Power Player Super Joy 3, the Super Joystick!

Throughout the years I passed up so many Super Joy consoles, because I didn't know exactly what they were. Later on, when my interest in handheld Famiclones started to grow, I found a powder blue Super Joy 3 and I decided to take a chance on it. I had only done a little research on Power Joys, but I was told the Super Joy 3 was essentially the same type of Famiclone, meaning this thing played classic NES/Famicom games, and supposedly played Famicom cartridges. Those two facts alone were well worth the couple of dollars I paid for it.

My very first Famiclone is the one on the far left side.

When I got home I scrambled to find all the needed cables and batteries to give the thing a complete test. After powering the system on I was greeted by a little bit of music and a screen boasting 12000 games, which I now know is just a marketing ploy to move these things off the shelves. After a little bit of playing around, I started to wonder how these things could play Famicom cartridges, because mine didn't have any visible cartridge slot. Instead mine had some weird cover protruded from under the console, which caused my hands to cramp if I used it for too long, with absolutely no possible way to externally connect a Famicom game.

After carefully removing the the plastic cover, so that I could reattach it later, I found the 60 pin connector with a small board stuck inside. I grabbed a Famicom game I had bought a few months prior and tried to get it to fit, but there was no hope. I decided I should take the Super Joy 3 apart and see if this thing really would play Famicom games through that slot.

The answer was a resounding yes; yes these things really do play Famicom cartridges. But if I had to take the whole thing apart, rendering in useless, how was I suppose to actually utilize this fact? In frustration, I just put the Super Joy 3 in my closet and used it on occasion the way it was, until I happened to find another Super Joy 3, this time with an actual slot to put a cartridge in.

As you can see above, the Super Joy 3 comes in 2 external variations. The first, and most common, has an actual Famicom sized slot on the bottom, allowing for cartridge insertion, opening the library to any Famicom (or pirate) cart you own. The second design still has the cartridge slot, but it's molded so that the unit only allows for the inserted rom board, leaving no room for any actual cartridge to be plugged in.

My collection has grown quite a bit, and hopefully will continue to grow, so I've found that although the Super Joy 3 is your typical handheld Famiclone, stuffed into an N64 style controller, there are at least two different programs inside that I've found. The first being the one I previously mentioned that boots up with a little bit of music and boasts 12000 games. The second one boots up with no music, a black background and Fun Time written in green, before going to a screen of 78000 options.

The overall quality varies from unit to unit as well. Some of my Super Joys have very nice video output, while others have lines in the background, and others have fuzzy, snowy screens that are almost unplayable! While the inner workings vary from unit to unit, the outer construction tends to stay the same with cheap plastics throughout. I have noticed a slight button variation, but it really isn't a plus or minus as they are all buttons and do their required jobs, no matter what plastic they used.

The Super Joy 3 has a player 2/light gun port on the very front of the unit, outside of where the battery pack goes. I've never owned a brand new Super Joy 3, so I can't comment on the quality of the zapper, but I do happen to own three of the second player controllers. Player 2 controllers are modeled heavily off a Sega Genesis controller, with slight modifications. These controllers are ok, for what they do, and work well with almost any other Famiclone you have as controllers for either player.

After collecting my first one, it seemed that I found them all over the place. If one of them happened to cross my path that I felt the price was worth paying, I couldn't pass it up. So, needless to say, my Super Joy collection has expanded to a total of six. I can't really say the Super Joy is a great unit, because it varies from unit to unit, but I can say that if you get your hands on one that works correctly, it's a great little handheld Famiclone.

An Additional (Blue) Super Joy 3

As you can see I own three blue Super Joy 3 Famiclones. No, I'm not being greedy, its the fact that two of them have different game sets inside and the third one, although looking identical from this angle, is quite different from the other two. In fact, its different from almost all of my Super Joy 3 systems, and not just by color.

The two on the center and right have an open Famicom slot, as where the one on the left has a strange blue thing that seemingly hangs underneath it. This isn't the first Super Joy 3 I've found that has one of these, but I've found them to be harder to find than the ones with open cartridge ports. If you're quite careful and push in on the bottom of the cover (oriented as shown below), after breaking loose those two clips, then gentling pulling it back down toward the long handle of the unit you can easily pop that cover off, revealing the Famicom slot and extremely small board inserted within.

The board is much smaller than any true Famicom game board, so much so that the 60 pins hardly align up correctly in the 60 pin slot. And even though I tried, you simply can not use these type of Super Joys to play Famicom games, unless you have loose game boards. And for some strange, inexplicable reason these units prefer to be powered by battery, giving an extremely poor quality video output when powered by a wallwart.

My total Super Joy 3 count is up to a total of six, half of those are blue, but I will continue to collect them as I find new colors or maybe even more like this and the light blue/gray one. Well, that previous statement isn't strictly true as I do have one that's shell was broken beyond repair, so I salvaged the guts and plan to turn it into a console... someday, but it doesn't really count as its no long in its shell. Regardless, the Super Joy 3 is fun in short bursts of time and to some, like myself, fun to collect all the different colors and variants.