Super Joy 3: The Review!

Earlier I did a quick once over for the Super Joy 3 that I own, and I didn’t quite go into too much detail. Today we are going to delve as deep into this thing as we possibly can without getting lead poisoning. The very first thing you are going to notice when you pick up one of the Super Joy units is the fact that the housing looks a lot like a Nintendo 64 controller, so I will be comparing the two quite a bit. The second thing you’re going to notice is just how cheap and plasticky this thing feels, and that is pretty much the theme throughout.

To start off, the controls are shoved quite a bit more to the center than they are on the N64 controller. The D-pad is essentially the same, but its way off to the right of where it should be. Instead of the C buttons, here you have 2 pairs of A and B buttons, one set being standard and the other set for turbo. More toward the center you have the Reset button next to a slant aligned Start and Select buttons, and a functionless joystick simply screwed on from the inside.

The Super Joy design has done away with the N64’s trigger and they’ve turned the memory card port into the battery pack holder. On the very top left you have the AV outputs, in the middle there is the typical and super cheap looking 9 pin controller port (much cheaper looking than Atari and Sega used) and to the right is the power adapter input and On/Off switch. Since I don’t own the right power adapter, I run mine off 4 AA batteries. Performance seems to be ok, although I can’t compare between the batteries and power adapter. Underneath all Super Joy units, that I’ve seen, there is a 60 pin connector for running ROM boards (mine had a cover on it) which means your unit is either run off a ROM board or you can use Famicom cartridges with it.

As you would expect from anything built in China, this thing is cheap and functions as such. Often times I will find myself hitting the A or B button and getting random reactions or none at all. The D-pad seems to be only slightly inaccurate, but watch out for the extremely willing to work Reset button, which can often be confused for the start button when you need to pause a game in a hurry. The games within my Super Joy 3 (listed in a previous article) are obvious classics, as if they didn’t even really care about copyrights and didn’t try to hide what these games were. The games all function properly with the exception of Super Mario Bros., which is sped up quite a bit.

Within the unit is a mess of wires and three different printed boards, one strictly to handle the controls, another is attached to the 60 pin connector and the other is the main brain of the clone. The wires look cheaply soldered into place and although I’m not a master at soldering either, it just looks like a mess. The extreme bare essentials are thrown in, the components are cheap and that causes a loud buzz in the audio and there are lines running vertically across the screen.

The slot around the 60 pin connector on the bottom of mine is way to small for me to properly insert Famicom cartridges, but I did take the unit apart and they do work! Like wise, after I built my first Famicom to NES converter, I took the ROM board out of my Super Joy and played it on the NES, that works too! Some Super Joys have a bigger cartridge slot than mine, I believe mine was built strictly to be run off the ROM board in the hopes it would never be removed, they sure didn’t see me ever getting my hands on this thing!

I bought my Super Joy 3 at a thrift store for around $4, and if I found another I would more than likely pay $4 for it too. Since this has the option to run off batteries, which have lasted longer than I thought, these units are ideal for packing with you for a trip. The games are fun and the unit is, for the most part, functional. I love playing the original games on the original hardware, but this thing just gives you so many choices that its hard to put it down sometimes. The issues with the audio buzz and lines on the screen tend to fade away, once you’re focused in on playing a game. It does lie and say it gives you 12000 choices while in reality it is only 120-ish, but even so I’ve found this thing to be a lot of fun.

Posted July 26th, 2011

Attack of the Clones!

With as often as I go to flea markets and thrift stores, I see a lot of crazy items. Some of these items aren’t even related to video games, but sometimes I see things that are video game related that are just as crazy, such as the onslaught of systems known as Famiclones. These systems are made in China, boast an insane number of games or features it can’t truly offer and are built within slightly modified and brightly colored gaming systems we already know and love. I personally own 2 handheld Famiclones, I believe only one of them slightly works as I can’t test the other because I tried to power it up with an NES power supply and think I fried it.

My Super Joy 3 next to an N64 controller. Top (left) and bottom (right) comparison.

Since Nintendo let the patents to the Famicom and the NES go, you would assume these systems would be sold anywhere other Chinese goods are sold, but you’d be wrong. See, it isn’t the hardware that these companies create (or ripped-off, depending on your point of view) but the illegally pirated software within the units that comes under fire and keeps them off most store shelves. Essentially the system is a Nintendo on a chip, or NoaC, which emulates (to an extent) the same features the Famicom and NES did, while packing in game ROMs to make it a complete system with games. Some will boast anywhere from 76 to 99 million built-in games, which isn’t true. Although you may see that many choices, most of the games are split up into certain levels of the same game featured over and over within the system.

For example my Super Joy 3 offers 12000 games incuding: Super Mario Bros., Tennis, Baseball (utterly broken), Arkanoid, 1942, Pacman, Donkey Kong 3, Dig Dug, Clu Clu Land, Super C and a few other titles, from the maybe 30-40 original titles within the system, the rest of the choices are areas 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, etc. of Super Mario Bros., or different levels of Super C. Also, as you may suspect, these units are Chinese made so they aren’t built to stand the test of time, my Super Joy 3 has a terrible buzz and there are lines on the screen, but once you’re captured in a game it really tends to fade away to an extent. I do have to admit that I have had quite a bit of fun with my Super Joy 3, its fun to have that many games in your hands and it feels closer to the real thing than PC emulators.

So if the systems emulate the NES instead of the Famicom, why are they called Famiclones? Well, that is because most of them have a 60 pin connector attached to them, which is standard for the Famicom as the NES systems all used 72 pins. I’ve seen evidence that you may also be able to play official Famicom cartridges on these units, some other Famiclones are geared specifically for doing just that, but since I only own the handheld units and don’t own any Famicom games, I can’t claim this to be true.

My Super Joy 3 (left) and Power Joy (right) 60 pin connectors.

The systems range from Playstation shaped all the way to the odd shape of my Power Joy, which is like an N64 controller mixed with a jet fighter toy to allow for the light gun built into the unit. These systems almost always use a 9 pin input, much like the Atari 2600 or Sega Genesis, for a second controller or light gun. The handheld units can be run off batteries or DC adapters, they also have the standard power on/off switch, a reset button, D-pad, A and B with matching turbo buttons above them as well as start and select buttons. If you’re use to the N64 controller, at times you may want to pause the game and instead hit the reset button, but if you know what you’re looking for you can always scroll through the games and find the level you were on listed somewhere along the way.

All it took was buying the Power Joy for $1 that set off my obsession with wanting to understand the Famiclones. These units are often used for parts to create better handheld versions of the full systems they emulate, but on their own they’re pretty weak. These items will never come close to replacing the original Famicom, but for those of us who either can’t afford or don’t want to hunt down a working Famicom system, these might do enough to pass the time until we just can’t live without the real thing anymore. I will be doing more research and testing with mine as well as hopefully getting more Famiclones to test, but the bottom line is, I just want to enjoy the Famicom even in this sad, cloned, fraction of a sense.

Posted April 24th, 2011