Shenzhen Safari Ⅱ
Games. Cheaper by the Half-Dozen #
Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Forty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Thirty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Twenty years ago, Forty pounds, Forty dollars; Ten years ago, Forty pounds. Forty dollars; Now.
Now.
Now.
Now.
Hold your horses there, pilgrim. Disarm and dismiss your “well, actually”, your “in my experience”, your pathethetic, snivelling, nasal whine. Because the above poem about game prices isn’t factual. It isn’t fact-checked. It is in fact, an anecdote. A commentary. A feeling. That price has deflated. What effect has this dilution had? Just you strap in. Let’s just enjoy some spike-free time together here. No tricks. I promise. Honest. Just treats.
Supply and Supply and Supply and Supple and Subverted #
Video games came on cassette tapes, floppy disks, hard disks, shiny discs, and for a good chunk of the ’80s and ’90s, monolithic, gravestone ratio cartridges. These physical yearns, with binary ones and zeroes (bits) chiselled or magnetically polarised into place, would slot firmly into the earth of the machine.
Gorgeous, lying art, enrobing a creamy grey Commodore 64 cassette tape, for example. Printed pink or blue, entombed in clear plastic. A colourful, titled spine. Up front, a hand-painted artist’s impression. An enticing blurb with minute screenshots on the rear. A glorified vision from a better world; a superior version of the game, one generation newer at least.
Why is it so pricey? #
A complete package in 1993, and by that I mean wood, stone, plastic, and bone, was only £3–5 (£6–10 in 2023 money). Cartridge games though, were much dearer. Round about, a-ha, oh, I’d say, a-ha-ha, forty quid. Ahem…
This meant, to enjoy the latest SEGA or Nintendo title, you had to either be rich, have a birthday/Christmas on the way, or save up from your child labour work, in my case, a short-lived career as a paperboy for £13 a week (until my bike was stolen, and I got into washing dishes at a hotel instead.)
Games were a rare treasure indeed then. And like it or lump it, if you got a rotten pile of garbage and faeces, you would still explore it all inside-out, forensically rooting around all it’s ugly design failures, bugs, warts, terrible graphics, abysmal gameplay, laggy, dropped inputs and ear-bleedingly discortant sound-effects and music.
Because, even as a noxious pile of toxic waste, lethal rust and metals, it had great value. It was forty pounds for god’s sake. Suffer the monophonic blocks of stimulation, however jagged, samey, painful, and repetitive. The alternative was nature. Was chaos. Was lack of structure. Lack of control. Lack of certainty. Lack of rules. Lack of constraints and limitations. Unbearable. And it had great value. It was forty pounds.
As you got to know your forty pound game like the backs of your unwashed hands, something strange would happen. You would grow an attachment to it. And your interactions with it would be distorted. Somewhere between the projected reality and your processing of reality, your perception would be re-folded.
The broken melodies and predictable movements would shift from repellant to attractive. You, yourself were being re-programmed, by the game. The forty…pound…game.
Warty Forty #
Consider, not-your-toddler-quality art was sold for the same price as the finest masterpieces, worked on by a team of creative geniuses. Forty pounds, please.
And yes, physical piracy plagued all formats, as it does today. But this all changed with the rise of the internet. Even earlier than 1999, games old and new could be copied and captured in minutes.
One could sneak around virtual museums and shops, dodging AOL chatroom creeps: “A/S/L? A/S/L?”, pop-up adverts, invisible viruses, trojan horses, and worse, to magically duplicate and run off with a perfect duplicate of a game, to then imperfectly emulate through a layer of software, hacks, and latency.
Anything TESticle, NESticle better #
Nineties Ninties emulation bore fruit in 1997. NESticle was a popular (and completely free, paperboy) NES emulator, which featured a severed hand’s pointing index finger as a mouse cursor. It’s name came from the smashing together of testicles with Nintendo Entertainment System. A witty portmanteau. Bloodlust Software also developed a Mega Drive / Genesis emulator named Genecyst, and many other outrageously titled games. Software with personality and quirks. Human software. Better times…
Physical, Digital, Forty Pounds, Free #
“When something is free, how much value can it really have? When something is forty pounds, how little value can it really have?” —Iain Plays, 2023
Spoiled for choice.
Spoiled by choice.
Paralysed by selection [choice].
So what if instead of the infinite jest, your chest of games only had one-hundred, and three, and forty?
143 games. Well, forty years ago, that would be a giant collection. More than a lifetime of enjoyment. Today, with our smoother and faster brains, that’s at least an afternoon’s delight.
A curation of welcome and obvious heavy-weights, interspersed with diamonds in the rough and quiet, curious fancies. Well, such an artefact exists and for around £10, you can purchase an AliExpress 143 NES games in 1 cartridge. (Note: not an affiliate link.)
Shenzhen Safari Ⅱ: NES 143 in 1 #
The NES is a fickle creature with a 72-pin connector. Its mating with a
cartridge is so fragile and so prone to failure, that contacts must be cleaned
regularly. Dust cannot within a mile of it. The amount of friction, the
position, the alignment, the weather, cosmic rays, and levels of torpor
must all be perfectly attuned, or else; tough. No happy beginning—or ending—
for you.
You may find also that you have to remove and boil the connector for forty minutes. Or order a new one. Or do both. And/Or cut the fourth leg of a specific processing chip underneath the belly of the machine.
But once you’re in, you can enjoy such sweet meats and rare treats as Sweet Home, which I would never have known of or cared about, had I not received for review The 143 in 1 Best Video Games of All Time NES Cartridge.
Really, prior to this, I thought the NES was just another shitty 8-bit pretender. A pale imitation of the arcades. How wrong I was. Robbed of the opportunity due to my birth-year and birthright, deceived by emulation, I am elated to now bask in the variety and richness of the games from this fine console. It really does make my Sega Master System look like crap. (I think. I’ll have to procure one again, since I carelessly donated mine during the PlayStation era. a story for anothe time.)
So, O Hearken Ye, and see for yourself. This fine example is the 1989 precursor to Resident Evil, Sweet Home, being played via RF connection to a Panasonic TX-G10 (10” CRT). Further, under, the full listing of this exquisite mausoleum. I’ll leave it there. Until we meet again.
The 143 in 1 Best Video Games of All Time NES Cartridge Game List #
| Title ID | Title Name |
| 1 | Adventure Island 1 |
| 2 | Adventure Island 2 |
| 3 | Adventure Island 3 |
| 4 | Adventure Island 4 |
| 5 | Adventures of Lolo |
| 6 | Adventures of Lolo 2 |
| 7 | Astyanax |
| 8 | Balloon Fight |
| 9 | Baseball Stars |
| 10 | Batman |
| 11 | Batman Returns |
| 12 | Bionic Commando |
| 13 | Blades of Steel |
| 14 | Blaster Master |
| 15 | Bomberman 1 |
| 16 | Bomberman 2 |
| 17 | Bubble Bobble |
| 18 | Bubble Bobble 2 |
| 19 | Castlevania 1 |
| 20 | Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest |
| 21 | Chip n Dale 2 |
| 22 | Clu Clu Land |
| 23 | Contra |
| 24 | Contra Force |
| 25 | Super Contra |
| 26 | Crystalis |
| 27 | Deja vu |
| 28 | Devil World |
| 29 | Donkey Kong |
| 30 | Donkey Kong Jr |
| 31 | Double Dragon 1 |
| 32 | Double Dragon 2 |
| 33 | Double Dragon 3 |
| 34 | Double Dragon 4 |
| 35 | Dr Mario |
| 36 | Ducktales 1 |
| 37 | Ducktales 2 |
| 38 | Earthbound |
| 39 | Excitebike |
| 40 | Faxanadu |
| 41 | Final Fantasy 1 |
| 42 | Final Fantasy 2 |
| 43 | Final Fantasy 3 |
| 44 | Flintstones 1 |
| 45 | Flintstones 2 |
| 46 | Friday the 13th |
| 47 | Galaga |
| 48 | Gargoyles Quest 2 |
| 49 | Ghost n Goblins |
| 50 | Goonies 1 |
| 51 | Goonies 2 |
| 52 | Gradius |
| 53 | Guardian Legend, The |
| 54 | Ice Climber |
| 55 | Ice Hockey |
| 56 | Ikari 1 |
| 57 | Ikari 2 |
| 58 | Ikari 3 |
| 59 | Jackal |
| 60 | Kickle Cubicle |
| 61 | Kid Icarus |
| 62 | Kings of the Beach |
| 63 | Kirby’s Adventure |
| 64 | Kung Fu |
| 65 | Legendary Wings |
| 66 | Life Force |
| 67 | Little Nemo: The Dream Master |
| 68 | Little Samson |
| 69 | Lode Runner |
| 70 | Magician |
| 71 | Maniac Mansion |
| 72 | Mega Man 1 |
| 73 | Mega Man 2 |
| 74 | Mega Man 3 |
| 75 | Mega Man 4 |
| 76 | Mega Man 5 |
| 77 | Mega Man 6 |
| 78 | Metal Gear |
| 79 | Metal Storm |
| 80 | Metroid |
| 81 | Mickey Mousecapade |
| 82 | Might and Magic |
| 83 | Mighty Final Fight |
| 84 | Millipede |
| 85 | Moon Crystal |
| 86 | Ninja Gaiden 1 |
| 87 | Ninja Gaiden 2 |
| 88 | Ninja Gaiden 3 |
| 89 | Over Horizon |
| 90 | Pac-Man |
| 91 | Paperboy |
| 92 | Parodius |
| 93 | Power Blade 1 |
| 94 | Power Blade 2 |
| 95 | Rad Racer |
| 96 | Rainbow Islands |
| 97 | Rampage |
| 98 | Ring King |
| 99 | River City Ransom |
| 100 | Rush n Attack |
| 101 | Rygar |
| 102 | Samurai Pizza Cats |
| 103 | Sansara Naga |
| 104 | Section-Z |
| 105 | Shadowgate |
| 106 | Silver Surfer |
| 107 | Skate or Die |
| 108 | Smash T.V. |
| 109 | Spider-Man |
| 110 | Spy Hunter |
| 111 | Super Spy Hunter |
| 112 | Star Wars |
| 113 | Star Wars Empire Strikes Back |
| 114 | Startropics 1 |
| 115 | Startropics 2 |
| 116 | Stinger |
| 117 | Mario Bros. |
| 118 | Super Mario Bros. 1 |
| 119 | Super Mario Bros. 2 |
| 120 | Super Mario Bros. 3 |
| 121 | Sweet Home |
| 122 | Tecmo Super Bowl |
| 123 | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 (Japanese Version) |
| 124 | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game |
| 125 | Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project |
| 126 | Turtles Tournament Fighters |
| 127 | Terminator 1 |
| 128 | Terminator 2: Judgment Day |
| 129 | Tetris 1 |
| 130 | Tetris 2 |
| 131 | Time Diver Eon Man |
| 132 | Tiny Toon Adventures 1 |
| 133 | Tiny Toon Adventures 2 |
| 134 | Totally Rad |
| 135 | Uninvited |
| 136 | Vice Project Doom |
| 137 | Willow |
| 138 | Willy & Right’s Rockboard |
| 139 | Zanac |
| 140 | Zelda, The Legend of |
| 141 | Zelda 2 |
| 142 | Zen Intergalactic Ninja |
| 143 | Zombie Nation |
Every second month throughout 2023, I reviewed a choice piece of AliExpress’ gaming hardware, carefully appraising each gift horse’s mouth, teeth, mane, and muscles.
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅰ: Pocket Multi Game (PMG) 99 in 1
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅱ: NES 143 in 1 Cart
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅲ: Data Frog SF2000
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅳ: Wireless PS2 Controller (2.4Ghz | Translucent)
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅴ: 3D Neon Sign Lamp Headphone Stand
- Shenzhen Safari Ⅵ: Non-tendo 168-in-1 iPhone 12 mini Phone Case
- Read the next post: “Peak Web”
- Read the previous post: “Shenzhen Safari Ⅰ”
- Or roll for a random post