Nameless pirate console: what kind of connection?

[DaVince]

Hello people, I'm new here! And I have a question that's probably appropriate to these forums. :)

I bought a little nameless pirate console for laughs today. It's an obvious Wii knockoff, with remotes and everything. I found out it has a cartridge slot. However, my SNES, Mega drive and Master System games don't fit. So I'd like to ask anyone here if they know what kind of connection this is.

Is it unique to this console? It seems unlikely, since it probably would have come with just a single cartridge (that I don't have because it was second hand and in not a very good shape)...

Hope anyone can enlighten me. I'll make pics of the console internals and accessories if requested.

-DaVince

[BamBoo]

Hmmmm looks like it may fit a N64 cart

[DaVince]

That would be awesome, but I somehow don't see it being an N64 connection. The inside is incredibly simple (I see like 3 chips on the main board (which is very small), 2 of the chips are tiny) and the "Wii remotes" don't have enough buttons for that.

[BamBoo]

did you try both pal and ntsc genesis/mega drive games because pal games are bigger than ntsc

[DaVince]

I only have PAL ones, and they're a bit too wide. Perhaps it does accept Genesis carts... Will buy one to try it later. Thanks for the tip. :)

EDIT: I was wrong, I DO have an NTSC copy of Ecco the Dolphin. But the connections are exactly as wide as the Mega Drive games.

[Cyantist]

famicom

[Alchy]

famicom

Bingo.

[XerdoPwerko]

Famiclone carts is the most obvious choice.

[ASSEMbler]

famicom

[DaVince]

Ahh, I thought it would be NES-like. Then I guess I finally own a Famiclone. :P Thanks for the info, folks.

[Alchy]

Are the pads infrared or radio?

[DaVince]

Infrared. When I open it up there's a little plate in the front with the name WT0210-IR.

Attaches is a phone pic of the accessories. I like how it comes with all these "accessories" when the console itself is no more than a Famicom. I also tried making pics of the inside with my phone camera, but they came out really blurry. Will try a proper camera later if anyone is interested. The inside looks quite simple.

[bushing]

Anything like this?

image by bushing, on Flickr

[DaVince]

Close, but it's simpler. Blurry pic attached.

[Cyantist]

This has so many names its unreal. To date I've seen Zii, Vii, SportZone,. One I worked on that decided to stop the motion games cart working (because it does have motion controls) looked the exact same. Pirates in China appear to be using the same moulds and boards and just slapping on different names.

[DaVince]

Besides the nameless console shown in this thread I have another Wii knockoff called the Vi, but it's got built-in games only. Surprisingly, most of the games are homebrew. It includes a Wii Sports knockoff that reacts to actual motions from the remote controllers. Besides the sports games it features knockoffs of all kinds of other games, like Tetris, Arkanoid and Bejeweled. It also had digitized sound instead of 8-bit chip sound.

I plan to make a video about it some day (such dedication, lol). Pirate consoles are so interesting, especially when they're unique, have weird games or have just really, really stupid looking box art.

[Alchy]

Pirates in China appear to be using the same moulds and boards and just slapping on different names.

Absolutely. That's common practice with this sort of thing.

I would imagine the complete list of Famiclone variants runs into the thousands. It'd be nearly impossible to document them all.

[Cyantist]

Absolutely. That's common practice with this sort of thing.

I would imagine the complete list of Famiclone variants runs into the thousands. It'd be nearly impossible to document them all.

Too bad you can count the number of different board revisions on one hand.

[Trenton_net]

There are many companies who sell this product under different branding. In Canada, Interact sells these (if I'm not mistaken) at some crazy price like $50-$70. You can usually find them in Radio Shack or Rogers Video.

[mrdomino]

It might not necessarily be a Famiclone (although it certainly could be, there are certainly Wii-esque famiclones out there) - lots of 16-bit Wii clones seem to use 60-pin famicom cartridge ports for their own proprietary carts, in which case it'll probably only work with whatever came bundled with the console. i have a Wiii3 and a Zone Interactive, both have 60-pin ports but neither are compatible with famicom carts (or the other console's, for that matter).

I *think* yours might be one of the Family Sports series, but there are so many of these things out there going under so many different names (and sometimes using the exact same mould despite being from a different company and containing different hardware) its kinda hard to tell.