POP Station

A POP Station.

The POP Station is a series of Chinese electronic handheld games, some of which have a shape similar to the Sony PlayStation Portable. The technology is similar to Nintendo's Game & Watch Super Color series, where the LCD panel is covered by strips of coloured plastic, but with illumination added. Because of the poor animations (even by the standard of electronic games) and the overall bad designs, it's often difficult to understand what's happening in the various games.

Similar designs

Due to the ubiquity of the technology used, many different designs exist. Although some are made by the same manufacturer of the POP Station (such as the Neo Double Games) most are made by different Chinese companies with different shapes: some have an original appearance, others instead mocks other famous handhelds or consoles. For example, the PCP Station is another PSP clone, the Polystation 3 has the shape of a miniaturised PS3 and the WLL resembles a Wii Remote. They are often built with cheap materials and are not very durable, particularly with models that require you to switch games by switching the LCD screens.

Cartridge systems

Certain POP Station clones allow you to play different games changing the LCD screen cartridge. This is the same method used by electronic handheld systems of the 80's like the V-Tech Variety or the Bandai Digi Casse, and in the 90's by the Tiger R-Zone. The cartridge contains the LCD display and all the electronics needed for the game, while the console itself provides only the physical controls, the batteries and the speaker, all wired to the socket where the cartridge is inserted. For instance, if all the various cartridges that comes with the various POP Station clones had all the same sizes and connector shape, those would be interchangeable with each other. Other POP Station clones could instead, to lower even more the production costs, use a single controller chip for all the different games: in this case only the LCD is changed and a selector is used to make the controller behave consistently with the selected game. This selector could be a simple switch used by the player before starting the game, or the cartridge itself could close the correspondent circuit with a pin (similarly as the Atari Cosmos cartridges). On a system of this kind only a predetermined number of games could be played.

Known Games

• City Fighter (Street Fighter clone, sometimes referred to as Street Overlord on packaging)
• Chanticleer Hegemony (cockfighting game similar to City Fighter)

• Soccer (crude soccer game with players moving horizontally)

• Submarine Invasion (A clone of Casio's CG-330 Submarine Battle from 1985. shooting game involving a submarine gunning down planes)

• Fortress Guardian (A clone of Casio's CG-370 Heli-Battle from 1987. a shooting game involving trying to keep your bases safe)

• Basketball (appears to be based off of Soccer)

• Space Guardian (a clone of Bandai's Space Hawk 50 from 1985)

• Super Mary (Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch clone)

• Anti Terrorism (game that tries to imitate a first-person shooter)

• Racing Car, Motorcycle Match, Supreme Skiing, and Boat Race (all of them are Pole Position clones and function the same)

• Munch Time and PiranhaMan (Pac-Man clones except one has Pac-Man himself and the other features a Piranha)

• Angry Birds (clone of the mobile phone game of the same name)

• Plants VS. Zombies (clone of the mobile phone game of the same name)

• Loader and Porter (both the same Mario Bros. Game & Watch clone except one has Mario and Luigi and the other has 2 Popeye the Sailors)

• Eagle Catch Chick (Green House Game & Watch clone)

• Counter Strike (clone of the game of the same name)

• Contra - Snow Field (unconfirmed, but assumed to be a Contra clone)