Nintendo plug and Play

An interesting 3 piece unit it includes 2 game pads. The main controller is shaped like a N64 controller and has 4 buttons plus a start, select and reset button. On the back of the controller is an on/off switch and a jack to plug another controller into, an Audio/Video RCA jack and a power adapter jack. On the bottom of the controller is a place to put 4 AA batteries and a cartridge slot.

The Power Player Super Joystick 3 - 76000 in 1 is an interesting unit and an obvious Chinese bootleg. It is for all intents and purposes a Nintendo or Famicom system stuck into a controller. It is however a device that works well with the games it includes.

The second game pad is like a SNES controller but more akin to a Genesis controller, with the six buttons, although they are duplicate rows of three. It also has a start button.

The package also includes a light gun that can be plugged into the main controller instead of the second player controller. Like most light guns it can only be used on a CRT(Old tube TV), you can not use it on a new LCD or Plasma screen and the 100hrz CRTs might even be a problem. Including a light gun makes this package some what unique. Even if televisions that will support it are less and less in number. The Power Player Super Joystick 3 also came with a power adapter and an Audio/Video cable.

The Power Player Super Joystick 3 says it includes 76000 games and we just have to trust them. I did take the twenty minutes to scroll through a giant list of games and noticed there are a lot of duplicates. There must be twenty versions of pac-man and as far as I can tell they are the same. The names of the games aren’t always right. Donkey Kong is for instance Donkey Kong Jr. With such a large list and so many duplicates it is hard to say just how many games this thing has. It seems to include most of the popular NES/Famicom games and the arcade renditions as well as a few I have never heard of. I suspect it has an almost complete NES game library, with games from various manufacturers and possibly in various languages.

It also has two player support for those games that can use it and so a friend can play allowing for some socializing too. I do generally play the games by my self but having the option is really nice and many of the NES games are a lot of fun with a second player.

Having all these cables coming out of the controller can make it little awkward at times. But you can use batteries and the single game pad if you don’t need a second controller or have no place to plug in the adapter.

The system is most likely using a Nintendo on a chip and original ROM images. It is the only system that actually makes sense to be using the NES on a chip.

Having the light gun included for games like Duck Hunt is a plus and really adds to the system.

Having the 3 controllers it is more like a regular console and would have been nice to have a small console that you could attach all the controllers to. This would be more convenient than having all the other controllers tethered and flopping around when you play alone. I should probably mention that you can only have one extra controller plugged in at a time, the extra game pad or the light gun not both. If you are playing alone you do not have to have any extra controllers attached.

As it seems to be running the NES chip the games are pretty much perfect. I don't have a NES that works or all the games to check against and do not feel the need to check them against MESS or another NES emulator. There are plenty of games so every gamer should be able to find something they can play and is fun to pass the time with. Although some games can take a long time to master, most take very little work to understand and get playing, they also do not require a huge commitment on your part. They are fun and re-playable games. The graphics are not bad at all, far better than the Atari/Activision plug and plays and as good as or better than the Arcade plug and plays. I should of course note that the Atari 2600/Activision games didn't have the same graphics power as a NES in the first place.

The number of games is a drawback in some ways, just to many to choose from and scroll through to find the game you want to play. They also don’t seem to be in any particular order, so finding the game you want can take a while. You can move forward and backwards through the list and can jump by page too, it still takes a while to get where your going. There are no instructions for the games included with the system so it can take a bit to figure out what you have to do. At least there are only 4 buttons to worry about. On the plus side you don’t have to switch out cartridges. There is a cartridge slot but I couldn’t find a cartridge that fit it, it may be for Famicom cartridges, I really don’t know.

Considering the number of games they had to choose from and the fact that it doesn’t seem to be licensed, they included a lot of good games from various companies.