Mega Joy gives sub £10 NES ecstasy

While being dragged round a Poundstretcher style crap emporium in Wolverhampton I spotted a games machine in which the N64 style controller plugged directly into the TV and gave you a top selection of Spectrum games. For under a tenner.

These kind of devices seem quite common but no one believes it offered Speccy games. Most people say NES so I’ll shut up about that.

They’ve been spotted in all the best shopping locations – Skegness, Southampton, Cleveleys and Doncaster - and everyone who's bought one loves it.

Sub £10 ZX Spectrum games console with N64 style controller

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Got one of those handsets from a 'hypervalue' in Cardiff about two months ago - I was tipped off about them and went into said shop for the express reason of buying one. I don't think it even owned up to who made it on the packaging.

Minutes of retro fun

James Stacey

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My nephew has had the mega joy 2000 since start of this year... ITS SUPERB!!!!!!

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I saw these at a computer fair at Doncaster tonight. Quite decent for a tenner !

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Theses consoles are not spectrums, they are pirate Nintendo NES (old 8 bit) systems. Some far east pirates have reduced the whole NES on to two surface mount chips including a rom which holds several games.

I have two different versions of these one claims to be 7000 games in 1,actually 9 unique games, and 6981 hacks on the original 9. The other a Super Joy 3 contains 76 games about 65 are no duplicated. The games include Tetris(the banned Tengen version), Super Mario Brothers, Dig Dug, Circus Charlie, Duck Shoot (great needs a light gun), Pacman etc etc

Both of mine where bought at "B" and "M " Bargins in Cleveleys, Lancashire.

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I believe that 'Homeplus' in Totton, Hants had/has some 'MegaJoy 2000' consoles and also 'HyperValue' in Southampton has them in stock!!

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I've got a "Mega Joy 2000" at home. Apart from having a name which makes it sound like something you'd buy from a dubious sort of retailer, it's a great unit.

However... mine is an NES clone. It includes "Super Mario", for instance. The graphics are definitely Nintento graphics, not spectrum graphics.

I'd say there are about 50, maybe 60 individual games. It claims 2000, and there are 2000 entries on the menu (which is extremely tedious to go through), but many of them are repeats of the same thing (often with amusing misspellings of the game's names).

At least some of the duplicates offer direct access to different game levels and such like.

The claim of 2000 is pretty much groundless, but 50 or so games still seems pretty good value. I presume the value is so good due to someone's copyright not having been paid - these are the original versions of the games, not cheap knock-offs.

One more thing, ours claims to be an "educational" device. There is one fairly low quality mathematical game, with Chinese text which crashes fairly frequently. It makes some call on reasonably fast mental arithmetic, and my kids (aged 4 & 6) have been known to play it for quite a while. Not too thrilling, though.

Are you sure there's a spectrum version of this thing out there ? If so, I'd be quite interested in having one myself. I almost never get around to dragging out the real spectrum these days.

David.

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Also in Argos, they have a console called the "Rumble Station" which appears to be another old computer put into a hand held controller, my (uninformed) guess being the Amstrad CPC. The picture shows a young boy playing what seems to be Boulderdash. You can search for it on argos.co.uk to find a very small picture.

Argos also used to sell the "TV Boy" a year or two back, which was a small
MegaDrive-style controller which held 127 Atari 2600 games.

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Those Megajoy thingies aren't Spectrum based - they've got a Nintendo 1 inside them. There are a few versions out there - the original is the Megajoy 2000 and it claims to have 2000 games. Upon closer inspection you find it's only got about 48 or so, but it's not bad for a tenner.

When I was on holiday recently in Skegness they were flogging a Megajoy II, which looks as though it's a clone - the only difference is it has a different selection of games.

They're good value though - you get Super Mario World, Galaxians, Track and Field and loads of other classics. Great stuff.

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Was in sunny Skegness at the weekend (don't ask - I'm not about to repeat the experience) and saw the thingies you are on about.

Also saw something similar which had 105 games (some market stalls were claiming 10,000+ games 'variations'). The interesting thing with this one is that it came with a pair of connected handsets because some of the games are multiplayer and the main handset doubles as a pistol type affair for the duck hunting games which are on the system. Prices varied in the market from £16.99 to £20 for the same thing.

And it has a galaxians/galaga variant! My favourite from way back when – I know what I want to pop out of the chimney at xmas. :)

Richard Skinner

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I actually bought one of these about six months ago and I can tell you it's actually a Nintendo NES, not a speccy. At least the version I have is a NES clone, but it does sound identical to the one you describe.

Mine's also called Megajoy 2000, it's also a rip-off of the N64 controller and looks identical to the piccy on games-console.com, it also has 36 games including the ones you mentions; Tank, Tetris (actually a slight variant called Jewel Tetris), and Macross (plus, best of all... Super Mario Bros!).

I guess that's why the image quality wasn't up to your memories of the beloved Speccy. Definitely worth it for a tenner though!

Sir Clive forever!!!!!!!

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Cor blimey mate, where have you been.

There has been a console on the market for over 12 months that is commonly Hawked around the computer markets and is modelled off a Games controler pad.

So What, I hear you croak, well, this one has 76000, yes 76000 games on board of a sort os speccy/atari quality and has all of the favourites and more to offer.

It runs off batteries, which seemingly last forever, and simply plugs into your telly’s video socket. You can even get a second controller for 2 player games.

So how much is this 8th wonder, well, last year it was £15 but it’s just a tenner this year. So far I've bought 6 for myself, friends and family and I just love mine.

Its name.....Superjoy III and its available in 4 colours what a steal

Tony Lonczyk

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This device has nothing to do with the ZX Spectrum. It's actually based around the original 8 bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Much simpler job to redesign the board for this and load some cartridge games into ROM than to try to instant-load tape games into a modified Spectrum design.

Ralph W. Lorkins