Sweater Fish Deluxe
08-26-2006, 06:54 PM
http://www.jungletac.com/images/m1.gif
That's the OneStation. It's a portable system from a company called JungleTac which appeared sometime this past Spring as far as I know. The unit I have has the date 4-20-06 (whooo! smok dope, man!) on the PC board and that's about when I first heard of the system, too, so I figure that's probably about when it came out, though it's hard to say with semi-pirate systems like these. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I first learned of the system from a topic on this board; someone posted a link to a Polish auction for one and asked what it was, but no one knew much, though I think it was mentioned that the system was being sold at success-hk.com--a board search doesn't turn anything up, probably because the name of the system wasn't mentioned in the thread. I sort of forgot about it after that and only rediscovered it when I saw JungleTac's page about the system on their site, which I like to visit every so often to see what they're up to.
JungleTac has been around for a number of years now, manufacturing video game systems that dance around on the borderline between legit and pirate. I first learned of them about five years ago when I discovered they were the manufacturer behind the Gamestation Arcade plug and play systems that were being sold in the U.S. by Pelican Accessories. The Gamestation is a Famicom-on-a-chip system that has the whole catalog of Color Dreams games built into it. There's actually also another version that has the Wisdom Tree games built in instead of the Color Dreams stuff. I saw the Wisdom Tree one for sale once, but I thought it was too expensive at the time and passed on it, in retrospect I wish I had bought it since I would love to own an oddball thing like that but I'll probably never see one again in my life. These were among the first legal Famiclone systems sold in the U.S. (the Color Dreams and Wisdom Tree games had just recently been put into the public domain by their original owners) and along with the original Activision plug and play system from ToyMax that came out around the same time they were sort of the prologue to the whole plug and play system trend. There's also a physically identical system called the RumbleStation that was sold in Hong Kong and has a standard selection of illegal games--basically like any other Famiclone-in-a-controller, though the GameStation/RumbleStation is quite a bit nicer and more well made than your run of the mill Mega Joy sort of system.
A couple years later, I heard of JungleTac again when they were manufacturing some other legal Famiclone plug and play systems. These ones had original games on them that JungleTac seems to have programmed themselves--or at least contracted someone else to program just for their system. Like the GameStation, these systems weren't actually sold by JungleTac directly, instead various models were distrubted by a whole slew of different companies, mostly Senario and dreamGear, though I've also seen ones from Polaroid and others. The original games on these systems are pretty widely despised by people who've bought the systems, though I think there's a handful of really great games nestled in among what is admittedly a wash of total crap.
Finally, last year JungleTac released a series of portable systems alternatively called either M3 or VG Pocket depending on who handled the distribution: the M3 systems are sold by JungleTac directly while the VG Pocket labeled ones are, like JungleTac's previous hardware, licensed for distribution by a third party, this time Performance). These handhelds are actually sort of a crossover between the plug and play market and true handheld consoles since all their games are built in and they don't take carts and they actually also feature a TV out port along with their built-in screens. They have the same original JungleTac games built into them as the previously mentioned systems.
JungleTac also has some other hardware lines listed on their website, including some sort of hi-tech virtual pet looking thing and some media players with built in game functions, but these apparently aren't widely distributed outside of Asia so I've never been able to find any of them for sale anywhere. I have actually owned all three of the systems I just mentioned above, though, and enjoyed them all so I guess you could say I'm a JungleTac fanboy.
The OneStation is their newest system and it's definitely more ambitious than their previous lines, mostly because instead of having its games built in, it takes cartridges more like a normal handheld console. In addition to cartridges that contain varying amounts of their original 8-bit games, there's also multicarts full of NES games ranging from 12-in-1 to 99-in-1 and these often feature some pretty nice games, not just the standard mapper 0 pirate multicart fare. Third, there's another type of cartridge that contains orignal games different from their Famicom-on-a-chip 8-bit ones. These ones are running on 16-bit hardware, but it's not clear what architecture it is exactly, definitley not either Genesis or SNES, though, more likely it's some special architecture from Winbond or SunPlus like many of the licensed plug and play systems from Jakks Pacific use. Now, the way the OneStation is able to play these cartridges containing games on different platforms is what's really interesting about the system. It doesn't just have two different CPUs built into it, like you might assume. In fact, the main console doesn't have any CPU in it at all, instead the CPU for whatever system is needed comes on the cartridge along with the games. The main unit is just a shell with controls, screen and a battery compartment all of which are accessed directly through the cartridge port by the different carts. That's a pretty brilliant design concept, if you ask me because it allows the OneStation to be both extremely cheap and extremely flexible.
There's already a line of Genesis game multicarts available from 4-in-1s up to a 9-in-1. However, these don't play on the OneStation directly, they require an MD bridge adapter which actually contains the Genesis-on-a-chip while the individual game cartridges just contain a ROM like normal game carts for any other system. I assume that JungleTac did the Genesis games this way since the Genesis-on-a-chip is quite a bit more expensive then a Famicom-on-a-chip, so Genesis game carts each with their own CPU would have been more expensive than the ~$10 each price point JungleTac seems to be aiming for with their cartridges so far.
Hopefully the more systems will be supported in the near future. Some of JungleTac's promotional material already mentions GBC games, which would indeed be possible since there's a GBC-on-a-chip that's shown up on a few pieces of hardware from Hong Kong. Also, while they haven't mentioned them, Master System and Atari 2600 should also be possible. SMS-on-a-chip stuff has recently started coming out of China built into various media players like the Coby V-Zon system. And a Stella-on-a-chip has been around for a long time now. I really hope JungleTac has plans to release cartridges based on each of those consoles. There's also an N64-on-a-chip which is currently probably too expensive to be considered, but maybe in the future...controls would be a problem obviously, but I think it would be possible to come up with a list of N64 games that can be played with just a dpad, three buttons and start. There's likely to be other architectures available in the future, too, such as cheap 32-bit architectures form Winbond or SunPlus that original games could be written for.
In addition to games, JungleTac also plans to sell cartridges for the system that will turn it into a multimedia player, a digital camera, a GPS unit, or other things like that. Basically anything that there's an all-in-one chip to handle, the OneStation can do. And those sorts of low-cost unified architecture chips just keep appearing out of China for all sorts of applications, so the system could end up doing almost anything. Games are definitely what the OneStation is intended for, though.
Of course, this is all dependant on whether JungleTac actually continues to support the system or not. There's a lot of potential in the system's design, it would really be a shame to see it wasted. At the very least SMS and 2600 cartridges really need to be released. Unfortunately, these sorts of Chinese eletronics companies don't have a great reputation for product support and JungleTac has never had a system in the past they had to continue supporting after its release since they've always had their games built in with no for the end user to add more.
I don't know if it's a false hope, but it does seem to me that JungleTac has put some extra effort into the OneStation beyond what you would normally expect from a system like this, so maybe that's a sign that they really are behind it and plan to continue releasing cartridges for it.
First of all, there's the cartridges themselves. The multicarts--especially the NES ones--feature some great titles that you don't see on multicarts normally, lots of "big name" games that use a variety of mappers. I also like the way the smaller gamecount NES carts are grouped together with games based on movies, games based on cartoons and platformer games each on separate carts, I wis they'd dont eh same with the Genesis carts. Also, while I only have one NES game cart so far, it doesn't contain the usual hacked up versions of the games with no title screens and Track & Field broken up into separate events and stuff like that like you normally expect on multicarts, they're the real proper ROM images, fresh and clean. They haven't inflated the number of games included, either, the 12-in-1 is really 12 games and really the 12 games listed, same for the 35-in-1s and even the 99-in-1 I have really has 99 games on it (though they actua;lly are mostly mapper 0 games, with only four larger games; on the 35-in-1s, though, up to half of the titles are larger, mapper games).
What really shows the quality of the system, though, is the system itself.
The most impressive thing on the system is the screen. It's absolutely great. Like the screen on JungleTac's previous handheld, the VG Pocket, the OneStation's screen is in reality a tiny analog RGB screen not digital like other handheld system's screens (I actually looked at it under a microscope at work this just to confirm this!). The advantage of having an analog screen for a system like this that when playing games from a variety of systems you'll also be dealing with a variety of native resolutions but an analog RGB screen will display anything you throw at it full screen at the proper aspect ratio without any of the image deformation commonly seen in the case of emulation. Try playing NES games emulated on the GBA or DS and you'll find that the screen is funky looking because the NES actually had a higher internal resolution than that of the either GBA or DS screens, so the emulators have to drop lines distorting the picture. With the GP2X or Dreamcast or a computer your screen's resolution is usually higher than that of the system you're trying to emulate, so lines don't have to be dropped, but if you want the picture to be full screen you'll still have to put up with some distortion because some lines will be doubled and others won't. On the OneStation, there's none of that. The image looks right all the time, just like it would on a real TV because it works essentially the same way. I think the Game Gear and the TurboExpress also had RGB screens similar in theory to this one, but the Game Gear screen was obviously really horrible, with huge pixels and tons of blur; the TurboExpress screen was nicer, but it had quite a lot of blur, too. The screen on the OneStation has no blur at all and it has a really tight dot pitch, so that even if you stare at the screen looking for the individual pixels, you really can't see them. You just have a clear and solid and smooth picture that's beautiful. I initially assumed the screen on the OneStation would be just the same as the one used on the VG Pocket systems, but that one definitely had larger pixels which were big enough in relation to the size of the screen to cause some odd visual effects like jagged edges or a sort of diagonal grid look across the screen. The OneStation screen isn't like that, it's just solid and perfect. It's also very well lit, I was even able to play it outdoors in direct sunlight. I would honestly go so far as to say this is the nicest screen I've ever seen on a handheld. Really. The fact that the OneStation's screen is RGB is particularly interesting in the case of the NES carts since the NES--either the original or the on-a-chip clones--doesn't naturally output RGB, so this must be a new Famicom-on-a-chip design; it would be interesting for hackers to play around with and try turning it into a full system, though it still seems to have the same audio problems as a normal Famicom-on-a-chip.
The dpad and buttons on the OneStation are also very good. I'm used to having to make various modififcations to the controls on pirate systems because they're usually pretty shittily constructed and I'm picky about controls. On the OneStation, though, I haven't had to do anything, the controls feel right: not too clicky, not too mushy. Also, the dpad doesn't register directions sloppily, which is a big problem with pirate hardware; on the OneStation, when you press up, you don't end up getting a diagonal or anything like that. The only problem with the controls is that JungleTac apparently realizes that A comes before B unlike Nintendo, so when playing NES games the buttons are reversed. This isn't usually a problem, but for some games it can be awkward, for instance in Super Mario Bros where you have to hold down B all the time to run and occasionally hit A to jump. Because of the way the system is set up with the control signals leaving the system and going to the cartridge, there would be lots of places to try modifying it to switch the A and B buttons, I could even do it on the individual cartridges that I want to have reversed controls, but it's too bad to have to make any modifications like that. Controls wouldn't be perfect for the Genesis games, either, since the button above and between the A and B buttons acts as C. I can't think of any games off the top of my head that this would be a problem for, though. That C button can either act as Select or turbo on the NES game cartridges, by the way; there's a jumper on the cartridge board that selects between those per cartridge.
The only other complaint I have about the design of the system is the way the cartridges stick out of the top. They only plug about a CM into the system, leaving most of the cartridge sticking out of the top. I would have preferred the cartridges to slide all the way into the system even if it meant a slightly larger system overall. The carts are actually surprisingly stable the way they are, though; it just looks a sort of strange.
There's not really much more to the system since, like I said, the main unit itself is just an interface for the cartridges to plug into. There's also the battery compartment. The system seems to get pretty good battery life, though I actually haven't gone through the first set of AAAs that came with it and I've been playing it quite a lot for the past week. I took some batteries out of my VG Pocket Max that were getting low and put them in the OneStation and it wouldn't turn on, so its battery life must be lower than the VG Pocket's, which averages about 12 hours on three AAAs. This is probably because of the better screen on the OneStation. I'm estimating 9 or 10 hours, though, which is respectable enough compared to other current handhelds (though the last handheld I owned before this and my DS was a Neo Geo Pocket, so anything less than 30 hours will always seem horrible to me).
So, there you go. I think the OneStation is a great system. The hardware is really good quality and the design holds tons of potential, so if JungleTac takes advantage of that potential by releasing all they cartridges they could, this thing could be a classic gamer's dream come true. The biggest problem is that we'll almost certainly always be limited in game selection to what JungleTac decides to put on their multicarts. While, they do make reference and SD card connection on their site, I think this is more likely to be used for the media player or the camera than the game carts just because JungleTac knows that if they release a Genesis card with an SD slot, they'll never sell another of their Genesis game multicarts. Same goes for adapters to use orignal cartridges from any supported system. I don't really mind having a limited selection of games, though, especially since the selection on the multicarts so far seems pretty good. In a way, it's sort nice...nostalgic, even since it's like being a kid again when I didn't have access to every single game I wanted, thousands per system, I just played whatever I could and that was good enough. There's plenty to have fun with.
Here's some links if you want to read more about the system:
http://www.jungletac.com/product_7.asp
Not really much info there, but you can check out the non-gaming cartridges JungleTac plans to release.
http://www.geocities.com/sweaterfishdeluxe/onestation.htm
That's a table I put together that lists what games are included on each of the multicarts. It doesn't list the Genesis carts, but those are liste don success-hk's site. It also doesn't include the 99-in-1 NES carts, I only have one of those, but there's apparently five of them altogether. I don't know how the game selection on them differs, it may be that only the four big name games differ between them and the other 95 games are the same. The one I have has Sonic The Hedgehog (this is a pirate original clone that's been aorund for a while), Mighty Final Fight, Tiny Toon Adventures 2 and The Adventures Of Lolo 2 as well as 95 mapper 0 games (Zippy Race, Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, etc....all the usual pirate multicart stuff).
http://nesworld.parodius.com/p8-onestation.htm
There's another review of the system.
http://www.success-hk.com/product_html/Cool_Stuff_One_Station_Game_Console.html
These guys are the best place to get the OneStation stuff that I've found. Actually, if you check your favorite shady Asian importer, chances are they'll have some OneStation stuff listed in their "other" or "miscellaneous a/v" category, I've found the systemj for sale tons of places, but success-hk seems to have the most complete selection of game cartridges. For all I know their selection may not be complete, either, though. It definitely doesn't include the five 99-in-1 NES carts that I know exist, maybe there's other things missing.
http://contents.fifthunit.com/html/products.5th/sku.827.html
These guys sell the system, too, but the version the sell is different from what I've seen anywhere else. Like JungleTac's previous systems, this one is apparently manufactured by JungleTac for a third party to distribute, in this case Kensington Technologies. The only significant difference between the JungleTac OneStations and Kensington's is that the Kensington ones have a plus-shaped dpad instead of the Playstation-esque dpad on the JungleTac ones. That makes a big difference to me, so I got the Kensington one. The packaging has pictures of other styles that The Fifth Unit doesn't sell, but I like the fakey Famicom Classic GB Micro styling of this one better than the other ones anyway. The Fifth Unit also gives you a 99-in-1 NES cart with the order, so that's the only place to get one of those that I know of--the others are probably only available at nasty little back alley shops in Hong Kong.
So, this has turned into a way longer and more in depth review than I originally planned to write, but I just can't help myself. It's as much a reflection of my college conditioning as my excitement about the OneStation system, of course.
...word is bondage...
That's the OneStation. It's a portable system from a company called JungleTac which appeared sometime this past Spring as far as I know. The unit I have has the date 4-20-06 (whooo! smok dope, man!) on the PC board and that's about when I first heard of the system, too, so I figure that's probably about when it came out, though it's hard to say with semi-pirate systems like these. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I first learned of the system from a topic on this board; someone posted a link to a Polish auction for one and asked what it was, but no one knew much, though I think it was mentioned that the system was being sold at success-hk.com--a board search doesn't turn anything up, probably because the name of the system wasn't mentioned in the thread. I sort of forgot about it after that and only rediscovered it when I saw JungleTac's page about the system on their site, which I like to visit every so often to see what they're up to.
JungleTac has been around for a number of years now, manufacturing video game systems that dance around on the borderline between legit and pirate. I first learned of them about five years ago when I discovered they were the manufacturer behind the Gamestation Arcade plug and play systems that were being sold in the U.S. by Pelican Accessories. The Gamestation is a Famicom-on-a-chip system that has the whole catalog of Color Dreams games built into it. There's actually also another version that has the Wisdom Tree games built in instead of the Color Dreams stuff. I saw the Wisdom Tree one for sale once, but I thought it was too expensive at the time and passed on it, in retrospect I wish I had bought it since I would love to own an oddball thing like that but I'll probably never see one again in my life. These were among the first legal Famiclone systems sold in the U.S. (the Color Dreams and Wisdom Tree games had just recently been put into the public domain by their original owners) and along with the original Activision plug and play system from ToyMax that came out around the same time they were sort of the prologue to the whole plug and play system trend. There's also a physically identical system called the RumbleStation that was sold in Hong Kong and has a standard selection of illegal games--basically like any other Famiclone-in-a-controller, though the GameStation/RumbleStation is quite a bit nicer and more well made than your run of the mill Mega Joy sort of system.
A couple years later, I heard of JungleTac again when they were manufacturing some other legal Famiclone plug and play systems. These ones had original games on them that JungleTac seems to have programmed themselves--or at least contracted someone else to program just for their system. Like the GameStation, these systems weren't actually sold by JungleTac directly, instead various models were distrubted by a whole slew of different companies, mostly Senario and dreamGear, though I've also seen ones from Polaroid and others. The original games on these systems are pretty widely despised by people who've bought the systems, though I think there's a handful of really great games nestled in among what is admittedly a wash of total crap.
Finally, last year JungleTac released a series of portable systems alternatively called either M3 or VG Pocket depending on who handled the distribution: the M3 systems are sold by JungleTac directly while the VG Pocket labeled ones are, like JungleTac's previous hardware, licensed for distribution by a third party, this time Performance). These handhelds are actually sort of a crossover between the plug and play market and true handheld consoles since all their games are built in and they don't take carts and they actually also feature a TV out port along with their built-in screens. They have the same original JungleTac games built into them as the previously mentioned systems.
JungleTac also has some other hardware lines listed on their website, including some sort of hi-tech virtual pet looking thing and some media players with built in game functions, but these apparently aren't widely distributed outside of Asia so I've never been able to find any of them for sale anywhere. I have actually owned all three of the systems I just mentioned above, though, and enjoyed them all so I guess you could say I'm a JungleTac fanboy.
The OneStation is their newest system and it's definitely more ambitious than their previous lines, mostly because instead of having its games built in, it takes cartridges more like a normal handheld console. In addition to cartridges that contain varying amounts of their original 8-bit games, there's also multicarts full of NES games ranging from 12-in-1 to 99-in-1 and these often feature some pretty nice games, not just the standard mapper 0 pirate multicart fare. Third, there's another type of cartridge that contains orignal games different from their Famicom-on-a-chip 8-bit ones. These ones are running on 16-bit hardware, but it's not clear what architecture it is exactly, definitley not either Genesis or SNES, though, more likely it's some special architecture from Winbond or SunPlus like many of the licensed plug and play systems from Jakks Pacific use. Now, the way the OneStation is able to play these cartridges containing games on different platforms is what's really interesting about the system. It doesn't just have two different CPUs built into it, like you might assume. In fact, the main console doesn't have any CPU in it at all, instead the CPU for whatever system is needed comes on the cartridge along with the games. The main unit is just a shell with controls, screen and a battery compartment all of which are accessed directly through the cartridge port by the different carts. That's a pretty brilliant design concept, if you ask me because it allows the OneStation to be both extremely cheap and extremely flexible.
There's already a line of Genesis game multicarts available from 4-in-1s up to a 9-in-1. However, these don't play on the OneStation directly, they require an MD bridge adapter which actually contains the Genesis-on-a-chip while the individual game cartridges just contain a ROM like normal game carts for any other system. I assume that JungleTac did the Genesis games this way since the Genesis-on-a-chip is quite a bit more expensive then a Famicom-on-a-chip, so Genesis game carts each with their own CPU would have been more expensive than the ~$10 each price point JungleTac seems to be aiming for with their cartridges so far.
Hopefully the more systems will be supported in the near future. Some of JungleTac's promotional material already mentions GBC games, which would indeed be possible since there's a GBC-on-a-chip that's shown up on a few pieces of hardware from Hong Kong. Also, while they haven't mentioned them, Master System and Atari 2600 should also be possible. SMS-on-a-chip stuff has recently started coming out of China built into various media players like the Coby V-Zon system. And a Stella-on-a-chip has been around for a long time now. I really hope JungleTac has plans to release cartridges based on each of those consoles. There's also an N64-on-a-chip which is currently probably too expensive to be considered, but maybe in the future...controls would be a problem obviously, but I think it would be possible to come up with a list of N64 games that can be played with just a dpad, three buttons and start. There's likely to be other architectures available in the future, too, such as cheap 32-bit architectures form Winbond or SunPlus that original games could be written for.
In addition to games, JungleTac also plans to sell cartridges for the system that will turn it into a multimedia player, a digital camera, a GPS unit, or other things like that. Basically anything that there's an all-in-one chip to handle, the OneStation can do. And those sorts of low-cost unified architecture chips just keep appearing out of China for all sorts of applications, so the system could end up doing almost anything. Games are definitely what the OneStation is intended for, though.
Of course, this is all dependant on whether JungleTac actually continues to support the system or not. There's a lot of potential in the system's design, it would really be a shame to see it wasted. At the very least SMS and 2600 cartridges really need to be released. Unfortunately, these sorts of Chinese eletronics companies don't have a great reputation for product support and JungleTac has never had a system in the past they had to continue supporting after its release since they've always had their games built in with no for the end user to add more.
I don't know if it's a false hope, but it does seem to me that JungleTac has put some extra effort into the OneStation beyond what you would normally expect from a system like this, so maybe that's a sign that they really are behind it and plan to continue releasing cartridges for it.
First of all, there's the cartridges themselves. The multicarts--especially the NES ones--feature some great titles that you don't see on multicarts normally, lots of "big name" games that use a variety of mappers. I also like the way the smaller gamecount NES carts are grouped together with games based on movies, games based on cartoons and platformer games each on separate carts, I wis they'd dont eh same with the Genesis carts. Also, while I only have one NES game cart so far, it doesn't contain the usual hacked up versions of the games with no title screens and Track & Field broken up into separate events and stuff like that like you normally expect on multicarts, they're the real proper ROM images, fresh and clean. They haven't inflated the number of games included, either, the 12-in-1 is really 12 games and really the 12 games listed, same for the 35-in-1s and even the 99-in-1 I have really has 99 games on it (though they actua;lly are mostly mapper 0 games, with only four larger games; on the 35-in-1s, though, up to half of the titles are larger, mapper games).
What really shows the quality of the system, though, is the system itself.
The most impressive thing on the system is the screen. It's absolutely great. Like the screen on JungleTac's previous handheld, the VG Pocket, the OneStation's screen is in reality a tiny analog RGB screen not digital like other handheld system's screens (I actually looked at it under a microscope at work this just to confirm this!). The advantage of having an analog screen for a system like this that when playing games from a variety of systems you'll also be dealing with a variety of native resolutions but an analog RGB screen will display anything you throw at it full screen at the proper aspect ratio without any of the image deformation commonly seen in the case of emulation. Try playing NES games emulated on the GBA or DS and you'll find that the screen is funky looking because the NES actually had a higher internal resolution than that of the either GBA or DS screens, so the emulators have to drop lines distorting the picture. With the GP2X or Dreamcast or a computer your screen's resolution is usually higher than that of the system you're trying to emulate, so lines don't have to be dropped, but if you want the picture to be full screen you'll still have to put up with some distortion because some lines will be doubled and others won't. On the OneStation, there's none of that. The image looks right all the time, just like it would on a real TV because it works essentially the same way. I think the Game Gear and the TurboExpress also had RGB screens similar in theory to this one, but the Game Gear screen was obviously really horrible, with huge pixels and tons of blur; the TurboExpress screen was nicer, but it had quite a lot of blur, too. The screen on the OneStation has no blur at all and it has a really tight dot pitch, so that even if you stare at the screen looking for the individual pixels, you really can't see them. You just have a clear and solid and smooth picture that's beautiful. I initially assumed the screen on the OneStation would be just the same as the one used on the VG Pocket systems, but that one definitely had larger pixels which were big enough in relation to the size of the screen to cause some odd visual effects like jagged edges or a sort of diagonal grid look across the screen. The OneStation screen isn't like that, it's just solid and perfect. It's also very well lit, I was even able to play it outdoors in direct sunlight. I would honestly go so far as to say this is the nicest screen I've ever seen on a handheld. Really. The fact that the OneStation's screen is RGB is particularly interesting in the case of the NES carts since the NES--either the original or the on-a-chip clones--doesn't naturally output RGB, so this must be a new Famicom-on-a-chip design; it would be interesting for hackers to play around with and try turning it into a full system, though it still seems to have the same audio problems as a normal Famicom-on-a-chip.
The dpad and buttons on the OneStation are also very good. I'm used to having to make various modififcations to the controls on pirate systems because they're usually pretty shittily constructed and I'm picky about controls. On the OneStation, though, I haven't had to do anything, the controls feel right: not too clicky, not too mushy. Also, the dpad doesn't register directions sloppily, which is a big problem with pirate hardware; on the OneStation, when you press up, you don't end up getting a diagonal or anything like that. The only problem with the controls is that JungleTac apparently realizes that A comes before B unlike Nintendo, so when playing NES games the buttons are reversed. This isn't usually a problem, but for some games it can be awkward, for instance in Super Mario Bros where you have to hold down B all the time to run and occasionally hit A to jump. Because of the way the system is set up with the control signals leaving the system and going to the cartridge, there would be lots of places to try modifying it to switch the A and B buttons, I could even do it on the individual cartridges that I want to have reversed controls, but it's too bad to have to make any modifications like that. Controls wouldn't be perfect for the Genesis games, either, since the button above and between the A and B buttons acts as C. I can't think of any games off the top of my head that this would be a problem for, though. That C button can either act as Select or turbo on the NES game cartridges, by the way; there's a jumper on the cartridge board that selects between those per cartridge.
The only other complaint I have about the design of the system is the way the cartridges stick out of the top. They only plug about a CM into the system, leaving most of the cartridge sticking out of the top. I would have preferred the cartridges to slide all the way into the system even if it meant a slightly larger system overall. The carts are actually surprisingly stable the way they are, though; it just looks a sort of strange.
There's not really much more to the system since, like I said, the main unit itself is just an interface for the cartridges to plug into. There's also the battery compartment. The system seems to get pretty good battery life, though I actually haven't gone through the first set of AAAs that came with it and I've been playing it quite a lot for the past week. I took some batteries out of my VG Pocket Max that were getting low and put them in the OneStation and it wouldn't turn on, so its battery life must be lower than the VG Pocket's, which averages about 12 hours on three AAAs. This is probably because of the better screen on the OneStation. I'm estimating 9 or 10 hours, though, which is respectable enough compared to other current handhelds (though the last handheld I owned before this and my DS was a Neo Geo Pocket, so anything less than 30 hours will always seem horrible to me).
So, there you go. I think the OneStation is a great system. The hardware is really good quality and the design holds tons of potential, so if JungleTac takes advantage of that potential by releasing all they cartridges they could, this thing could be a classic gamer's dream come true. The biggest problem is that we'll almost certainly always be limited in game selection to what JungleTac decides to put on their multicarts. While, they do make reference and SD card connection on their site, I think this is more likely to be used for the media player or the camera than the game carts just because JungleTac knows that if they release a Genesis card with an SD slot, they'll never sell another of their Genesis game multicarts. Same goes for adapters to use orignal cartridges from any supported system. I don't really mind having a limited selection of games, though, especially since the selection on the multicarts so far seems pretty good. In a way, it's sort nice...nostalgic, even since it's like being a kid again when I didn't have access to every single game I wanted, thousands per system, I just played whatever I could and that was good enough. There's plenty to have fun with.
Here's some links if you want to read more about the system:
http://www.jungletac.com/product_7.asp
Not really much info there, but you can check out the non-gaming cartridges JungleTac plans to release.
http://www.geocities.com/sweaterfishdeluxe/onestation.htm
That's a table I put together that lists what games are included on each of the multicarts. It doesn't list the Genesis carts, but those are liste don success-hk's site. It also doesn't include the 99-in-1 NES carts, I only have one of those, but there's apparently five of them altogether. I don't know how the game selection on them differs, it may be that only the four big name games differ between them and the other 95 games are the same. The one I have has Sonic The Hedgehog (this is a pirate original clone that's been aorund for a while), Mighty Final Fight, Tiny Toon Adventures 2 and The Adventures Of Lolo 2 as well as 95 mapper 0 games (Zippy Race, Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, etc....all the usual pirate multicart stuff).
http://nesworld.parodius.com/p8-onestation.htm
There's another review of the system.
http://www.success-hk.com/product_html/Cool_Stuff_One_Station_Game_Console.html
These guys are the best place to get the OneStation stuff that I've found. Actually, if you check your favorite shady Asian importer, chances are they'll have some OneStation stuff listed in their "other" or "miscellaneous a/v" category, I've found the systemj for sale tons of places, but success-hk seems to have the most complete selection of game cartridges. For all I know their selection may not be complete, either, though. It definitely doesn't include the five 99-in-1 NES carts that I know exist, maybe there's other things missing.
http://contents.fifthunit.com/html/products.5th/sku.827.html
These guys sell the system, too, but the version the sell is different from what I've seen anywhere else. Like JungleTac's previous systems, this one is apparently manufactured by JungleTac for a third party to distribute, in this case Kensington Technologies. The only significant difference between the JungleTac OneStations and Kensington's is that the Kensington ones have a plus-shaped dpad instead of the Playstation-esque dpad on the JungleTac ones. That makes a big difference to me, so I got the Kensington one. The packaging has pictures of other styles that The Fifth Unit doesn't sell, but I like the fakey Famicom Classic GB Micro styling of this one better than the other ones anyway. The Fifth Unit also gives you a 99-in-1 NES cart with the order, so that's the only place to get one of those that I know of--the others are probably only available at nasty little back alley shops in Hong Kong.
So, this has turned into a way longer and more in depth review than I originally planned to write, but I just can't help myself. It's as much a reflection of my college conditioning as my excitement about the OneStation system, of course.
...word is bondage...