One Station, Digital Crystal Panel: You can play Mappy!

Mappy is a mouse who dresses as a police officer, enters hotels, and “retrieves stolen goods”. I’m not sure that he is an actual police officer. If he is I’m fairly sure he is a crooked cop.

Allow me to back up a bit. One Station Digital Crystal Panel is potentially one of the most awesome handhelds ever. There are several reasons for this. The controls are tight and responsive. The price is quite reasonable and the system is still available new. The games are spot on versions of classic games. The system is really small, not much larger than a Gameboy Micro. Best of all, the screen is totally awesome. I could go on and on about the screen. The screen is one of the best screens of any handheld. The advertised specs for the screen are a LCD resolution of: 960px x 240px, with 26000 colors per pixel. In layman’s terms it looks simply awesome. There are negatives. The main negative is the library of games. Strangely however, game selection is also one of the system’s strengths. As an example, my favorite game cartridge is called 8B35-A Pocket Big Soft Max 35 in 1. It has the following games on it:

01. Boukenjima 2

02. Double Dragon 2

03. Super Contra

04. Code Name Viper

05. Super Chinese

06. 8 Eyes

07. Burai Fighter

08. Family J

09. Toki No Kagi Densetsu

10. Battle City

11. Donkey Kong Jr

12. Galaga

13. Toobin

14. Super Mario Bros

15. 1942

16. Pac-Man

17. Alien 3

18. Lode Runner

19. Circus Charlie

20. Donkey Kong

21. MAPPY!!!!!!!!!!

22. Mario Bros

23. Pinball

24. Road Fighter

25. Recca

26. Yie Ar Kung-Fu

27. Balloon Fight

28. Bomber Man

29. Xevious

30. Golf

31. Pooyan

32. Popeye

33. Gurume World

34. World Cup Soccer

35. Super Sprint

On one cartridge!

The system is called One Station because every cart follows the naming convention of “# in one”. This is pretty freeking awesome. Unfortunately many carts have several of the same games on them. Super Contra, Donkey Kong and the original Mario show up on several different carts. Other carts are full of crap you have never heard of before. Some of these unknowns are quite good like Binary Land or Cattou Ninden (Having no knowledge of Japanese I have translated the name to “Super Ninja Cat Team Go!”). I am kind of torn between 8B35-A Pocket Big Soft Max 35 in 1 and Classical Big Soft Max Pocket 34 in 1 8BJD34 which has pictures of the Ninja Turtles on it as my favorite. Classical Big Soft Max Pocket 34 in 1 8BJD34 has some awesome games including Ninja Turtles 2, Mega Man 5, Ninja Gaiden, Shadow of the Ninja, Mappy and 29 more awesome games. I’m not sure exactly why I prefer 8B35-A Pocket Big Soft Max 35 in 1 over Classical Big Soft Max Pocket 34 in 1 8BJD34. I do know why my favorite is not 35 in 1 VS Power. Though 35 in 1 VS Power does have, Shatterhand, Snow Bros, Excite Bike, and Cattou Ninden it does not have Mappy and is therefore inferior. Maybe I just like 8B35-A Pocket Big Soft Max 35 in 1 better because it has more games or maybe it is because of the weird game selection screen for Classical Big Soft Max Pocket 34 in 1 8BJD34 which features cows, turns me off. What do cows have to do with Ninja Turtles? In any case the game I play the most on the One Station is Mappy.

The plot of Mappy, as best as I can tell, follows. There is a chain of hotels that are run by a cadre of cats called the Mewkies. The manager of the Mewkies hotel chain is a rotund cat named Goro. He is a fun loving cat and a fair boss. Sure he looks a bit like Brando and nobody can ever quite understand what he is saying but he is basically a good guy. One day Mappy the mouse shows up demanding that the stolen goods be returned.

“I’m calling in your effing ticket and you are going to pay what you owe.” Mappy threatens.

Goro, confused, claims that there are no stolen goods. Mappy in his most Eastwood like manner drops the nice guy ruse and repeatedly slams Goro’s face into a door handle in a display of violence so shocking it is usually reserved for a Cohen brother’s films. Goro, blood soaked*, manages to crawl to a hiding spot behind one of his many copies of the Mona Lisa. While Goro, panicked, scurries from hiding place to hiding place, the hotel staff made up of Mewkies attempt to stop Mappy from marauding their hotels. Mappy’s objects of desire are pairs of valuable objects littered about the hotels. They are always in pairs. This is one of Goro’s many eccentricities that there must be two of any object in every hotel. These objects include the previously mentioned copies of the Mona Lisa, boom-boxes, tee-vees, computers, and safes. There are no customers at the hotels though this is quite unsurprising since the hotels have no stairs. Goro is quite mad, having more in common with the Island of Doctor Moreau Brando then the Godfather Brando and had the architects build his hotels to very specific specs.

Speaking of specs, the specs of the One Station has been the object of some scrutiny on the interwebs. Apparently the One Station is nothing but the screen, a few buttons, a speaker and a place for the batteries. The cartridges have, not only the games, but the entire systems on them. I love whoever first manufactured NOAC (Nintendo on a chip). Because of NOAC there are all sorts of Fami-clones, which are systems that play original 8 bit Nintendo or Famicom games. Several of them are handheld like the Handy Fami Eight, and they in general play full original Famicom cartridges or take no carts at all. One Station is unique in this respect. It takes the special carts. There were rumblings of flashable carts but these never materialized, perhaps due to the relative obscurity of the system. So the One Station owner is limited to the games available. That means no super Mario 2 or 3, no Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, no Yoshie’s Cookie or Dr. Mario. Many of the best games are simply not available on the One Station. Mappy however is.

Each hotel has trampolines to get from floor to floor, bell-towers, and special floors with trap doors. The trampolines have a strange deficiency that they can only be jumped on 3 times consecutively before they break and sends customers tumbling to their deaths in Goro’s special snake pits of death**. Once Mappy has successively “repossessed” all the safes and art from a hotel he goes on to the next hotel. Some hotels are special hotel filled with extra trampolines and lots of balloons. Mappy gets a reward of points for each balloon he collects. Most of the balloons are worth 200 points but in every level there is a super balloon that Goro has hidden inside worth 2000 points. I’m not sure if the points are given by Goro, the police force or, are simply some invented point system that Mappy has created himself but it is strange. If Mappy collects two of the same item consecutively, the point value of the second matching item gets a multiplier. A careful Mappy can get up to 8500 points per level this way. Mappy can also get points for finding Goro as he is hiding. If Goro is caught hiding he bribes Mappy with 1000 points so Mappy will not beat him more. The Strange thing is that if any of the Mewkies including Goro catch Mappy he rolls over. Mappy slams doors in faces, drops bells on heads, and triggers trap doors to defeat the Mewkies however, once caught by one of the kitties he gives up. Mappy use your fucking gun! At least smack them with your nightstick.

In short One Station is awesome, it has AV out, a great screen, fits in your pocket, and is reasonably priced at less than $40. In addition Mappy is awesome, it has cats and trampolines. I’ll admit that 90% of my info about the game is pure conjecture. Regardless I stand by my observations about the game. If my made up stuff about Mappy does not convince you consider this. There are 256 levels in Mappy. 256 levels of cat themed mouse cop action which is awesome even if Mappy won’t use his gun.

* Mappy the game has no blood.

** Mappy the game has no snake pits of death either.