TV Boy

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TV Boy 1 (with power and TV leads attached)

The TV Boy and its successor TV Boy 2 were video game consoles of the 1990s produced by many different companies including systema, akor, NICS and a few others based upon an unlicensed clone of the Atari 2600 hardware. Resembling a large handheld pad, the system plugged into a TV and running from either 4 AA batteries or a 6v power supply could play any one of 127 built in games.

They were widely available across Europe. In the UK they were most visibly available through Argos. An improved version of the TV Boy 2, the Super TV-Boy was made by Akor in 1995.

1 Hardware
2 Games
3 List of included games
4 See also

[edit] Hardware

The only difference between a TV Boy and TV Boy 2 is that the former has two 9pin Atari type joystick connectors for the optional use of external Atari-type joysticks.

The TV Boy 2 has no capacity for the addition of external joysticks so only a single player may play at once, using the built in pad.

The system has a jumper labelled NTSC/PAL on its motherboard so the underlying Atari 2600 clone presumably may be configured to play in either region. Doing so would require a replacement of the games ROM however, as on an Atari 2600 the game software controls vertical synchronisation timings.

There is no slot for additional games.

[edit] Games

The system contains a single 512kb ROM housing 128 programs. One of those is the program that enables the others to be selected, so only 127 games are included and none of them use any sort of paged ROM scheme.

All 127 are original commercial Atari 2600 games by companies such as Atari, Activision, Mattel and Atari hacked so that all copyright notices and other assets demonstrating ownership of exclusive rights in a game are removed. The coloured bars to the left of the A in the Activision logo remain on some games but the company name is entirely excised.

False and ambiguous names - such as "Mad Kong" (for Donkey Kong) and the rather amusing "The Flying Man" (for a Superman game) - were printed on the back-of-the-box game list, and in the instruction manual.

Some of the games have slight graphical alterations over their originals. All play with altered colours - for example, Pitfall! (known here as "The Jungle", according to the box and manual) is now set in a blue forest. This is because the game ROMS included in the package are usually the NTSC versions, but are played on a PAL console, much the same as when American cartridges are played on a real PAL format Atari 2600.

[edit] List of included games

The following is an incomplete list of the original Atari 2600 games that were modified for inclusion in the TV Boy 1, listed according to the game number given on that device: