Cougar Boy Portable Console?

[rbudrick]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3025962363&category=187

Hi Folks,

Not sure if this should be in the Ebay Insanity forum, but has anyone ever heard of this? I'd be kind of surprised if it were a Gameboy clone, since GB clones are so rare....so whaddaya think?

-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

GB clones rare? Well, I suppose Assembler's had me pampered for pictures...anyways, I don't see anything about Nintendo or GameBoy on the shots given, so if indeed this is a GB clone (in functionality, not just appearance) it would have a hard time convincing people to buy it so they could play their GB games.

Also, it mentions "Scrolling background" or something for "great visual effect..." doesn't sound like standard GB fare to me (though there were scrolling backgrounds, I've never heard of them being called a great visual effect).

[Abe Honorable]

http://www.zxql3000.net/nerd/md_faq.php

http://consoledatabase.retrofaction.com/consoleinfo/megaduck/

[rbudrick]

Wow! Great info! Thanks!

Joe,

Here's almost all the info needed to add this one to the list! Well, except rarity...:-)

-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

Games, as well...about 30? I've never heard of the thing before today.

[Abe Honorable]

I did a little searching for the roms but found none.:( I'm guessing you could play them on a GB emu. Maybe I'll try looking via MIRC (but I really suck at it.)

[Ed Oscuro]

If you read the links up above, it's NOT a GameBoy, but rather a unique game system with its own library of 30 or so games.

The specs are quite different from a GameBoy, for one thing.

[Abe Honorable]

From the first link:

First of all some facts. I think, by the looks and the functioning of the thing, the Mega Duck is a very close copy of the Gameboy. I'm pretty sure it has the same processor, an 8-bit Z80 (clone), and it has the same display: a 160x144 LCD display with four shades of gray. Since the Mega Duck has "CHEAP RIPOFF!" written all over it, I wouldn't be surpised if the memory is sliglty less than a Gameboy (which has 8kB). But other than that - I think they're very similair under the hood.

Okay, here's the theory for these facts. Let me begin at the Mega Duck's producing company. The Mega Duck has been released under several names, Creatronic being the one most mentioned, and unfortunately there's little known about this company. All the games for the Mega Duck have been made by a company called Commin, and were all released by Creatronic. My guess is that Creatronic contracted this game company Commin to produce games for their Mega Duck system. Whichever way - Commin and Creatronic were in close cooperation, and might even have been the same company. Anyway, years went by, the Mega Duck flopped, and nobody heard of it anymore. A few years later, Commin released a lot of the Mega Duck titles for the Gameboy and Gameboy Color on 4-in-1 cartridges. These were *exact* copies, including al the graphics and characterising details of the Mega Duck versions.

This, and some details about Commin explained in the "GAMES" chapter, lead me to form this theory. First of all, the chance of a Taiwanese company completely doing a remake of some unimportant, obscure, lousy game for the huge, high-quality Gameboy market is pretty small. Second of all, Commin had proven to be quite talented hackers and had serious reverse- engineering skills (especially if they get the credit for developing the Mega Duck). My guess is the Mega Duck's internals were the same as the Gameboy's, and the games were reprogrammed on tiny details to work on the Gameboy. If the processor and the screen is the same, it's not a difficult task. They crammed four games on each cart, and voilla: two weeks of work and about eight cartridges to present on the blooming Gameboy market. Easy money!
http://www.zxql3000.net/nerd/md_system.php


Get some roms, and it can be done. Promise.

[Abe Honorable]

Quick clarification:
You probably can't run the roms on any gb emu. But if you found the roms the emu would only be weeks (if that) behind it. Or the next version of someone's gb emu. Or the emu runs the games out of the box. Sure would like to find out.

[Ed Oscuro]

Whoops, you are right. (I thought the screen looked a bit tall, that's part of it, and I forgot how many pins a GameBoy cartridge has). Yeah, I do this often. No harm done, I hope?

Anyways, the main thing that jumps out at me is the 64K RAM, quite a bit more than your average GameBoy's 8K RAM (and the reason why I thought it was a completely non-compatible system). It would be interesting to see what sorts of mappers and other new things the Cougar/Duck specific titles use.

[Abe Honorable]

Anyways, the main thing that jumps out at me is the 64K RAM, quite a bit more than your average GameBoy's 8K Yeah, that 64k doesn't sound right does it? In fact this guy that wrote the faq (which is the only faq on the net- (DP seems to use this faq in fact) even theorizes that it might have less than 8K:
Since the Mega Duck has "CHEAP RIPOFF!" written all over it, I wouldn't be surpised if the memory is sliglty less than a Gameboy (which has 8kB).
It's the second link that makes the 64k claim. I wonder were this info came from? It doesn't seem like that it would be less than 8k (what would it be then, 7K? 6K?. Who makes those memory chips? I seriously doubt its 4K, which would seem to be the next logical descending amount. 64K makes little sense either. Why would they have so much? Judging by the game reviews they really didn't make much use of even 8K. Hmmmm....

And since it actually is a unique console with 30 unique games, I would like to see some official DP coverage of it. The guy that wrote the FAQ is the only knowledge base for this system on the internet (by his own admission, at least). And his faq is reposted on only four sites (DP being one of the four).
Maybe DP can get him to dump a few roms so that some of the brainier types here can get some better technical info on it.

Since it's not a real GB clone and has a good-sized library, there does seem to be a void in the "Great Console Information Database", that so many sites claim to have. Sounds like a job for DP!:D