The Brick Game, through the Ages

What do you think about gaming in the late 90’s – early 2000’s? The PlayStation? The Nintendo 64? Maybe later SuperFX SNES games like Yoshi’s Island? Well, too bad. You’re not getting any of those, but you can get a portable game console in a church fundraiser. No, it’s not a Game Boy Color either, but hey, it’s got hundreds of games built right in! How bad could it be?

Talking Brick Game

At least the fundraiser sprung for the fancy “talking” model. This is a pretty typical model, though I don’t see any year on it, even though I do have the packaging.

Notice that it mentions that there are no repeats, and that it’s talking. Therefore I don’t think this is the original “brick game”. However, this one does seem to predate the one we can see on Wikipedia, which promises 576-in-1, and features an “up” button.

Another oddity about the box. Take a look at the screen. Notice that it has square blocks with a square inside, and a number of icons. Now compare it to the real thing.

Now notice on the real thing. The block have spades inside each of them, and the sidebar segments are different too, with an odd child. I don’t really think anything of it, but it is odd.

So, what is the Talking Brick Game 118-in-1? Well, the packaging promises all sorts of games:

Does it talk for real? Oh, you bet. I can’t understand what it’s saying, though.

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And it does boot up to a select screen. All of these have a particularly annoying select screen– you don’t scroll through the games using the directional keys as directions. Instead, look at the secondary labels. “Level” increments the level. “Speed” increments the game speed. And “Mode” increments the game type (a letter). “Rotate/Direction” increments the game subtype (a number underneath the letter). You can only increment, but they loop. In this case, the game types go from A to E. The game subtypes vary based on the game.

But there is one game in particular whose name doesn’t appear, but is basically the primary reason for the console: Tetris. Why do I say that? Well, I mean, come on. It even plays Korobeiniki when you choose one of the Tetris-like games.

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That’s not to say the other games aren’t real; there are driving games, where your giant pixelated car moves back and forth, and that’s even game “A”. In fact, that’s only game “A”.

Every other game is a Tetris clone with some variant. For example, pieces may fall occasionally that are just one block. These variants are mostly annoying. Honestly, though, it’s hard to state just how big Tetris was at the time. It’s still one of the most addicting games ever made, but it was even more popular then, in an era before Candy Crush on everyone’s phones. (I guess we’re in the era after that now)

What’s inside

What’s inside the Talking Brick Game? Well, there’s an incredibly thin PCB behind the screen with an epoxy blob, the infamous “chip-on-board” packaging that makes it so much harder to understand what’s happening. Underneath this is the die.

And there’s a PCB behind the buttons. The buttons are individual pieces of hard plastic, with rubber contacts underneath. Extremely typical for handheld gaming consoles.

Really, the most interesting thing is the little capacitor that does some filtering of the audio, and the transistor that does… something. Unfortunately, handheld games are pretty integrated. The brick games in MAME mention using CPUs from the “Holtek HT1130” 4-bit microcontroller family, but I don’t see 118-in-1 there.

Did I say 2000’s?

Now, here’s where things get fun: the Brick Game is still around. You can buy brand new ones, usually for less than $10.

Now, the differences are subtle, but they add up to show that this actually doesn’t have much in common with the older counterpart.

The screen is larger

The big center hump has been moved slightly to compensate

The whole thing is slightly thinner

The controls are now made entirely of a single piece of rubber; they’re moved closer together to compensate

There’s an up button and a reset button

The rear speaker is moved from behind the controls to behind the screen

The battery compartment has the option for a screw to hold the cover in place (not used, on mine)

All in all, while you can definitely recognize the design heritage, none of the plastic could actually be the same molds as before. Also, even though I ordered this new, there was no box or any real packaging beyond a plastic bag. (What can you expect, for such a low price?)

However, if they just reused the same box design, at least the pixels would actually be a box inside of a box. However, they’re not square! Even brick games aren’t free of the scourge of non-square pixels. And yeah, the screen is indeed noticeably worse in person too.

9999-in-1

You might notice the other thing: we’re no longer being modest and limiting ourselves to 118-in-1. Oh no; we’re...