Native 32 is a piece of hardware by the Taiwanese company Sunplus. The hardware is primarily used on a series of DVD players that act as monitors for car seat headrests; though a few non-DVD players (such as the DTV-M5 Irish Digital TV Receiver) are also compatible.
The systems are notable for having a large amount of 32-bit games developed for them. The games are credited to a company known as Potatoo Multimedia Studio, and are of notably higher quality than most other budget systems at the time.
Overview[]
Systems that can play Native 32 games come with a controller, a remote controller that doubles as another controller, and 2 discs that feature various games for Native 32. Some variants also contain extras like headphones. More games could be downloaded from their site and be flashed to the system using a SD card; the user may also be able to load Famicom/NES ROMs to the hardware, though this is not 100% verified. All systems compatible with it will also show a "NATIVE 32 GAME" string on the cover of the manual as well.
A handful of the later Native 32 titles (e.g. Metal Storm and Storm Wind) feature elaborate, 3D-animated cutscenes, likely played through DVD playback, as well as English voice acting. Given their scope, it is unlikely that the cutscenes were designed for the Native 32 games directly; they may be sourced from stock assets or stolen from other video games.
Games[]
Games are selected by either going to MODE menu, loading them from the disc or finding them in the SD Card or USB. Each are separated in one of 7 categories:
- Hot Game - Effectively a "featured games" section, often boasting the higher-budget game titles. In most commercial releases, games featured in this category are duplicated in other game sections.
- Puzzle Game
- ELA Game - Refers to educational games. Many of these titles are part of a "series" titled Raidy Go!, featuring a recurring set of characters.
- Sport Game
- Action Game
- Chess Game - Refers to board games.
- 8Bit Game - Judging by a dumped disc's ISO contents, this category features various pirated Famicom/NES ROMs, presumably through some form of emulation. All of the ROMs appear to be internet-sourced copies (with some containing GoodNES-like file notation), though feature considerable scrambling and do not contain iNES headers.[1]
Early variants such as the disc bundled with Philips PD703 Portable DVD Player use a more simplistic menu and lack the 8Bit Game option, but do feature a long end user agreement upon boot.
Bizarrely, even though the target audience for the games are presumably kids, some games contain swearing and blood. Another game, Girl Time Show, seems to be an adult game with sexual scenarios. Multiple of the bundled 8-bit games are inappropriate ROM hacks, such as Dick Dug and Dick & Milk.
Released on Disc[]
Note that this list does not currently include the 8-bit games. An asterisk (*) indicates a title that is duplicated in the "Hot Game" section.
Puzzle Game[]
- Badboy - Appears to be derived from the Game & Watch game Rain Shower, with its rules effectively reversed. The player controls a boy in Mario-like attire, and must move a series of clotheslines to catch basketballs thrown by another boy at the top of the screen.
- Bell Girls - The player navigates two waitresses who move opposite of each other, traveling across a hotel's hallways in order to deliver food to the doors with bells ringing.
- Cat Run - A horse betting-like game featuring cats. The game lacks any title screen.
- Celestial Castle - The player controls a sheep that must remove all blocks before touching a crystal; without falling.
- Dreaming Fairy Town - A "swipe-to-the-exit" game with a fairy theme.
- Dragon - The player is a dragon who needs to eat fruit and melt frozen fruit. The game lacks any title screen.
- Rune Word* - A tile-matching puzzle game featuring a witch. Features still cutscenes with voice acting throughout the game.
- Elemental Adventure - Titled "Alchemist for Love - Elemental Adventure" on the title screen. A variant of Tetris with a plot about a love potion.
- Food Rain - A shopkeeper must catch the falling food indicated at the top of the screen. Uses a rendition of "Norwegian Dance no. 2" by Edvarg Grieg.
- Frog - A simplified clone of Frogger featuring a time limit. Lack a logo on the title screen.
- Fruit Party - A fruit-themed puzzle game similar to Candy Crush.
- Gemwoods - A Soukoban clone; appears to use customized level layouts.
- Guess - A memory-match game.
- Hide & Seek - A puzzle game similar to Lights Out, though uses three colors of tiles instead of two; the tile patterns change in each round.
- Leap Rabbits - Plays similarly to a wooden "peg game". The player must maneuver the rabbits to jump over each other until all rabbits are cleared from the board.
- Mouse - A simple Whac-A-Mole game featuring a time limit. Lacks a logo on the title screen.
- Mushu Mushu - The player controls a mushroom wearing sunglasses, and must strategically aim obstacles at a grinning monster; taking turns, the players will throw obstacles back-and-forth at each other. Similar in gameplay to Worms or Microsoft's Gorillas. The ga,e seems to specifically be based off the Flash game, Mutt Vs Fleabag/Cat Vs Dog as it uses sound effects from the game.
- Naughty Orang - A Breakout clone featuring fruits in place of bricks. The player's paddle is held up by a modified version of Diddy Kong from the Donkey Kong Country series. "Orang" may be a misspelling or shortening of "orange" or "orangutan".
- Orchard - A Candy Crush or Bejeweled clone.
- Pirate Century - A variation of Battleship.
- Puzzle Game - A simple sliding puzzle game.
- Space Snake Mania - A Snake game featuring space backgrounds.
- Sudoku - A version of the game of the same name.
- Zero Hunt - A strategy game very similar to Nice Code's Fated Pirate, but with a space theme.
ELA Game[]
- Raidy Alphabetical Order
- Animal Friends
- Recognize Animals 1
- Recognize Animals 2
- Chickling Go Home
- Colors Matching
- Raidy's Comprehensive Arithmetic
- Digihunter
- Find The Most
- Recognize Fruit 1
- Recognize Fruit 2
- Raidy Learning Geography
- Raidy Living Tips
- Magic Change
- Magical Adventure
- Math Barge
- Monkey Arithmetic
- More Or Less
- Ord Blocks
- Recognize Letters
- Raidy Reads Picture
- Chinese School 1*
- Chinese School 2*
- Raidy The Seeker
- Raidy Simple Artihemic
- Speed Arithmetic
- Super Adding
- Understand Time
- Raidy's Word Choice
- Letter Workshop
Sport Games[]
- Basketball - The player needs to shoot the ball in a constantly moving hoop.
- Magic Bowling - A bowling simulator where the player is a monster that rolls itself into pins.
- Mission Express* - A Road Fighter clone featuring three characters: a policeman, a fireman, and a race car driver. Each character selection acts as a unique game mode with a different opening cutscene. Billboards across the game are labeled Sunplus and Silverstone.
Action Games[]
- Bloody Blade* - A fantasy beat-em-up with dialogue between stages and actual blood.
- Gun Fire* - A shoot-em-up where the player rides a motorcycle.
- Metal Storm* - A top-down, military tank game similar to Jackal. Features a 3D-animated opening. Labeled in Chinese on the selection menu, but written in English in-game.
- Storm Wind* - Top-down shooting game similar to 1942. Features multiple 3D-animated cutscenes with voice acting; notably uses the word "Shit" within the opening video.
- Pirate* - A Bomberman clone. Oddly, the title is written in a much larger font than the other games in the selection menu.
- Little Mermaid - A Shark! Shark!-like game with the player controlling a mermaid (while still eating fish).
- Lost Sword - A game where the player must fly to the sword without hitting anything.
- Poping Play [sic]- Listed as "Music Game" on the menu. A rather well-made Taiko no Tatsujin clone staring a generic Chinese girl.
- PoPo Fun - A very low quality simplified version of Balloon Fight featuring a time limit; only has one level layout.
- Shaolin Kitchen - The player must catch an onslaught of bowls thrown by men washing the dishes, placing them on the counter behind him. The game is over if the player misses too many bowls.
- Three Pigs - Simplified version of the first level of Pooyan; uses very large sprites.
Chess Game[]
- Lucky 21
- Lucky Box
- Paradise 777
- Sky Fighter - Appears to be a variant of Ludo.
Unknown game set[]
An additional set of games is included on a disc bundled with portable DVD players by Philips (including the PD703/37 and PD7012G/37). The games are placed after the Potatoo-credited titles in the game list, and do not feature any legal notation; it is unclear if they were developed by Potatoo.[2] These games include:
- Basketball - Different than the standard version.
- Bubble - A Puzzle Bobble clone.
- Football - A soccer game.
- Gobang
- Mole Hunting
- Pong - A Pong-based game in which the player must hit a row of apples before the ball can pass through (similar to the Cube Technology game Dodge Ball).
- Pair Match
- Puzzle Tetris - A Tetris clone.
- Snowball Fight
- Water Park
Website-Only[]
- Citymaster
- Comic Fighting - Described as a fighting game featuring unauthorized uses of various popular characters like Sailor Moon.
- Fights Landlord
- Girl Time Show - Described as a game where the player competes against one of three women with different personalities in card and guessing games. The player is rewarded with "cool" photos and animations for beating one of them.
- Travel Monopoly - Described as being similar to the Monopoly board game.
- World Baseball Classic
Fate[]
The last game ever released for the hardware is Citymaster. Not much is known about what happened to Potatoo Multimedia or what they did outside of Native 32 as a whole. The same year the last game was released, Wellminds would release a series of touchscreen handhelds under names such as Touch Game Advance, EXEQ Guru, and Mi-Touch. These systems feature a few games very similar to games that Potatoo developed and ports of Pirate Century and Zero Hunt. Wellminds likely either contracted the company or merged with them in some form.
Trivia[]
- A "Batch Download" of all English games is still accessible through the Internet Archive, though it does not appear to have been updated past June of 2008; resulting in later titles not being present. Files of the later-released Girl Time Show, Travel Monopoly, and World Baseball Classic were also archived separately. Most Chinese games have not been archived as of currently.
- Even though most of the English games are archived, there is no known way to play them outside of using real hardware.
- The English selection menus are ordered roughly-alphabetically, though a number of titles are misplaced. This appears to be due to the filenames of the games themselves (e.g. Rune World's file is named "ERuneWod.smf", resulting in it appearing next to the "E" games).
Reference List[]
External links[]
- Official Website (English) (archive.org)
- Official website (Chinese) (archive.org)
- YouTube playlist of Native 32 game recordings (Der Sonntagsgamer)