, its internal components were professionally assembled (no "glop-top" chips). Unfortunately the system's fatal flaw is its screen. Even by the standards of the day, its screen is rather difficult to use, suffering from similar ghosting problems that were common complaints with the first generation Game Boys. Likely because of this fact sales were quite poor, and Bitcorp closed by 1992. However, new games continued to be published for
7476-415: Was intended at some point to be a full color model. It was available in charcoal, blue, and green. The two models are fully hardware compatible, can use the same games/cartridges, both have volume and contrast controls and use the same LCD screen. Also, they both have an external DC power supply 3.5 mm minijack plug; however, the plug is not labeled as such, and its function is only slightly hinted at in
7565-484: Was not a new software platform and played the same software as the original Game Boy model. The Game.com (pronounced in TV commercials as "game com", not "game dot com", and not capitalized in marketing material) is a handheld game console released by Tiger Electronics in September 1997. It featured many new ideas for handheld consoles and was aimed at an older target audience, sporting PDA-style features and functions such as
7654-542: Was released in Italy by Giocattoli Linea Paggio. It is unclear whether the machine uses a traditional programmable sound generator or relies only on digital samples for music and sound effects. Many of its games have soundtracks consisting of short audio samples with a sampling rate of 8 kHz , as opposed to games on other systems such as the Game Boy where sound is generated by a custom programmable sound generator. According to Brian Provinciano's reverse engineering of
7743-510: Was released in October 1995 in North America only. The release was six years into the market span of the Genesis, with an existing library of more than 500 Genesis games. According to former Sega of America research and development head Joe Miller, the Nomad was not intended to be the Game Gear's replacement; he believed that there was little planning from Sega of Japan for the new handheld. Sega
7832-601: Was supporting five different consoles: Saturn , Genesis, Game Gear , Pico , and the Master System , as well as the Sega CD and 32X add-ons. In Japan, the Mega Drive had never been successful and the Saturn was more successful than Sony's PlayStation , so Sega Enterprises CEO Hayao Nakayama decided to focus on the Saturn. By 1999, the Nomad was being sold at less than a third of its original price. The Game Boy Pocket
7921-567: Was the working title EPYX coined in 1987 for what would become the Atari Lynx). The console comes with 25 built-in games and is also able to accept cartridges, however their size and connectors are different from (and incompatible with) previous Gameking consoles. The game selection includes games typically found on NES clones, like 1942 , Pooyan or Dig Dug , as well as graphic ROM hacks of famous NES games (for example, using Blue's Journey graphics with Adventure Island ). The GM-228
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