This board software is still fairly untested, and possibly unstable - if you notice any bugs or odd behaviour (shoddy html aside), let me know! Either by posting in this thread or via email, if the board is so broken you can't actually post in it. Thanks.

and an update. yeps.

psst im testing something

spam removed. ignore this!

Thought you might wanna add this to your site. Interesting back cover for this game, which I've never seen before :)
http://img.ruten.com.tw/s2/a/56/8a/11090715806346_461.jpg
http://img.ruten.com.tw/s2/a/56/8a/11090715806346_664.jpg

:D thanks! i just found the exact same images on yahoo like, yesterday, as it happens. but i'm lazy and stuff. i guess the seller must have accounts on both sites. interesting that i can still access images on img.ruten.com.tw even though www.ruten.com.tw constantly times out for me.. my ISP and router are both a pain in my arse, I'm not sure which one to blame this time.

k uploaded.

Cool :) I'm finding all sorts of odd stuff, mainly just games we know already but with different labels. Check out this Squirrel King cart
http://item.taobao.com/auction/item_detail-0db1-8211fdb179827af8e685b6fee0770583.jhtml?cm_cat=20

Hah :D

ha! love it. at least they actually knew the difference between a squirrel and a chipmunk :o

wooo. just checking if it still works mostly. it should be pretty much the same as it was

Very nice site. I just found it again after a format and losing the address. I love Genesis pirate games and it was nice seeing the boxes. Do you have any what Super Magican (Ling Huan Dao Shi) is btw? It's the one game that I don't recognize at all. Would be interesting if it turned out to be some RPG that is unheard of still to the western world :)

it's nothing new, unfortunately. the rom has been around for ages, it's called "elf wor" (which is the name in the rom header - "super magican" and the chinese name only appears on the title screen, which is broken in most emulators). glad you liked the site though!

i just realised that this game is a pretty blatant clone of lucasarts's "zombies ate my neighbours", a game i've heard a lot about over the years but never actually played myself. so, uh, there. and all this time i thought it was original. ah well.

You know which font I'm referring to... the rounded, art-deco-ish one that seems to show up in every single one of Gamtec's games.

Well, anyway, I actually discovered its actual origin today.

It's not, in fact, an original creation of Gamtec, as I had also assumed.

Rather, it's from a 1989-era DOS paint program called "PC Paint". And it just so happens that this program was released as legal abandonware by the author himself:
http://www.shdon.com/pcpaint

I've noticed a couple of the other built-in fonts in PC Paint showing up in other unlicensed ROMs, for that matter. The "Bold" font also seems to be particularly popular amongst bootleg game developers.

bloody hell. so that's where it came from. the other day I chanced upon an MSX game called "Kempelen Chess" by Pony Canyon which also used the font, so I was pretty sure it wasn't Gamtec's own creation, but I was no closer to finding its actual source until now.

Just stumbled across your YouTube collection. I love these sorts of bootleg game playthroughs, for some reason that even I'm not sure of.

Anyway, I have a very strong suspicion that Lion King II and Super Bubble Bobble are also the work of Gamtec and/or Sun Team. (Same fonts, similar sounding music, etc.) Any interest in doing a playthrough of either of those?

yeah, I've been thinking about doing those two along with a few others (pending laziness), and I'm pretty sure you're right about them being by Gamtec - Lion King II in particular I played through a while back, and some of the credits seem to match up with Squirrel King's.

I remember seeing a 2 page Alston ad for the Gamate in EGM magazine as a kid and what really grabbed my attention was the MegaMan Me-Tool on the "BOOM!" box cover (EGM issue #38, September 1992, pages 72/73). Over time, that ad faded away in my memory until I stumbled across a Gamate system and a large lot of games sitting in a shoebox at a flea market in the Los Angeles area about 4 years ago. I sifted through the games and didn't see "Boom!" so I passed it up. The lady was asking $30 for the lot, and I thought that was a tad bit overpriced. Guess I couldn't have been more wrong. If I remember correctly, the Gamate console version I saw had an "x" type d-pad, not "+".

I started collecting Atari 2600 games, and some of my favorites were NTSC bootlegs of some PAL games originally developed by a company named Bit Corp. In my search for Bit Corp 2600 games, fate brought me back to the Gamate console. I couldn't believe it, Could the Gamate really be from the same Bit Corp that made these strange 2600 games in the early 1980s? It appears so.

I own a handful of Gamate games these days, and I'd love to discuss the system and games, if any of you want to. I feel very lucky to have found this site, and am very thankful to Taizou for compiling such a comprehensive list of information about this unique handheld. ^^

whoops. post above was me

Games that I have that you haven't reviewed are:
Legend of Dragon Knight
Money Maze
Pharaoh Revenger
Kill Shot
Pipemania
Vindicators
Baseball
Metamorphosiser
Magic Jigsaw
Grand Prix

I can also get you lots of box and manual scans. What size and format are you looking for on the images? I already have some 600dpi scans of carts, manual covers, boxes... but those files are pretty BIG. ^^

ooh nice. any particular standouts in that lot? Legend of Dragon Knight and Metamorphosiser I've always wondered about, just because I don't even know what genre they are.

i don't mind much about image size and format, i can always convert and resize for the site as necessary - anything that doesn't break the attachment limit on my gmail account is fair game, i reckon. as long as it isn't too much of a pain in the arse to send over or anything.

shite! forgot my name again. i really should get this board to use cookies to save that sort of thing. ah well.

I need to get all my stuff together so I can send you everything in an orderly fashion. Each one of my images is about 5mb to 8mb in size, to much of a hassle to email all of those. By any crazy chance you wouldn't happen to live in the Los Angeles area yourself, would you? If so I'd just drop everything off at your house and you could deal with it. :-p

Some of the boxes and manuals are hilarious. The back of the Magic Jigsaw box says this verbatim:

1. Now, this is what I call sweet girl.
2. A pack of creatures are disturbing Mr. Q.
3. Just several more pieces, and the motorcycle will be done.

Is it just me, or does that description sound like...quite possibly the coolest game ever f*cking made!? I mean, they really touch all the bases with that one. ^^

brilliant! i do love gamate boxes. unfortunately most of mine are in italian though, which sort of limits the awesomeness since i don't speak the language.

and i live in the UK, might be a tiny bit too far for you to drop the stuff off :p
fair enough on the image sizes. if you just send them as decent quality jpeg's, size-wise anything at or above this kind of resolution, that'd be fine

Well, I've sat down and played Legend of Dragon Knight a few times today. It sort of feels like a level-based Legend of Zelda clone. When you start the game, you see your character walk up to a house on a map, and you can see there are about 10 or 11 stages. It's a top view game, and you kill enemies to collect coins and keys. There are many little shops scattered about each little level, which give you the option to buy new weapons. The problem is, the second you kill an enemy you have absolutely no time to grab the item they drop unless you kill them at point blank, so newer long distance weapons seem pretty useless. There is a glowing boxed in orb in the center of the stage, that you can access once you've collected enough keys and beat the level. During the level one button lets you attack, and the other seems to do nothing but freeze your character in place when you hold it. You have a life bar, and it seems that you can take about 4 hits before you die.
The game is frustrating and difficult, like so many other Gamate titles. Once you've tediously collected those keys for an eternity and beat the level, you go to a side view platformer boss stage where that useless freeze button becomes a jump button. *Of course*, the boss kills you in one hit and you can barely figure out what's going on when concentrating on the blurry LCD screen. Maybe those newer weapons could be useful in the boss stages. I have no idea how you could possibly beat this game without having the option to save. When you pause the game, a little menu pops up in the center of the screen displaying the amount of coins and keys you have, and what type of weapon you are using. Due to this and how quick enemies kill you, getting in-game scans will be a headache.

On a different note, I would highly suggest you play your Gamate when using headphones. The audio clarity is much better, and has separate left and right Stereo audio channels.

Also....

I was wondering if you have any tips for easily getting the game cards out of the system? Maybe you understand what I mean, those game cards really don't dislodge easily, and as a collector I really don't wish to damage the plastic at the top of the game at all. ^^;

ah, i was sort of expecting dragon knight to be something like that. i bet more than a few gamates were broken at the hands of frustrated kids in the 90s playing stuff like that and Myth of Asamia. Probably could have been a good(ish) game as well, if it'd had a bit more time spent on its development.

dunno about the cards, it is tricky to get them out without using the indentation at the top and running the risk of damaging the plastic (a few of my cards already had signs of that when i got them) - i suppose you could sort of wiggle them until theyre far enough out to get a decent grip on it, but that probably wouldn't be good for the connectors.

oh and i completely agree about headphones, the speaker is bollocks.

It's going to be released by 505 Gamestreet (in Europe), and I can't work out whether this is a previously released Japanese game or not. Any ideas? It's a full-price game, rather than a budget release, and it's for PS2 and wii. So I'm guessing it's not a Simple series game this time...

Oh, scrap that, I just caught it on your homepage. Sorry! BTW keep up the good work... your info is really useful.

yeah, that one took me by surprise - i thought it might be that Journey to the West Simple2000 game making a belated appearance until I saw the cover art. never expected this to come to Europe, and on the PS2 as well.. and for full price! you have to wonder what the fuck 505 Games are playing at sometimes. or all the time.

Especially on the Simple 2000 Series! This list is Handy!

Thought you might be interested in this D3 published DS puzzle game - is it part of the Simple Series - I'm pretty sure it is but it wasn't on your great site :)
http://www.armchairempire.com/Previews/multi-platform/puzzle-quest-challenge-warlords.htm

it's called Puzzle Quest in case the link on my name doesn't work!

>>2-3
yeah, I've seen that game... as far as I'm aware it's not part of the Simple series, though, it was specifically developed as a full(?) price game for the US/Euro market.

All of them has to go.

Hit me up for a list!!

ah i'd buy some of those, but i don't have any money. in fact i could do with selling some of my own gaming shite, but most of it is either (a) worthless or (b) weird taiwanese stuff that you might not find again in a million years, but still would only sell for a tenner on ebay