Jakks Pacific's plug and play systems

Jakks Pacific is an American toy manufacturing company established in January 12th 1995, best known for designing and releasing children's toys based on numerous properties including various Disney movies, Star Wars, and the World of Nintendo series.

Around 2002, Jakks Pacific started the "Plug It In and Play TV Games" line, which were plug-and-play systems based on popular franchises and movies of the time. Each unit resembles an Atari 2600 joystick that is designed to resemble the character or series the games are based on.

Why They Suck

 * 1) Awkward joystick designs as they're slanted and aren't built very well, making them bad to control, thus making the games a chore to play because of it.
 * 2) Many systems look unappealing with poor coloring, mediocre sticker quality, bad button layouts and overall awful shaping.
 * 3) Many games included on the systems feel rather basic and unoriginal. Mainly the Spider-Man ones being exactly just like every other game related to the IP in a formulaic and boring way possible.
 * 4) Most games will also get boring after five minutes due to how easy they are with simplistic gameplay that offers no challenge at all and feel generic at best.
 * 5) In fact, some of these games have been reskinned and repackaged on other systems!
 * 6) *A notable example of this is the Shrek/Over the Hedge plug-and-play; Out of all the five games included, only one of them is brand new.
 * 7) **Donkey Dash is Downhill Skateboarding from the Nicktoons plug-and-play.
 * 8) ** Shrek Pinball is a rethemed version of the pinball game from the Dragon Ball Z plug-and-play.
 * 9) **Crooked Castle Golf is Birdie Putt from the Nicktoons GameKey.
 * 10) ** RJ's Dash for Trash is Channel Chasers, another game from the Nicktoons plug-and-play.
 * 11) *Riches of Argabah, one of the games on a Disney GameKey, is a reskin of Simba and the Tree of Trials from the first Disney plug-and-play.
 * 12) *Sponge Pop, a game included on the SpongeBob SquarePants: Jellyfish Dodge plug-and-play, is a remake of SpongeBob's Bubble Pop from the first SpongeBob SquarePants plug-and-play.
 * 13) *Every plug-and-play unit in the whole TV Games Touch line are just repackages of previous plug-and-plays (SpongeBob SquarePants: Jellyfish Dodge, Ultimate Spider-Man Villain Round-Up, and Star Wars Original Trilogy) except with a touch pad as the primary controller. This also comes off as a poor cash-grab attempt on the games at the iPhone's App Store since they utilized the iPhone's touch screen, but that gimmick doesn't work on these plug-and-plays since you would have to control the game using the touch pad and still have to look at the TV screen to see what you're doing, while the iPhone had players both looking and using the screen at the same time.
 * 14) Some systems have poor build quality. The Ms. Pac-Man system is a good example, as many people complained about the system just not working or the joystick even breaking off.
 * 15) A lot of them require four AA batteries like most toys and budget-gaming devices.
 * 16) Terrible graphics that are really blurry and outdated. At best they tend to resemble a 16-bit console like the Super NES or Sega Genesis.
 * 17) Repetitive music that often loops all of the time throughout the games, the music itself can range from average to downright cringeworthy at best, which is not a good sign for the system's kind of music at all.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) There are still a handful of good plug-and-play systems:
 * 2) *The Pac-Man (Namco), Atari, Activision, Capcom, EA Sports, Space Invaders (Taito), Mortal Kombat, and Bejeweled units are easily the best ones, as they include ports of various games that stay very true to the originals.
 * 3) *SpongeBob SquarePants: The Fry Cook Games is one of the more fleshed-out systems with unique features like a campaign, achievements, and a two-player mode.
 * 4) *The Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, The Price is Right, Deal or No Deal, and 1 vs. 100 ones are great adaptations of the original game shows. Heck, the Wheel of Fortune unit even comes with a wheel you can actually spin!
 * 5) *Even the other plug-and-plays have some good or decent games:
 * 6) **Stitch's Search for Paradise on the first Disney plug-and-play is a platformer with a unique ball-jumping mechanic and multiple endings depending on how many pictures you collect.
 * 7) They are very easy to find on online stores like Amazon.

Videos
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Trivia

 * Lots more plug-and-plays have been documented in various places, but have never been released. These include ones containing classic Midway and Tecmo games, another Capcom system, a motion-controlled Disney Princess system, ports of Jr. Pac-Man and Cut the Rope (the latter as part of the TV Games Touch series), and even a Pokémon system. Find out more here.
 * Around 24th May 2021, a prototype ROM for another DreamWorks-licensed plug-and-play, DreamWorks Movie Night, was leaked and is now available to emulate in MAME. You can watch a video of it here.