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chuckroWe visited several gatchapon-specific stores while touring various parts of Japan (and also the machines are pretty much everywhere—every convenience store and gift shop has at least a few), but I wasn’t going to actually put money into any of them because I didn’t need any figurines or other doodads. Well, then I saw one that had mini-handhelds in it for 400 Yen ($2.50) and my resolve was broken.
I got a purple “Electro Game Collection 4”. (I’m not clear on whether all of the available handhelds are part of “collection 4” or if this was #4 in this collection.) It’s a horizontal design, shaped roughly like a GBA. The whole thing is less than 3” across and it has a 1” LCD screen that’s clearly of the same style as the Pro200 Gaming System or 23in1 Super Game. It squeezes 12 tiny buttons (4 of which make up a d-pad) onto the face and it’s powered by a button-cell watch battery. After about a minute of inactivity, the device shuts itself off. It plays a tinny bit from “Ode to Joy” when you press Reset. (Turning it on/off actually saves the state of whatever you’re playing!) Oh, and it’s got a keychain attached.
The four face buttons all seem to do exactly the same thing, mind you. None of the games seem to need more than a single button (and a couple only use the d-pad). But that’s okay, because they’re so small that it’s a trick to just hit one of them with my thumb—using the tiny d-pad (especially since it’s also 4 separate buttons) is a challenge if you’re going for precision input; though I think it says something that I can declare it’s not the worst D-pad I’ve used.
From the home screen, the up and down buttons change the number of the game (01-99), while left and right change the speed and level. (Let me note again that this screen is tiny. I can barely read the “speed” and “level” labels.) Pressing the face buttons rotates you through the letters, which seem to be different games.
The games are terrible LCD games like we’ve seen on other systems of this type, but some of them are new!
A is a tank-battle game against four tanks that respawn endlessly.
B is a “racing” game; it’s a two-lane dodge-em-up.
C is some kind of guessing game. I couldn’t figure out what it expected me to do.
D is a shooter/block-breaker. You can just hold the fire button and sweep back and forth to play indefinitely.
E is Frogger.
F is a whack-a-mole game that looks like the guessing game; you press the direction buttons to hit the four spaces when a mole appears.
G is a Quarth-clone.
H is a shape-matching game. Three shapes float from the top and you need to use the arrow keys to rotate through shapes on the bottom so they match when they collide.
I – Z are all Tetris variants. There are definitely some that I’ve seen before, like the pieces that swap instead of rotating, but I haven’t searched through all of them.
Overall: Is this a good device? No! Is it awesome for a random gatcha toy and souvenir? Yes!
I got a purple “Electro Game Collection 4”. (I’m not clear on whether all of the available handhelds are part of “collection 4” or if this was #4 in this collection.) It’s a horizontal design, shaped roughly like a GBA. The whole thing is less than 3” across and it has a 1” LCD screen that’s clearly of the same style as the Pro200 Gaming System or 23in1 Super Game. It squeezes 12 tiny buttons (4 of which make up a d-pad) onto the face and it’s powered by a button-cell watch battery. After about a minute of inactivity, the device shuts itself off. It plays a tinny bit from “Ode to Joy” when you press Reset. (Turning it on/off actually saves the state of whatever you’re playing!) Oh, and it’s got a keychain attached.
The four face buttons all seem to do exactly the same thing, mind you. None of the games seem to need more than a single button (and a couple only use the d-pad). But that’s okay, because they’re so small that it’s a trick to just hit one of them with my thumb—using the tiny d-pad (especially since it’s also 4 separate buttons) is a challenge if you’re going for precision input; though I think it says something that I can declare it’s not the worst D-pad I’ve used.
From the home screen, the up and down buttons change the number of the game (01-99), while left and right change the speed and level. (Let me note again that this screen is tiny. I can barely read the “speed” and “level” labels.) Pressing the face buttons rotates you through the letters, which seem to be different games.
The games are terrible LCD games like we’ve seen on other systems of this type, but some of them are new!
A is a tank-battle game against four tanks that respawn endlessly.
B is a “racing” game; it’s a two-lane dodge-em-up.
C is some kind of guessing game. I couldn’t figure out what it expected me to do.
D is a shooter/block-breaker. You can just hold the fire button and sweep back and forth to play indefinitely.
E is Frogger.
F is a whack-a-mole game that looks like the guessing game; you press the direction buttons to hit the four spaces when a mole appears.
G is a Quarth-clone.
H is a shape-matching game. Three shapes float from the top and you need to use the arrow keys to rotate through shapes on the bottom so they match when they collide.
I – Z are all Tetris variants. There are definitely some that I’ve seen before, like the pieces that swap instead of rotating, but I haven’t searched through all of them.
Overall: Is this a good device? No! Is it awesome for a random gatcha toy and souvenir? Yes!
