Winfun TV Plug & Play Joypad

The Joypad 65 in its packaging.

The Joypad 65 (also known as the TV Plug & Play Joypad in product listings, hence the original name of this wiki page) is a VT09-based famiclone marketed under the "WinFun" subsidiary of Winfat Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong company that specializes in toys targeting younger children. Matching its name, it comes with 65 video games, and like other plug & play consoles of its time, it's powered on three AA batteries.

Exterior

The Joypad 65, like many other "Plug & Play" consoles, follows the traditional form factor of a video game controller. It's made out of hollow plastic, with a yellow base and a black mask under each side (the latter of which is cheap paint). What makes the controller stand out is its steering knob, and two extra turbo buttons.

Both sides of the motherboard.

Content

The menu.

The Joypad 65 comes with 65 games developed by the Chinese company JungleTac. JungleTac's arcade-style games are notable for being repackaged on other famiclone consoles. The company tends to reuse assets and concepts from other video games.

The gameplay for a random eight titles from the 65-game library are as follows:

• Fast Racing plays like Bump 'N' Jump. The core gameplay is a top-down racer, but you can get points by bumping enemies into walls and landing onto their cars from above.
• Undersea Travel is quite similar in gameplay to the Flash game "Helicopter Game". This is not the only instance of JungleTac copying browser games, as Pet Shop is mechanically similar to the Flash game "Fleabag vs Mutt".
• Last Cabra [sic] and Delta Fighter are top-down shoot 'em ups with a militaristic theme, not unlike the arcade game 1942.
• Challenge 100 is a platformer where you play as a frog going down a castle avoiding spikes. The centerpiece of the title screen vaguely resembles Sanrio's Keroppi, while the in-game sprites bear a much closer resemblance. A stylistically similar game, Towers, is built into the same chip.
• Hero Spud (also going by names such as Mr. Onion or One Day of Mr. Potato on other consoles) puts you in the shoes of a heroic potato who resembles Tiki, the protagonist of The NewZealand Story. The titular vegetable climbs platforms, shoots projectiles at enemies, and grabs keys, all to save who is heavily implied to be his girlfriend. The gameplay is similar to the 1990 arcade game Rod Land.

Preservation status

Thanks to MAME developers David Haywood, Sean Riddle, and Kamaal Brown, the Joypad 65 and its sister console (the Joystick 30) have been dumped and available under joypad65 and joysti30 since the release of MAME 0.227 on December 31st, 2020. Graphical and sound emulation remain imperfect as of March 2023.

Trivia

• The Joypad 65 has a secret test screen accessible by holding both the "B" and "A" buttons while powering it on. This seems to be very common with JungleTac hardware.
• It's likely there are different hardware variants of the Joypad 65, with the difference lying in the ROM. Minor differences include the pumpkins in Hero Spud being either blue or orange, the title screen for Power Jump being proper or bugged, and Dangerous Zone either having a title screen or not.