The world is full of ridiculous Famicom clones, and I'm happy to own one of them. This here is the Gold Leopard King, which I bought in Manhattan at some closeout store on 5th Ave, down the road a few blocks from Book Off on 41st St. This was in 2004 so it's doubtful they have anything remotely like it in stock anymore, but they did have a remarkable amount of discount knives and porn, for whatever that's worth.

Anyway, the Gold Leopard King is apparently educational, bragging "No dull reading,but more fun!", with the tagline "Play while you learn, learn while you play." I love the fact that a realistic looking gun toy is supposed to be educational. I don't know what kind of learning they do in China or wherever the hell this came from.

So this is what it looks like unboxed. As you can see, a bulk of the system is a keyboard, with a slot for Famicom games on top. The controllers have six main buttons despite there only being two on the standard NES/Famicom pad. Some of them do rapid fire, I have no clue about the others. The gun works just like the Zapper. They use the same kind of plugs found on the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis, rather than the standard NES plugs.

It runs standard Famicom games too. You need a converter for American/European NES games though.

This is the cartridge that it comes with. It begins with a extremely somber song with Yoshi riding a balloon with the word "Education computer" blinking on top. Then it moves to a screen that looks like a really old computer operating system. You can use the pad to pick from different categories like "Arts", "Text", "Voice", "Tools", "Games" and "Finger" (which I think/hope means typing exercises.) There's a silly little paint program, some number guessing games, a calender, a calculator, and a few dumb mini-games, most of which are Duck Hunt rip-offs. The graphics and sound do remind me a lot of the edutainment software I had growing up for my Atari 400, which means it's low-tech and a bit frightening if you're four years old, especially when things start blinking in seizure inducing colors. It looks like crap through my video card in, but here's a brief video showing off some of the programs, while I (poorly) attempt to provide some narration.

The video output is pretty bad, and looks darker than your standard NES. I'm thinking it might run by the Japanese NTSC standard, which is ever-so-slightly different from the American one. The sound is also pretty awful, with muffled/missing channels, but it manages to run Akumajō Densetsu just fine (and yes, I know the correct title, I just made a stupid mistake when talking.) The keyboard is sticky and some keys don't work, greatly impeding my learning experience.

That about does it for the Gold Leopard King. At the same store, they also had Famicom clones shaped like Xboxes and PlayStations - the above picture isn't mine, as I didn't buy one unfortunately.