Hey, remember this?
Miraculously, it's dumped and emulated now! And after some code investigation, the story gets even more intriguing.
Miraculously, it's dumped and emulated now! And after some code investigation, the story gets even more intriguing.
So the chip powering this thing is the UM6578. Yeah yeah I know, yawn, chip number, but hear me out.
This chip is from UMC, the company that made some of the earliest Famicom clones, and one of (maybe the?) first to get the entire system down to just one chip.
This chip is from UMC, the company that made some of the earliest Famicom clones, and one of (maybe the?) first to get the entire system down to just one chip.
It's also the earliest known hardware enhancement on an NES clone, adding more memory and colors. Enhanced NES clones as a cheap portable system chip are super common, even now. Hell, you can buy one at Walmart with some terrible original games on it: walmart.com/ip/dreamGEAR-D…
This chipset wasn't generally known before basically a couple days ago, and today not only is it documented and emulated, we have games from THREE different systems that used it, including the Game Pad. Basically it's a newly discovered video game system: masterdisk.byethost15.com/blog/libg/inde…
So. The Game Pad. Holy hell is this thing interesting. It's:
- The first enhanced NES hardware product we know of
- The first embedded NES-alike that has original games on it
- The predecessor to the "plug & play" game system, a category that has been strong for 20 years now
- The first enhanced NES hardware product we know of
- The first embedded NES-alike that has original games on it
- The predecessor to the "plug & play" game system, a category that has been strong for 20 years now
And even more than that, a code investigation shows that it shares some DNA with a lot of the unofficial games coming out of Taiwan. It shares the same sound driver with some of the later Sachen games, even, and it's a product made for Bandai in Japan!
It's not conclusively MADE BY ex-Sachen developers, as others in Taiwan used the driver, but it might be! And if it is, this is pretty fun for me, because one of the first big game preservation things I did was import and dump all the Sachen stuff.
20 years later STILL DOIN IT
20 years later STILL DOIN IT
This is a good way of thinking about it, especially for the JungleTac stuff, but also a little bit iffy because I don't know of any of the other enhancements spun off of this one or if they were done on their own.
This wouldn't have been dumped without Chris finding a spare unit in a shop! These things are stupid rare and I didn't want to risk the original. So glad to check this one off the list.
