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Touch Game Player (sometimes formatted as Touchgameplayer) is a manufacturer of bootleg handheld Famiclone consoles. The company produced numerous devices for various distributors, including variants of the Play Vision Portable and FC Pocket. Their site is down, but Touch Game Player-like consoles are still manufactured, so it is unknown if the company is still in operation.

Overview[]

The exact details surrounding Touch Game Player are unknown, including the company's location and founding date. However, the website's listed phone numbers have location codes based in Shenzhen, China.[1]

Rather than distributing their own products, Touch Game Player mainly produced game systems via request from other manufacturers. The game consoles could be customized by the purchaser in numerous ways, though could only be purchased wholesale (with a minimum order quantity of 3,000 pieces).[2][1] There were reportedly 500 sets of console molds available; including forms of cartridge-based systems, "plug & plays", and handhelds.[2]

Beginning around the mid-2010s, numerous Famiclone devices began using ROMs with the copyright bylines hacked to read "www.touchgameplayer.com" (or a similar notice); the exact reasoning behind this is unclear. Only one line of the copyright is changed, with further notices often left intact (e.g. Namco logos above the written text). While the notices may suggest that Touch Game Player manufactured the respective console, it could also be left over from a multicart compiler program; as the strangely-hacked ROMs have seemingly outlived Touch Game Player's existence as a company.

Notable releases[]

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The Sup Game Box, a console featuring "Touchgameplayer.com" copyright bylines

Featured on website[]

  • Play Vision Portable (PVP Station, "PVP") - Some models are Touch Game Player-produced (likely not all).
  • FC Pocket - Some models are Touch Game Player-produced (likely not all).
  • FC Compact - Some models are Touch Game Player-produced (likely not all). Touch Game Player boasted on their website that it could serve as an equivalent to the official Famicom Mini/NES Classic Edition, with customizable games at the wholesalers' request.[3]
  • Power Joy 小创子 KS-2521C - Version on website features the exact design and game list of this model.[4] Later repurposed into a DreamGEAR release featuring Nice Code games.
  • ES-2016 16bit - A Sega Mega Drive/Genesis-based handheld. A console resembling the ES-2016 appears on Touch Game Player's website, suggesting it was (at the very least) one of their available molds.[5]
  • PVP Wish Game - Educational VT32 console resembling a schoolbus.[6]
  • TV Mahjong Game (TV 麻雀ゲーム) - Mahjong plug & play produced for the Japanese market; appears to play a bootleg hack of Capcom's Ide Yousuke Meijin no Jissen Mahjong.[7]
  • Pac-Man Connect and Play - Resembles the official Bandai plug & play released in 2012. It is unknown if Touch Game Player is the genuine manufacturer of the Connect and Play, or if this is merely a counterfeit of it.[8]
  • Various units visually resembling DreamGEAR plug & plays (often using "My Arcade" branding); however, they are not the U.S.-sold consoles, instead using actual (pirated) Famicom/NES games. These are most commonly sold in India, and often feature Cricket games and ROM hacks tailored to the region (such as Shaktimaan and Bollywood 2007, hacks of Batman and Street Fighter VI, respectively).

Consoles featuring "Touchgameplayer.com" copyright notices[]

  • BittBoy - Handheld Famiclone resembling a Game Boy.
  • Sup Game Box - Handheld Famiclone resembling a Game Boy.

Others[]

  • GB Station Light / GB Station Light II - Not shown on Touch Game Player's website, but often feature identical menu layouts to various Play Vision Portable units.
  • "GAMEBOYS" GBA Clone - A handheld Famiclone in the shape of a Game Boy Advance. The manufacturer is technically unknown, but it contains a similar multicart layout/game list used in other Touch Game Player plug & plays.[9]

Exclusive games[]

NES-based consoles[]

Several Touch Game Player systems feature seemingly-custom ROM hacks, which were initially designed exclusively for the PVP consoles. However, in part due to the company's obscurity, it is not 100% verified if Touch Game Player produced the hacks themselves, or if they only published them. These hacks include:

Additionally, several hacks of original plug & play titles are known to appear exclusively on PVP systems. Notably, this appears to include several rare variants of games produced by Nice Code Software:

It is theorized that custom variants of Super Angry Birds appear on some PVP consoles, though documentation on these games is limited.

Mega Drive-based consoles[]

The ES-2016 16bit, which is seemingly Touch Game Player-produced, features four custom games which are not present on other clone consoles; it is unknown who developed these titles. The games include:

  • Angry Birds Season - hack of the homebrew Angry Birds Sega Genesis port
  • Fruit Ninja HD - port of the mobile game
  • Bullethead - port of an Adobe Flash game
  • Fishing Joy - based on a genre of arcade fishing games in China, known overseas as Harpoon Lagoon

Trivia[]

  • Some "limited edition" My Arcade releases (such as the Don Doko Don Pocket Player) were limited to 3,000 units worldwide.[10] Given this is Touch Game Player's exact minimum order quantity, it may suggest that they were the manufacturers of the Pocket Players/Micro Players (though the software architecture was seemingly developed by Wellminds).

References[]

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