Megajoy 2 with 60 games

Resembling a Nintendo 64 pad without the thumb stick and claiming a whopping sixty games in a single plug and play unit, the Megajoy 2 was (along with a Superjoy 3) my introduction to the “wonderful” world of Chinese hardware clones and indeed to the idea of Direct To TV hardware itself. For that I will be forever grateful in a somewhat grudging way and my partner would like a couple of words with the creators, most likely punctuated with some form of blunt instrument.

Almost all of the games included are straight knock-offs of NES cartridges produced various parties including Nintendo themselves and it’s presumably due to its age that very little attempt was made to disguise them; Super Mario Brothers has its title logo altered, a few other titles have blank spaces where the logos would be usually and pretty much all of the copyright notices are notable for their absence but most of the games at least still bear their original names. There’s a lot of repetition in the games themselves as well; although Power Mario is the same as the standard Super Mario with a modification to start at world four, other titles like Battle City and F1 Race make multiple identical appearances. Various events of Track And Field have also been “divided” to bulk the menu up a bit, the games start as normal, drops into whichever event the main menu referred to it by (the funniest example being “javel in throwing”) and when the event is complete the game progresses to the next normally!

Megajoy 2 - playing Gradius

That doesn’t mean the games themselves are bad though, a good selection of titles is present such as Super Mario Brothers, Bomber Man and my personal favourite Gradius are well worth playing (1942 is there as well, but seems to run slowly) and there’s a selection of decent arcade conversions such as Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Galaga and Pac-Man as well. There are also a couple of quite neat surprises too, both of which were originally Chinese bootleg cartridges (which may well be other games with redone graphics although I’m at a loss to name the titles they’re based on); the first is a port of Midway’s Mortal Kombat 3 which actually manages to look and even sound pretty decent all things considered; the game itself has been simplified for the NES controller and there is only a limited amount of enjoyment to be had from it but it’s an interesting curiosity.

The other pirate-created game is Harry’s Legend, the titular character presumably being Harry Potter since this is a scene for scene perfect version of The Philosopher’s Stone. No, I’m lying but it’s obviously based on it in passing because the cut scenes make references to sections of the story such as the house on Privet Drive, the Hogwarts Express, the tunnel guarded by Fluffy where the stone itself is hidden (although bizarrely, this segment is out of sequence with the rest of the game and Fluffy himself absent) but during play Harry isn’t actually capable of waving his wand (as it were) and the combat is reduced to giving the enemies a good kicking.

Megajoy 2 - playing Harrys Legend

So it’s all pretty cheap and that’s reflected in the build of the Megajoy 2 as well. The buttons are relatively reliable (the careful design of the N64 pad is somewhat lost since the usually secondary C buttons take up the job of primary control) and the D pad is functional even if it does occasionally forget what the word “diagonal” means just when you didn’t want it to. On the plus side, there is a socket for DC power on the back of the unit along with two phono connectors for video and audio out. If it’s not being driven from a mains adapter, four AA batteries need to be inserted into a caddy that in turn slots into the base of the unit where the rumble pak would usually be on the real N64 controller.

The Megajoy 2 is a knock-off in every sense of the word really, the shape of the case, the games included, the works. But considering the age of mine (getting on for nine years old at the time of writing and, despite taking quite a battering, still working as well as the day it was purchased) and the range of titles included even after you remember to not count the repeats like the person writing the manual failed to, it’s still got some titles worth having; if nothing else it’s worth grabbing for Gradius and the bootlegs.