Gameking Dmo

[Ezekiel Tulagan]

GameKingis a brand of handheld game consoles, designed and developed by Timetop and manufactured by Guangzhou Panyu Gaoming Electronics Co., Ltd, (also known as GZ Daidaixing Tec.Electronics Co., Ltd.)[1] in 2003, for the Hong Kong consumer market. The brand has three consoles, the GameKing I, the GameKing II and the GameKing III. A fourth console, the Handy Game, was produced by Timetop and shares some branding, but otherwise has little to do with the GameKing franchise.

The console has above-average sound circuitry capable of multi-channel music and digital sound playback, but a comparably low quality non backlit grayscale LCD screen,[2] only supporting four shades of grey and having a very low 48 x 32 pixels resolution.[2]

Games can be compared to some of the earlier built-in cell phone games (pre Java games), while their playing speed (scrolling etc.) and audio is far superior (multi-channel music and digitized samples and voices are quite common in GameKing games).

It is unclear whether the machine uses a traditional programmable sound generator or relies only on digital samples for music and sound effects. Many of its games have soundtracks consisting of short audio samples with a sampling rate of 8 kHz, as opposed to games on other systems such as the Game Boy where sound is generated by a custom programmable sound generator.

According to Brian Provinciano's reverse engineering of the GameKing,[1] most GameKing games heavily rely on bitmap rather than tile-based rendering of the screen, e.g. most levels in its platform and shoot 'em up games are in reality large 4-colour bitmaps, instead of using the most common method of graphic tiles and tile maps, like in most other game consoles and arcade games. This was probably done for economic reasons (the CPU alone can handle all graphics easily, at that resolution) and easy development of the games, apart from the objectively low resolution of the screen. While such a scheme seems to work, it has the disadvantage of using cartridge space inefficiently, so that e.g. most platform games are limited to three levels.

The GameKing II (GM-219) released in October 2004,[5][3] on the other hand, is fashioned to look like Sony's PlayStation Portable, comes in more sober colors (either black, grey, white or aqua - and although not shown on the packaging, yellow ones do also exist), and uses 3 AAA size batteries, of which only 2 are used to actually power up the GameKing's hardware, while the third one serves to power up both its built-in audio amplifier (a bit more powerful than the one on the original GameKing) and its backlit LCD screen (which can be turned on and off at will, depending on external lighting conditions, thus saving power). The unit can still work with 2 batteries, only with no sound and no backlighting available.

Also, the GameKing II has a fixed color background picture for its LCD screen, only visible when the backlighting is switched on. This is probably to give the false impression of having a colour LCD screen, as implied on its box. The picture may vary between various GameKing models, however it has a mostly negative effect on screen readability when the backlighting is turned on. This background picture can also be removed or replaced simply by opening the machine and removing the small plastic transparency behind the LCD. Removing it makes using the backlighting much more effective.

The GM-222 was released in 2006 and sports an original design, which does not borrow much from previous models.[3] Even though it is sequenced later than the other consoles in the Gameking line, and therefore one would expect more advanced hardware, it is in fact a redesigned Gameking II with the back-light removed (notice however that the box for the GM-221 and GM-222 both show exactly the same false color screen shot, despite the two machines vastly different capabilities). It is not known why Timetop chose to release the GM-222 in this fashion, although renderings exist that show this design was intended at some point to be a full color model. It was available in charcoal, blue, and green.

The two models are fully hardware compatible, can use the same games/cartridges, both have volume and contrast controls and use the same LCD screen. Also, they both have an external DC power supply 3.5 mm minijack plug; however, the plug is not labeled as such, and its function is only slightly hinted at in the units' manuals. The GameKing requires 3V DC, while the GameKing2 requires 4.5V DC with the peculiarity of needing to keep at least one battery in the unit in order to have sound and backlighting.

The console has a small selection of known games (38), being 3 built in and 35 in carts, although 37 games were said to be available by TimeTop. Most games are clones of famous NES, C64 or Atari 2600 titles,[2][3] with heavily dropped graphics. The games come in cartridges resembling the original Game Boy ones, with a typical size of 128KB, although 4-in-1 cartridges are available, containing 4 normal GameKing games plus a selection menu, and have a maximum size of 512KB.

Games are generally sold in separate cartridges, but there are 4-in-1 cartridges holding 4 distinct games. Later games seem to be only available in this manner. Also, each 4-in-1 pack comes numbered and higher numbers seem to provide games that are more refined in presentation.

TimeTop quietly released a third GameKing machine, called the 'GameKing III' or GM-220 sometime in 2005.[6][7] While early advertisements showed the GameKing III with the same "false color" background picture as the GameKing I and II, which indicated that the system was black and white like the previous GameKing models, the GM-220 is full colour. Another distinction of the GM-220 is that unlike its predecessors, the Gameking I and II, which were promoted and marketed worldwide, the Gameking III was not distributed outside of Asia, making it much less common than the earlier models. In 2005, many websites initially reported the device as "coming soon", and it is not known why Timetop eventually decided to offer only a limited release.

The resolution doesn't seem enhanced compared to an original GameKing, and "classic" GameKing cartridges are automatically colorized, while games especially developed for it allegedly make use of the full color palette, which for the moment remains unknown. The site claimed a total of 12 carts for this system. If the built-in game is included, 8 titles are known as of 2010.

A second design for the Gameking III also exists which combines elements from the GM-219 with the GM-220. The Button design and layout is from the GM-220 design, with the "A" button being distinctly larger than the "B" button, but the overall form is obviously inspired from Sony's PSP design. Several colors are shown on the back of the box, green and orange for example, however only two colors, a black edition and a white edition are confirmed to exist.

A distinct Timetop console exists which uses NES compatible hardware rather than the proprietary hardware of the other Gameking consoles, and also has an integrated TV output. While early mockups indicated this handheld was considered part of the Gameking line, Timetop eventually removed the gameking branding from this edition prior to its release, replacing it with "Timetop LTPS Handy Game" ( ironically, "handy-game" was the working title EPYX coined in 1987 for what would become the Atari Lynx).[9] The console comes with 25 built-in games and is also able to accept cartridges, however their size and connectors are different from (and incompatible with) previous Gameking consoles. The game selection includes games typically found on NES clones, like 1942, Pooyan or Dig Dug, as well as graphic ROM hacks of famous NES games (for example, using Blue's Journey graphics with Adventure Island).

The NES-clone version of the GameKing III has its own selection of games, most of them being pirated or unlicensed NES games or variations. These come multi-carts with combinations such as 26in1, 49in1, and 72in1, etc. No HandyGame carts are compatible with any previous model.

I have used the 55 gr HPBT gamekings in my AR. I have a 24" barrel with a 1/9 twist and have loaded them with 26 grs of W748. I shoot 5 shot groups under an inch at 100 yards with that load. I have at least 15 more loads worked up that need tested with different bullets and powders to see what my rifle likes. Those gamekings were cheaper and they seem to be shooting pretty good out of my rifle.

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