Well, I brought my kid to Toys-R-Us today to get a Gameboy and I tripped over a bit of nostalgia. For a long time I have been a fan of console emulators as well as M.A.M.E. If you don't know about emulators, you should really check out the many emulator projects on the web. It is amazing what wonderful games were built and with such a tight code base. Bloat - ware be damned.
Anyway, as I'm sure I am so late on the news that this is history for most people, I came across these retro joysticks that had self-contained video games inside. These “Plug & Play TV Games” are awesome. Remember back in the day, you begged and pleaded for your parents to buy those expensive consoles. Or even worse you tried desperately to squeeze a role of quarter out of them at the arcade. Well along come these self contained joystick/game machines packed with retro and new games for just 15 bucks.
I think I am mostly geeking out over the simplicity of it all. From the back of every controller extend two RCA plugs to plug into the front panel of your TV or VCR. So pop in 4 AA batteries, plug in the plugs and off you go. Now admittedly the short coming is that these babies are hard wired with pre-set games. So on the Ms. Pac-Man control you get Pole Position, Galaxian and a couple of lesser known games. But for $15 who cares?
So hats off to the genius that realized taking something old and repackaging it will make it new again! I am a fan and now have 3 different controllers. And best of all, they plug into the Video player in my mini-van make my upcoming 18 hour car ride with the kids, just a little less horrific.
Oh yeah, the GameBoy is cool too.
--chaz