Games consoles are big business and like a lot of high end gear they run the risk of being cloned into unlicensed, rip off variants that consumers can be fooled into buying. These fake consoles are designed to look like the real thing from everything down to the logo to the shape of the machine and some claim they’re intended to be an affordable alternative. These consoles cannot play the games of the real thing and more often than not they only play low quality imitation games that are already built into the console. Here I’ve showcased the four worst, and funniest, rip off games consoles that you wouldn’t believe even exist
4. PX 3600
There’s no mistaking that thick green X that’s been plastered onto the top of this unfortunate creature. This cross bred PS3 and original Xbox’s only real advertised feature is that the (extremely unresponsive) controllers vibrate. Before you celebrate you should know that only one controller actually vibrates, not due to a manufacturing error but as an entirely intentional feature. I guess you’ll just have to share the faint rumbles between you both if you’re trying to play something in multiplayer. You’re unlikely to get a great deal of entertainment out of this thing however as it can only play pre-installed games that are somewhere around the quality of a NES game. But there’s a disk drive, you may claim and yes, on first appearance there does appear to be a disk drive. The only problem is, it’s just for show. Why Dr Frankenstein decided to score a round line in the top of this console and allow it to hang pointlessly open is beyond me. Maybe he was aware of how inferior it was to actual disk-playing consoles and wanted to give it a fighting chance. I guess its only positive feature is that there are quite a few games, approximately 60, but why you’d opt to play them on this piece of rubbish is completely beyond me. If this console is actually appealing to you you’ll probably be disappointed knowing that they’re only available to be bought wholesale; in quantities of 1000 or more. There are however, plenty of disappointed teens putting these things on Ebay around January time so you can always grab a PX 3600 from there, if you must.
3. Neo Double
Anybody gazing at this hunk of plastic is sure to be reminded of a Nintendo DS. After all, it’s basically it’s slightly more malformed brother with the duel screens, horizontal positioning, fold up screen... button placement, ok so everything is the same. The differences between them, other than this one being made of excruciatingly cheap and flimsy plastic, is that the bottom screen is fake. It’s basically a glued on sheet of black plastic. If that’s not bad enough for you; some of those buttons are useless. It’s not that they’re broken, it’s just that they’re not actually buttons they’re more… pseudo buttons so you believe this thing is more complex than it is, or maybe they’re just there to make it more like a Nintendo DS.. Hmm. Oh yes, and by the way the hinge at the top doesn’t actually work. To get the Neo Double to stay open you have to hold it there with your finger or maybe lean it so far back that gravity takes over. So now that we’ve figured out which bits of the console works and how to position ourselves hanging over the back of the sofa, what delights do we get to play? Not a lot, you may be surprised to hear. The LCD screen, the real one, has horribly broken pixels and a backlight so strong you can’t really see what’s going on so I’m afraid you’re probably going to miss out on all those built in 8-bit games that the Neo Double ships. What a shame.
2. Chintendo Vii
Aside from the absolutely hilarious name that sounds like something Seth MacFarlane made up the Chintendo vii otherwise looks like a pretty serious console. The Chintendo (from China, get it?) even has its own adverts on televisions and in glossy magazines which, considering that it looks basically identical to the Nintendo Wii, is a pretty bold move. What’s even bolder is that they have dared to advertise this console’s existence as it’s such a shoddy piece of equipment I’m surprised they didn’t smash it with a hammer the moment they realised what they had actually created. The motion sensing features on the Chintendo vii are actually bordering on offensive, in order to have the controller even recognize you’re moving it you need to quite literally pull several muscles from furiously paddling through the air. It’s only after you’re tired and sore that you look up to see that the ping pong ball in the rip off Wii Sports cover hasn’t even picked up on your furious swipes and has instead, bounced off somewhere else. All of the games are very similar to the Wii Sports titles and includes activities like bowling, Catch Fish, Come On and Fry Egg. I’ll leave your imagination to decide what those last couple of titles actually involve doing but I imagine it’s not going to anything exhilarating or enjoyable.
1. Mini Polystation 3
The shape, the colour and the logo are all unmistakably ripped off from the PlayStation 3 and, to make it worse, this is the third PolyStation out there. PolyStation has gone overboard in this fake console market and for every new version of PlayStation, since the first one, PolyStation has been right on its heels producing their version. PlayStation is under no threat from their persistent ‘competitor’ as the PolyStation is made from extremely flimsy, cheap plastic, cannot play disks and cannot be connected to televisions. The games are pre-installed onto the console, like the rest of these rip offs, and instead of being displayed on a television you instead have to squint at the tiny, broken LCD screen that pulls out from the side of the console as though it were the disk drive. This isn’t even a smooth process and to get the screen out you basically have to wrench it free and risk shattering the thin plastic casing of the machine. You control the game on an extremely tiny little PlayStation controller that, instead of analog sticks, has two round buttons and, rather than the classic buttons of X, Square, Triangle and O you just get one big one plonked in the middle. In in all, I think that the best part of this console though is that it requires AA batteries to run, the PolyStation series really are rip off games consoles at their finest.
