Majesco Adds Konami TV Games To Diverse Line-Up

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the press release noting Majesco are getting into the 'TV game' business by signing a deal with Konami to "publish five plug-and-play video game systems. The first two systems will contain classic versions of Konami's popular Frogger and Konami Arcade Classics video games and be available at retail this fall." Majesco was recently featured on Slashdot Games for its GBA video/messaging/link products, but also holds an intriguing game portfolio for a smaller publisher, from Bookworm for the Game Boy Advance ("immensely popular [PopCap-developed] web-game [converted to GBA]") to Guilty Gear X2 #Reload for the Xbox ("popular fighting franchise makes its debut on Xbox with head-to-head Xbox Live support.")

Comments

Plug & Nightmare

[KDR_11k]

Five of those devices at once? Let's see, the average TV has one or two SCART connectors. Those are usually on the backside of the device. That means, if you are tired of one of those PnP games and want to play another one (yes, I'm aware they're collections, but let's assume you want to play a game on another device), you'd have to pull the plug from the back of your TV and insert a new one. The difficulty of this depends on the position of your TV, but usually the back of the TV is facing a wall. Often you need to move the TV around to get to the connectors. That's a LOT of hassle for changing one game, not to mention that, if each of these devices brings its own cables, you're going to have quite a lot of cables wherever you store those things.

Interchangeaable game media exist for a reason, if you just want to throw out one device that contains pretty much your whole backlog that's okay, but splitting it up into five devices just screams greed. These devices cause major inconvenience if you have too many of them so don't expect people to buy more than one or two, splitting the games into five machines just makes everyone have less games but likely won't cause that many people to buy all five.

Re:Plug & Nightmare

[Blakey Rat]

Actually, the vast majority of televisions sold now have ports in the front under a little flip-down panel specifically for plugging in game systems. I know for my 27" HDTV, I can just plug it in the front and not have to move my entire entertainment center to get at it.

You must have an older TV, in which case you're kind of out of luck... maybe someone makes an extension cable for that you could just wrap around and lay on the floor for easy plugging.

Great idea... in theory.

[ChibiLZ]

I think these little TV Games are a great idea on paper. Some of the are even great in practice. For those who choose not to MAME, it's certainly easier (and cheaper) to run to the toy store and buy this TV Game for $20 than it is to track down an old Atari and a few games for it. Of course, the choice in this latest round is weak. Why don't we see Nintendo making this type of device, pack on 20 or so classics, call it SUPER FUN JOY 1 MILLION IN 1, and sell it for $49.99? I know I would buy it.