GameKing

Lore & Background

The original GameKing console (GM-218) is fashioned to look like Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and comes in a wide array of vivid pastel colors, either opaque or transparent, using two AAA batteries. It has above-average sound circuitry capable of multi-channel music and digital sound playback, but a comparably low quality non-backlit grayscale LCD screen supporting only four shades of grey at a very low 48 x 32 pixels resolution. Games can be compared to earlier built-in cell phone games (pre-Java), though their playing speed and audio are far superior, with multi-channel music and digitized samples and voices common. It is unclear whether the machine uses a traditional programmable sound generator or relies only on digital samples; many games have soundtracks of short audio samples at 8 kHz. According to reverse engineering, most GameKing games rely on bitmap rather than tile-based rendering, treating levels as large 4-color bitmaps, likely for economic reasons and easy development, though this uses cartridge space inefficiently, limiting most platform games to three levels.

Reader's Guide

The GameKing line represents a curious niche in handheld gaming history, notable for its extremely low-resolution screen and unusual graphics approach. The GameKing I and II are fully hardware compatible, sharing the same LCD screen, volume and contrast controls, and an external DC power supply minijack plug. The GameKing II (GM-219), released in October 2004, is fashioned to look like Sony's PlayStation Portable, uses three AAA batteries (two for hardware, one for backlight and audio amplifier), and has a fixed color background picture visible only when backlighting is on, likely to give a false impression of a color LCD. The GM-222, released in 2006, is a redesigned GameKing II with the backlight removed, though its box shows the same false color screenshot. The console has a small selection of 36 known games (3 built-in, 33 in carts), though Timetop claimed 37. Most games are clones of NES, C64, or Atari 2600 titles with heavily dropped graphics, and many reuse the same program with altered graphics. Games come in cartridges resembling original Game Boy ones, typically 128KB, with 4-in-1 cartridges up to 512KB. The line's significance lies in its demonstration of how low-cost hardware and bitmap rendering could produce playable games, albeit with severe limitations, and its status as a Hong Kong-market curiosity with a cult following among retro collectors.

Did You Know?

• The GameKing I (GM-218) was released in Italy by Giocattoli Linea Paggio.
• The GameKing II (GM-219) has a fixed color background picture behind the LCD, visible only when backlighting is on, to simulate a color screen.
• Most GameKing games use bitmap rendering instead of tile-based graphics, making levels large 4-color bitmaps.
• The GameKing II requires three AAA batteries: two for hardware and one for the audio amplifier and backlight.