Power Player Super Joystick!

A long time ago (the early 2000s) in a galaxy far, far away (Orlando, FL) I discovered the Power Player Super Joystick & Power Gun at an ancient trading post (Flea Market). I spotted this boxed relic next to a demo screen where folks were playing the original Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and Mappy Land! These were all games that I loved as a kid and my interest was sparked.

The back of the box confused me because of the PlayStation like graphics that were being advertised, but still I picked up the Power Player for somewhere around $15 and immediately took it back to our hotel and hooked it up to the TV. It was a revelation! In no time I was squashing Goombas and having duels with the bad guys from Wild Gunmen. It was glorious! The front of the box touted that the Power Player included 76,000 games! I didn't even know that many games existed. They just turned out to be 75,899 versions of Mario Bros. and then some other NES classics.

Speaking of the front of the box, I love that it includes a still from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace! There are no Star Wars games on this device and it jus baffles my mind why they would include this? Anyway, back to the actual game "system", it comes with 2 controllers, a light gun, AV cables and power cord. Let's take a look at those sweet looking controllers!

The N64 style controller is actually the system itself. All the games are housed inside this bad boy. The joystick on the controller serves no purpose as it is just glued on and can't be used during game play and it is crazy bulky since the AV cables and power cord connect to the top of the controller causing some balance issues while playing. It does have the option to use 4 AA batteries but...

The place where you are supposed to put the batteries can't hold 4 batteries! I tried to slam them in there, but when you try cramming the 4th battery in, it makes another battery pop out. The battery cartridge on the controller goes where you would put a memory card in an N64 controller and once I was able to jam the batteries in, but then the cartridge wouldn't fit back into the Power Player because it was bulging on the sides. So in short, the battery function is useless!

The Genesis style controller worked just fine. My only issues are that you can only use the controller as a second player and it made me crazy trying to figure out which buttons could be used when playing the games. Since all the games on the Power Player are old NES ROMs wouldn't it have made sense to make this a NES styled controller? But that seems to be the norm with this machine!

Power Gun works fine on old school TVs, but not at all on anything modern. Not too many issues here. When it does work it is actually pretty accurate.

I tried to get some screen shots of the actual game play, but sadly my Power Player no longer plays! It worked well out of the box, but over time it slowly became less and less dependable. For the price it wasn't a bad find, but there are many more affordable ways for you to get your classic NES game on these days that include a lot less frustration! For a demonstration check out the YouTube video by MN12BIRD below!