It's been an interesting few weeks to say the least.
Things started off rather sadly with the emergence of screen rot in my Mega Duck handheld. Starting off as just a couple of pixels this sadly this appears to be spreading.
If you don't know what screen rot is then Guru Larry covered it in his most recent Youtube video.
In essence it looks like this:
Things started off rather sadly with the emergence of screen rot in my Mega Duck handheld. Starting off as just a couple of pixels this sadly this appears to be spreading.
If you don't know what screen rot is then Guru Larry covered it in his most recent Youtube video.
In essence it looks like this:
See that reddish substance that appears to be something under the screen. It's actually a patch of rot that will, over time, expand until the whole screen is useless. :(
Sadly this "screen cancer" is unstoppable and a plague on early handhelds.
The deteriorating condition of this unit (the external speakers went kaput earlier in the year) is what has led to a slowing in what I had hoped to be a comprehensive Mega Duck section of the site as, while I now own 98% of the system's software. I've been trying to secure a replacement unit to play them on to no avail.
I did manage to review the above pictured 'Snake Roy', however and you can find it by clicking here.
As I was in a snakey mood I also added a review of Sssnake to the Supervision section of the website.
I want to get on to the really exciting news though. As you may know from reading this site, here at Obsolete Worlds we are huge fans of the Timetop GameKing and currently own multiple iterations of both the original monochrome unit and it's backlit successor the GameKing 2.
Many people don't realise, however, that a third GameKing unit did manage to sneak out onto the market before Timetop crumbled under the weight of its own obsolescence. The GameKing III is so mythical that only about five pictures of it exist on the internet and there are zero videos of it to substantiate it's actual existance as anything other than a prototype.
I was bemused then, to see it listed one pop up on ebay's UK website a few weeks ago and even more amazed to secure it for the not at all Kingly sum of just £16.99!
Finally after a convoluted shipping route the system has arrived here on Obsolete Island and this Holy Grail of handheld obscurity can finally be explored and documented.
Sadly this "screen cancer" is unstoppable and a plague on early handhelds.
The deteriorating condition of this unit (the external speakers went kaput earlier in the year) is what has led to a slowing in what I had hoped to be a comprehensive Mega Duck section of the site as, while I now own 98% of the system's software. I've been trying to secure a replacement unit to play them on to no avail.
I did manage to review the above pictured 'Snake Roy', however and you can find it by clicking here.
As I was in a snakey mood I also added a review of Sssnake to the Supervision section of the website.
I want to get on to the really exciting news though. As you may know from reading this site, here at Obsolete Worlds we are huge fans of the Timetop GameKing and currently own multiple iterations of both the original monochrome unit and it's backlit successor the GameKing 2.
Many people don't realise, however, that a third GameKing unit did manage to sneak out onto the market before Timetop crumbled under the weight of its own obsolescence. The GameKing III is so mythical that only about five pictures of it exist on the internet and there are zero videos of it to substantiate it's actual existance as anything other than a prototype.
I was bemused then, to see it listed one pop up on ebay's UK website a few weeks ago and even more amazed to secure it for the not at all Kingly sum of just £16.99!
Finally after a convoluted shipping route the system has arrived here on Obsolete Island and this Holy Grail of handheld obscurity can finally be explored and documented.
Unlike the GameKing 1 and 2, this final iteration of the GameKing is special for a number of reasons.
Like its predecessors it is its own proprietary system and, if this promotional screenshot found on the internet can be believed, had at least a handful of games released for it.
Like its predecessors it is its own proprietary system and, if this promotional screenshot found on the internet can be believed, had at least a handful of games released for it.
The version that we've obtained comes in metallic purple and takes 3x AAA batteries to power what appears to be a 64 colour TFT screen. Unlike the original monochrome GameKing systems which featured 3 built in games, the GameKing III only has one, a vertical shooter called Galaxy Crisis, that plays very similarly to previous Gameking shmups such as Ares.
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I fully expect that tracking down GameKing III cartridges will prove to be even trickier than tracking down the harder find multi-carts of the original GameKing has been, however the GameKing III does have one more interesting use: It is fully backwardly compatible with ALL existing GameKing carts...and it can display them in COLOUR!
The original GameKing titles were programmed in four shades of grey, this can lead to rather mixed results on the GameKing III. Some like Lanneret are definitely improved with a nice mix of green and brown seeming to fit well with the Choplifter clone. Others are more randomly assingned and end up looking like a garish LSD flashback or at best a Dragon 32k game running in "Buff" mode. Some game's become legitimately unplayable due to the random colour assignment. Now you see why Nintendo chose pre-set palettes for the GBC!
The original GameKing titles were programmed in four shades of grey, this can lead to rather mixed results on the GameKing III. Some like Lanneret are definitely improved with a nice mix of green and brown seeming to fit well with the Choplifter clone. Others are more randomly assingned and end up looking like a garish LSD flashback or at best a Dragon 32k game running in "Buff" mode. Some game's become legitimately unplayable due to the random colour assignment. Now you see why Nintendo chose pre-set palettes for the GBC!
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What this does mean is that we now have another option for capturing screenshots for the Gameking review section of the website. For future reviews we'll try to include screenshots from the monochrome game running on a GameKing 2 and the colourised version running on the GameKing III.
Well, that about wraps up this update. Now if anyone can point me in the direction of a healthy Mega Duck for sale it would be appreciated.
Well, that about wraps up this update. Now if anyone can point me in the direction of a healthy Mega Duck for sale it would be appreciated.
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