VTG Interactive Inc.

VTG Interactive Inc.
Logo from the box for Virtual Baseball.
Origin	San Diego, California, USA
Years	2003?, 2006-2009
Consoles	Proprietary VTG Interactive Game Console
First game	Unknown
Last game	Unknown
Published games by	Waixing
Related companies	SDW Games

VTG Interactive Inc. was a company in San Diego, California that distributed video game products. They were officially founded on March 9, 2006, and their only known releases were of interactive TV sports games. Information on this company is very scant, with their known products only known to have been sold on Amazon during the company's lifetime and by third parties as new old stock. VTG Interactive would shut down on June 25, 2009.

Games

VTG Interactive is known to have had released three games: Virtual Baseball, Virtual Tennis (not to be confused with Sega's Virtua Tennis video game series), and Virtual Boxing. All three games are simulations of their respective real world sports. The games would come on cartridges and be bundled with their own peripherals: Virtual Baseball would come with a wireless baseball bat controller and a wired interactive mat, Virtual Tennis would come with a wireless tennis racket controller, and Virtual Boxing would come with interactive wireless boxing gloves. All three games are known to have been listed on Amazon on November of 2006, with at least Virtual Boxing being sold as its listing has 2 reviews from 2009 and 2010. VTG Interactive also sold a proprietary console that would accept the game cartridges and any wireless/wired peripherals used with it, which was reportedly sold separately for around $30 USD. The manual for Virtual Tennis mentions that "game with console" sets could be purchased as well, although it is unknown if such sets were ever produced. At least with Virtual Baseball, the wireless peripherals use infrared communication. Virtual Baseball is also known to have had two revisions released, primarily to update the VTG Interactive logo shown on startup and in-game.

VTG Interactive's released games are versions of games that would later be included on generic 16-bit plug-and-play consoles running on Sunplus SPG hardware, which were released in the late 2000s and were typically Wii clones such as the Zone 40 and Reactor 32 in 1. These games were likely developed by Fuzhou Waixing Computer Science & Technology Co., Ltd., who were at one point a prolific developer of unlicensed games and translations of Japanese games for the Famicom in China. A year before VTG Interactive was founded in 2006, the Virtual Tennis and Virtual Boxing games were sold on Waixing's English Alibaba store. The same games are also known to have been listed on Subor's Alibaba store as early as 2007, strongly suggesting that both companies were involved in the production of the games. Whether the games were specifically made for VTG Interactive or before they were active at all is not entirely clear as a description of the company on a company directory website claims that they were active as early as 2003.

Generic versions

The generic plug-and-play versions of the VTG Interactive games have a few notable differences. One notable difference is that Chinese copyright registration numbers are added to the title screens, which are not present at all in the VTG Interactive versions. In some cases, variants of these versions of the games would use different names on the title screens as well. In the case of the baseball game included with Virtual Baseball, the title screen of the VTG Interactive version uses the name Live! Baseball while all known generic plug-and-play versions simply call the game Baseball. Further differences between the versions of the sports games released by VTG Interactive and the versions on generic plug-and-play consoles are unknown.

Console

Game Console
Distributor(s)	VTG Interactive
System	Sunplus SPG288

The console required to play VTG Interactive's games is a simple cartridge-based system with support for wireless infrared and wired peripherals. It is simply referred to as Game Console on the box it comes in. The console likely uses the Sunplus SPG288 system-on-a-chip as text in the ROM for a revision of Virtual Baseball mentions it in its strings. The VTG Interactive Game Console has a infrared receiver and 15-pin port at the front for wireless and wired peripherals respectively, integrated composite AV cables on the back, and a battery compartment located at the bottom. The Game Console also has a barrel jack power plug located on the back, but known units do not appear to come included with a power adapter when new in box.

Wireless peripherals

The following are wireless peripherals supported by the VTG Interactive Game Console. All of VTG Interactive's known games are bundled with one unique wireless peripheral that is required to play them. These peripherals respond to motion, which is then translated into their respective games as an input.

• Tennis racket - bundled with Virtual Tennis. Referred to as the "Racket Device" in the manual for the game
• Baseball bat - bundled with Virtual Baseball
• Boxing gloves - bundled with Virtual Boxing

Wired peripherals

The VTG Interactive Game Console has a single 15-pin port on the front that accepts one wired peripheral that can be used for games. Only one such peripheral is known to have been made and is exclusive to a single game, Virtual Baseball.

• "Running-Pad" - bundled with Virtual Baseball. According to the back of Virtual Baseball's box, it is meant to be used in-game when clearing a base

Trivia

• One of the stadiums in Waixing's generic 16-bit plug-and-play game Baseball has banners for a partially visible red logo with text. This logo is a version of the VTG Interactive logo, which is in the splash screens for both Virtual Tennis and Live! Baseball. This strongly suggests that the original incarnation of the game is Live! Baseball and that it was likely developed by Waixing for VTG Interactive before being repurposed for generic plug and play consoles.
• A revision of the Virtual Baseball cartridge is dumped in MAME.
• VTG Interactive's director up until the company's closure was Aviram Gerassi. He was also the director and president of SDW Games, which also released plug and play games that would later end up on Waixing's 16-bit Wii clones, such as Sudoku: Do You Sudoku? (simply named Sudoku on the generic Wii clones) and Operation: Cobra Strike.
  • Strangely enough, on a company directory website's listing for VTG Interactive, the address and phone numbers listed are linked to SDW Games. An Amazon listing for a plug and play unit from SDW Games, Operation: Cobra Strike, also lists VTG Interactive as the manufacturer despite the game's packaging and the Amazon listing's brand crediting SDW Games. This may suggest that both companies are closely connected in some way.

Gallery

Virtual Baseball

Box front, with a see-through panel for the baseball bat controller.

Box back.

Left side of box.

Right side of box.

Another box with a hand written sticker on it.

Virtual Boxing

Box front.

Box back.

Virtual Tennis

Box front.

Box back.

See also

• Fuzhou Waixing Computer Science & Technology Co.,LTD/Plug & Play console games
• Operation Cobra Strike

External links

• Amazon listing for Virtual Baseball
• Amazon listing for Virtual Tennis
• Amazon listing for Virtual Boxing