Si sent me this gem:
"As I was travelling down the M40 I discovered this hilarious Wii clone in a fairground-style crane grab cabinet.
My favourite thing is that as it definitely won't have motion control, the sports attachments would just be there to make your controller massive and unwieldy.
If I could have bought it I would, just to see what it would be like to play the included games, like "Girl" and "Assart", "Aimless" and "Grot Kid".
Oh, and it's 16bit too. PIMP."
Ooh it's classy alright!
"Knocking"? "The Farmer"?? Gorgeous.
According to a description, it "senses motion." This is open to wide interpretation, obviously - a simple mercury switch can "sense motion" - it just isn't terribly useful as a control mechanism.
Sadly it only appears to be available in the UK. Someone needs to spend the £50 and post a review, because as far as I can tell, based on the dearth of reviews on the web, no one has actually ever bought one.
Also: "Polk" the game? I am intrigued!
As a compassionate game developer, I do wonder what it must be like to develop content for this machine...
"Oh, you do console games? Which platform? Wii? PS3? Xbox360?"
"Err, no... the 'EZi Entertainment Games Console'... we basically just add new graphics to 1980s arcade games and come up with silly new names..."
"..."
Posted by: bob_d | September 02, 2009 at 17:02
My favourite game in the list, number 22: "Discuss Put".
Posted by: Roo | September 02, 2009 at 17:38
Damn you, Taylor, you made me buy one. I got it for quite a bit less than £50 too. I'll post a review once it arrives.
Posted by: Roo | September 02, 2009 at 17:45
Hahah Roo you didn't! What a laugh. Looking forward to the gruesome results.
Posted by: Alice | September 02, 2009 at 19:02
@Roo "Discuss Put":
I like to think that the name got slightly mangled in translation, and it's a game where you do nothing but discuss (golf) putts. I also like to imagine that "Polk" is a sim game where you take on the role of the 11th president of the United States. ("Press the 'X' button now to NOT die of cholera!")
Crap, now I want to develop games for this console.
Roo, I eagerly await your review!
Posted by: bob_d | September 02, 2009 at 21:34
I like the sound of "Grot Kid". Sounds like an Amiga PD game :-D
Posted by: Mr Tom | September 03, 2009 at 09:49
It arrived today and ooh, it's bad. For your information and delight, a review and even a wiki. It's currently fairly sparse, but it will fill up as I (and others?) add to it.
Posted by: Roo | September 06, 2009 at 02:21
Ah, Roo delivers with his review! I'm really curious about this whole system now. It seems like such a strange anachronism, that also neatly embodies the history of the game industry.
I remember in the '80s how a popular game would spawn an obvious clone. ("Like 'Pac-Man'? Well you'll love 'Wac-Man'!") Often it was an Western game and Asian clone, or vice-versa. (I imagine this console and its games were developed in China.) To some degree this has been the model for game development ever since - most games are based on pre-existing games. It was a lot easier to detect when gameplay was simple and the only changes were (often minor) alterations of the graphics. The games for this machine are pretty obvious clones of 1980s games.
The strange thing is that the console has one foot in the 1980s and one foot in the modern day. It's trying to compete (in some strange way) with the Wii on the one hand, while the games themselves are competing with free web games, where you have a million variations of those '80s games. Ironically, those free web games have better graphics, better sound, and have to be much cheaper to produce. I wonder if the EZi games already existed for some ancient knock-off console into which they cobbled in some poor motion controls, or if someone managed to put together some tools that made it really easy to crank out 100 games at little cost. I'm thinking the former.
Posted by: bob_d | September 07, 2009 at 21:46
Full review on Roo Reynold's blog - with gameplay videos!
Posted by: Trippenbach | September 09, 2009 at 11:17
Oh Philip, what am I going to do with you? Not only had I already linked to it (2 comments above) but you got the apostrophe in the wrong place. My surname is Reynolds, not Reynold. :-)
Posted by: Roo | September 09, 2009 at 22:25
Yeah, pwnd. The link is mea culpa - the apostrophe's location was a hasty typo.
No, really. It was. :-)
Posted by: Trippenbach | September 10, 2009 at 00:26