Jollibee Game Box Plug-n-Play System

Jollibee is a Filipino fast food restaurant that you probably wouldn't know about unless you were Filipino or from one of the major US cities. The company always has some type of great promotion going and usually the kids-meal toys benefit from them.

I'm not sure of the history of the Game Box, it could have been sold in stores or through some other means. What I do know was that they were only produced for a limited time, there is one targeted by color and character towards boys and one towards girls, they were produced in 2007, each contains 6 games, they were produced in Hong Kong, and each has an extra 2-player controller port.<br><Br>The one I picked up was the blue boy’s version that uses Jollibee as the controller. I grabbed it from a local thrift shop, still in the box, for $2.99. Inside the box is an instructions sheet that explains how to play the 6 games. The system runs on 4 AAA batteries and plugs into the AV inputs of a television.

The included games are:

• Boat Race
• Matching
• Mars Man
• Neighborhood Smash
• Target Practice
• 110 Meter Hurdles

I'm not sure of the origin of Matching, but I am 100% sure that the other games are either NES games or hacks of NES games. Boat Race appears to be a hack of Road Fighter, Mars Man is a hack of Binary Land, Neighborhood Smash is Karateka, Target Practice is a hack of Track & Field's archery mini-game, and 100 Meter Hurdles is a hack of Track & Field's mini-game by the same name.

The controller itself, for being oddly shaped, is incredibly responsive. The buttons are hard plastic but are also very responsive. All of the games are really enjoyable, as long as the TV is roughly 3 feet from you, as the AV cable is extremely short for a plug-n-play game system.

One odd thing that caught my attention was that there is a port for a second controller on the back of the system. Right next to that port is a switch for 1 or 2-players. I've yet to dig out any of my Hong Kong made ROM-based systems, but I am sure that I have a controller that will fit this port.

I am a collector of these fun plug-n-play systems. This one has a pretty neat theme, but I would have to say the hacks of the games aren't anything special. The two Track & Field games and Binary Land are simply sprite hacks. It is possible that the Road Fighter hack is actually not a hack but a different game or a later level. I'm not sure about this, but if it is a hack then it is the best one on the system. As for the Matching game, I am sure that I have played it before. It looks to be another one of those odd unlicensed games that made it onto multi-game carts (ie: 100-in-1). To the left of the screen is a witch sitting on a broom, and the items on the reverse side of the cards are all magic themed. The controller moves an arrow curser and a timer counts down as the gamer attempts to match all of the cards. I may go through GoodNES and try to place the game if I have more time.<br><br>I'm now on the hunt for the girl's version of the game that uses, who I believe to be, the blond haired Jollibee mascot named Hetty, as the controller.

Happy Gaming!
-Another World