12/7/2023 0 Comments Super player 76000 in 1![]() ![]() At the start of the 90s, NES and Famicom consoles simply weren’t sold in the region, so the Dendy filled the gap that Nintendo felt wasn’t worth being filled. For instance, the Dendy home video game console (which was itself a clone of a Taiwanese Famiclone called the Micro Genius ) became synonymous with 8-bit gaming in Post-Soviet Russia. In particular, Famiclones thrived in regions where official Nintendo hardware was virtually unavailable and not considered significant in the grand scheme of the emerging gaming market. There’s a wide gamut among Famiclones in terms of hardware quality and overall performance, but nevertheless, they’ve managed to find a way into homes and hearts worldwide. Famiclones have been floating around since the late 1980s, when demand for the NES was at its peak. So entered one of the most mysterious and bizarre mainstays of my adolescent years.Ģ. While the actual purchase of counterfeit merchandise isn’t a crime in the US, I doubt my aunt would have wanted to participate in any sort of transaction she deemed nefarious.īut luckily for prepubescent me, my aunt decided that any of the weirdness radiating from the booth or the vendor or the toy itself was outweighed by the notion of pleasing (or at least shutting up) her niece and nephew. As it turns out, the mall management’s approval of the kiosk did not reflect the actual legitimacy of the kiosk’s operation. What I’m positive that my aunt did not realize was that the Power Player Super Joy III she had purchased was illegally manufactured abroad, and would soon become the center of a series of anti-piracy crackdowns led by Nintendo. While box designs varied, many prominently featured a composite image sourced from Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace despite having absolutely no connection to the Star Wars franchise whatsoever. ![]() The Power Player Super Joy III in its original packaging. In an act of unprovoked generosity, my beautiful selfless aunt forked over $49.99 or so to whatever pushy seller was running the kiosk. Not my grandparents, who still functioned under the half-belief that too much television would liquify a child’s brain. Not my mother, seemingly impervious to the allure of an impulse buy. But I didn’t expect to actually get it.īut, by the grace of God, I was with my aunt that particular day. However, I was also still young enough to not fully recognize (or care about) the quality of the content or hardware at hand. Falling somewhere between the ages of 9 and 11, I was old enough at the time to enjoy playing video games. One of the rotating kiosks situated in the center of the main hall housed a few dozen brightly-colored packages and a screen advertising a variety of 8-bit games. My aunt was in charge of all the kids one afternoon, and for whatever reason, she took us to the nearby Clifton County Mall. ![]() Perhaps unsurprisingly, the consistency of these trips makes it easy for me to recall an event that I could not have anticipated – my first encounter with the Power Player Super Joy III. It was the sort of fun that I could accurately forecast, which even at a young age I deeply appreciated. Many of my memories of those visits bleed together. We’d visit a now-defunct water park aptly named Water Slide World, gawk at the mastodon skeleton and mineral collection housed at the New York State Museum, eat pancakes wrapped in brown sugar and syrup. Growing up in the early 00s, my brother and I would head up to Albany, NY for a week each summer to spend time with our grandparents and younger cousins. While the titles available on each cartridge varied significantly, each version featured a pair of gulls flying across the menu screen while the popular 1955 hit “Unchained Melody” played in an endless loop. The opening screen of a popular Famiclone multicart that was marketed under a variety of names.
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