Cloned Ben Heck Console Teardown
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
- Someone alerted me to a product on Amazon using one of my ancient portable console designs. I immediately bought it for a teardown! (then waited 10 months before editing for some reason)
Let's see if it's better or worse than that console from Menards...
That dual battery holder is pure genius.
My Alcatel One Touch easy mobile phone from the 90s had that. You could use 3 AA batteries or rotate the battery contacts over and swap the AAs for the supplied rechargeable battery.
@@markc65 Some of 8bitdo's controllers do the same. They have a rechargeable lithium mobile phone style battery in there, but take it out and you can put two AA batteries instead.
@@user-lv6rn9cf8m Yep, I have the 8bitdo sn30pro+ (great controller btw) and it's exactly like you said.
@@markc65 I remember that!, thanks for reminding me. Not many cellphones that does that trick.
@@user-lv6rn9cf8m interesting. Thanks for the reply.
The Chinese dude who comes up with these cheap knock offs: "Oh dang, I really like this design by one of my favorite foreign youtubers and modders, Ben Heck. I might as well put a little extra effort and time into this one incase he ever comes across it and wants to screw around with it!"
That dude is waiting for a grade from his teacher, Ben.
B+, maybe? What do you think?
Given how the Internet has made the world a lot smaller, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the designer of this unit actually knows about Ben Heck and would therefore be pleasantly surprised to see Ben's teardown. As opposed to if that designer simply went forth and lifted the design from a random third party who in turn got it second hand from the first person who reposted pictures of it...
@@nickfifteen forgetting the part where youtube is blocked in china
@@Lordilucas12 forgetting the part where pornhub is blocked at work, and yet..
@@Lordilucas12 it may be blocked, but its still the 11th most visited site in china. Lmao
I can remember reading a Popular Science magazine in a dentist office waiting room and seeing an article on your homemade handhelds in like 2002.
Ben calling the manufacturer: "Why am I Mr. Sparkle?"
You like Mr Sparkle???
Me su spa ko ro
@@tristshapez He is video. Answer question 100%.
mista sparkaloo
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Hehe, Fish-Bulb...
4:55 I wonder if Nokia knew back in the day, their battery design would long outlast their phones.
Points at an Oxford comma and says "incorrect punctuation"
*hiss!*
Indeed he did. Bravo, Ben! It may be called an 'Oxford comma' but we'll have none of that ungrammatical nonsense here in England, thanks! Methinks it must have been named after Oxford, Alabama...
Oxford comma 4 life, yo. I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty.
Since when did an amoxford comma have a period after it?
@@Blitterbug It's known as the Oxford comma after the Oxford University Press where it is mandated in the style manual. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
Interesting that (at least in Britain and the US) it's the journalists that don't use it rather than the academics. The latter being the more formal form of writing. Using fewer commas might help with cramming in more words in a paper I guess.
To me the arguments for using it outweigh those against.
Agreed
There's another cloned project I could make a video about - Thunderbirds Pinball by a Chinese company called Homepin. They cloned the board design we used on the first 4 Spooky Games.
They should send you one for the use of your design. They'd likely sell more if you made a video on it and people knew it was BH ripper. Greetings from Oconomowoc Ben !
@@gtijason7853 I've got the feeling that they don't even know what they're doing
Ooh yeah, I think one of my friends has one of these.
I'll give 'em props, among all the painful engrish I really appreciate the comparatively correct usage of the word "diurnal". Also, congrats on being entered into the holy halls of knockoff consoles alongside the NES and the PSP (among, of course, others, but you know those two are what you're seeing most when you google "knockoff console")
PS: Don't knock the Oxford comma like that :C
It was inevitable
Imitation is the sincerest form of patent infringement.
That's what China wants you to believe... It is just fraud and missing creativity, at least make it yourself and original by making it better or the world is better off without your fraud product!!! It ius just fraud fook China with all this crona shat
What if it were open sourced
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Yeah, I mean, Ben put up the files? And it has been changed from that original. Plus of course, did he patent the casing? I rather doubt he did.
Technically copyright law rather than patent law. The former covers the look and feel of a work for the life of the creator plus some years, while the latter covers the technical workings for a short period (typically years to a few decades depending on the country and renewal fees paid).
It's not patented though.
You know you've made it when a Chinese manufacturer knocks you off
China copies everything, never innovates...
@@shadowopsairman1583 not always, see DJI
Violent is actually an old NES game called seicross. It was insanely addictive, and the difficulty increased steeply as you progressed. My parents bought me an NES for my 6th birthday in 1989. This is the game that they ended up getting hooked on, but none of us could ever get past the 4th or 5th board. I remember getting woken up in the middle of the night from them screaming at the TV in sheer frustration. The inclusion on that cheap little knock-off would almost make it worth buying.
There wasn't a lot to it, but I played the heck out of it.
i actually recognized that game named "Violent" i used to play it as a kid on NES as a game called Seicross but it appears they redid the graphics somewhat.
Yea was thinking the same thing!
They had to redo the graphics to work on a 12 bit console.
Turn it into a console. On the original, you took a console and made it portable; so why not take the knock-off portable and make it a console?
I have been a huge fan of yours since roughly 2002. I was 13 when I found your page detailing one of your handheld stories. It changed the course of my life honestly. I've been modding things ever since. I can't thank you enough for the hobby you introduced me to.
Hmmm the music sounds like its from Mighty Final Fight for NES.
You're RIGHT! it's the Mighty Final Fight Music "Final Boss Theme"
czcams.com/video/THh9R7qXyAY/video.html
@@djmips Good ear! Ben was right, early 90's Capcom indeed.
Amazing, thought the same but really was not sure.
Old BenHeck.com content really brings back some good memories. I used to spend a lot of time there. Btw Port Washington was the shit!
@@peaxoop it was benheck.com I was referring to. Its been around in some form since 2004. I distinctly remember getting introduced to Ben through TechTV and The Screen Savers. I think I've followed Ben longer than I have any other internet personality and still love him. Keep it up Ben!
@@madrigale6396 Same! I found his stuff in 2004 when I was looking for projects to do in high school... I could never pull off anything he's done though.
9:18 -- Dude Ben.. you should totally make a portable SNES mini out of that
I would love to see this.
@@lexluthor3890 so would I
The music totally reminded me of Mega Man
same
Other people when they get ripped off: Sue
Ben Heck when he gets ripped off: Buys one and gives it a pretty decent review
It would probably be a different story if he patented it
you cant rip off a design that has no copyright or patent, it is essentially open source and perfectly legal for them to use
10:58 Ben spits on the memory chip. 😂😂
Really like these electronics teardowns with the explanation and Heck commentary
You should contact that company saying they ripped off your work and your solicitors will be in touch soon. 😂😂
That menu music is some version of the Final Battle music from Mighty Final Fight on the NES. czcams.com/video/MportJjmCLw/video.html
I remember getting one of those Rampage Mini Arcades last year at Walmart that used the MFF first stage music on the debug screen. Odd choice/coincidence... though I'm sure they were both made in China!
A lot of these things use the first stage music from Mighty Final Fight on the menu for some reason
These little nuggets always rip off Mighty Final Fight music for some reason, i mean it goes hard, so that's probably why, but still.
so he was right it is capcom!
@@Tarkamkrest Definitely had Capcom written all over it, to me it sounded like something from Megaman 6 era style of music. Turns out Mighty Final Fight and Megaman 6 were produced in the same year!
Nes on chip. The game "Violent" is actually Seicross by FCI/Pony Canyon.
even down to the "texture" of the colored plastic ...wow ... and of course it runs on a Nokia type battery :)
12-bit power, E-MODS does what Nintendon’t!
I feel old, but i remember reading your website how to's back in the day. Im glad you did take the time to create it!
same
Oh my god. I just realized you were the guy that made the portable ps1 that I remember seeing like, way back when I was 13 or some shit. I remember this portable SNES you made too. Holy crap man this takes me back like I never thought anything would haha. I used to want to make one for myself so bad back then but didn't have the slightest bit of skill needed to do so. It's funny that I've been watching your channel for YEARS now and for some reason it never dawned on me that you were the portable playstation 1 guy hahaha
menu music is from "Mighty Final Fight" on nes - final boss stage theme
China: All your base are belong to us, Mr. Heck.
*Mr. Hekc
Also China: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME
China: All your base are belong to us, Mr. Biden
@@elevate32767 Yeah, no shit :(
I love the old making of stories from back in the day
I used to read all of them
The music for the menu is probably the most epic menu music in the history of 8-bit gaming.
Wow, I’m surprised how good this is: quality parts, good screen protection, seemingly (mostly) not filled with rip off games. The shape definitely appears to be your design which now makes me wonder, was it laziness or was it flattery. Probably laziness, but still. I would have written this off at first glance, but I enjoyed the test down.
Having been a fan of yours since the early 2000s and still, to this day, owning your ExtremeTech "Hacking Video Game Consoles" (along with Grant Imahara's "Kickin' Bot"), I have a lot of respect for what you do. But man, being an Oregonian, after hearing you pronounce "Oregon", I gotta say, that respect got knocked down a bunch.
J/K, keep doing what you do.
You're saying that a chinese company ripped off someone else's design and sold it as their own? This HAS to be the first time this has EVER happened. They are normally so honest.
I know! Even their viruses are based on other people's work!
@@GrandTheftWatto Oh SNAP ! That's good
HAHAHAHA FFS.
Can't wait for someone to rip off your long Game Boy
@@andreasnorman3992 or the taco gba with a flip SP screen lolol
Bet you haven't got one of these in your collection .. .... ..... yet!
Man i think you are just waiting for someone to ripoff the Gintendo Bame Noy lmao
Elliot
BEN! You have no idea how many times I read through all of those stories/tutorials. At least once!
found and bought one on aliexpress, now that it has a history :D
Ben throwing shade at the Oxford comma. A bold move.
"Its not theft when you steal something that is already stolen" - Bill Gates to Steve Jobs (allegedly). Xerox invented the GUI and mouse.
Apple paid Xerox in stock options for access to their research department that would be worth billions of they had kept them. Bill Gates on the other hand simply stole it.
"Wow, I found someone who ripped off and stole my design and who are now profiting from it!"
"I better make them a 13 minute advert to get them more sales..."
Did you watch the video? Ben is cool with it, why would he be opposed to them having more sales.
@@jaro6985 Just because Ben is cool with it doesn't make it any less scummy. Every year thousands of users products are copied by Chinese hacks like this. In most cases it really cuts into their livelihood! Be a blithe jerkface about it though, that makes it way easier for them to rip everyone off
2:40 The Oxford Comma is sad.
Re: Fish War - In the mid-1990's I bought a bunch of Intellivision stuff (when "retro" hardware was just old and cheap), including the game "Shark! Shark!", which was my favorite game on the platform.
Ben why are you hating on the oxford comma 2:35
Oxford comma is objectively incorrect.
@@rustyshackleford5166 no.
@@rustyshackleford5166 Whatever you say, Dale.
It's only the oldest university on the planet, I think they get a say on commas.
@@Vamptonius your reasoning is intellectually vaccuous. Commas in the context of listing things are used to separate said listed items. When listing two items, through use of the word "and" for example , you wouldnt use a comma.
So why would you when listing three or more? Look at this:
W, X, Y and Z
Y and Z
"Y, and Z" would be incorrect use of a comma, so why is that acceptable in a list of 3 and up? Oxford may think it is, but is isn't.
I remember your old pages back then. I was determined to make that plastic molding station where you had some sort of vacuum. I forget exactly. But of course I was too poor to acquire parts and too young to really grasp the concept. And, as you mentioned, it was a different time then. While sufficient text and photo guides were, they were also open to interpretation. I also remember wasting tons of the school's printer ink and paper printing out guides and diagrams from howstuffworks.com.
Dude I remember those elaborate stores on your site.. good stuff.. LMFAO
This got me into you and your projects and ultimately into electronics :)
Not enough contrast to read the audio amplifier chip, but the pinout is unmistakable. Nice to see the humble LM386 is still in use in commercial consumer products, even in ones from Shenzhen.
EDIT: Rather than a double-meta portable, I'd probably build it out to a freestanding or tabletop arcade console with a decent loudspeaker and good button switches.
Your Xbox360 portable got me into engineering, modding, komatex, hacking, and general nerdy gubbins before I ever learned about CZcams.
The Midwest is like the Scotland of the Central United States. You do not question why you have to take things apart, you just do it.
2:45 Incorrect comma, he points and laughs, when it's the Oxford comma, which is agreed to be one of the correct forms and in fact clears up a lot of misunderstandings when used.
And then skips over a comma splice in like the next sentence. Ah well, English is tricky even when it's your first language.
I was expecting him to say "After taking it apart and comparing it with mine, it's off to the lawyers.
dump the contents of that flash memory chip, maybe we end up putting more games in it or adapting a cartridge port since it's basically a nes on a chip that blob
I second that motion :) I'd love to take a look at the contents of that flash.
@@guillaumegiraudon339 pretty sure it's just a rom, these nes on a chip have been around for too long by now, pretty sure they still work the sama way, the difference being this one doesn't have a cartridge port
It would be kewl to be able to put your own romz on it. I know enough about electronics to maybe call myself a amateur ... Maybe.. I would get one, but would give myself only give myself a 25% chance to figure out how to put my own romz on it and being disabled I don't really have 15 bucks to lose. Great video and Thank You for sharing your knowledge and experience!
You should make that one into a portable SNES. Kind of like consuming the offspring.
The correct way is with the comma before the "and".
There is a big difference between "adventure and puzzle" and "adventure, and puzzle".
My first introduction to Ben Heck was the Audio FX Pro 5+1 Headset back in what... 2007? Bought a pair on a whim (as i was looking for good headphones) Been a fan of Ben's stuff ever since!
I remember seeing your ads in video game magazines I think in the late 90's. I distinctly remember one stating "The original Ben Heck!". At the time I was wondering how many others there were. Love this rip-off. What wonderful trash.
Fish War... that game in flash form has cost countless hours of classroom learning time.
That's wild. Did they just copy the design from pictures of the build or was the design open sourced?
The 2 PCBs probably saved them money. The board for the controls is single layer, the main PCB is multi-layer. A bigger multi-layer would have cost them much more.
Ben would you consider a teardown of Lenovo's AR glasses? Perhaps the lightsaber or controller version? I'm really interested in seeing the tech in them. They can be found relatively cheap on ebay, and work well for what they are, but didn't really take off.
That saying you mentioned about your stolen design... Speaks volumes about you as well. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the world :)
This is why you're the man Ben! Buying a knock off of your device just to check it out. love it!
The "12 bit" is probably something to do with how they tend to market the features of these kinds of devices. There are a few NOAC type devices I've come across that are described as "16 bit", when the only real difference from a stock NOAC is being able to use more colors per tile/sprite and perhaps some extra sound channels if you're lucky. This thing looks like it has no such "enhancements" but they still wanted to raise that number from 8, so they just went half way. I'd bet all my money on this being a VT02 or some variant of it.
if you still had the original you could take pictures of it and write a joke review on amazon, pretending that it was what you received :)
Brilliant!
"This thing is massive!"
Wow, kudos to you for making something so cool that it gets a knock-off!
Just hit 4:50 and OMG THAT'S A NOKIA BATTERY! I would recognise that bad boy from a mile off. I'm sure several of their phones used this after the bulky battery in the 3310. Like I'm sure all the polyphonic phones had this battery - or at least most of them. I'm surprised you didn't spot that while making the video!
That’s actually kinda crazy the quality that was put into this Chinese nock-off. Like legit they put a lot of thought into it. But nothing can beat the Ben heck original!!! 😂 hope y’all are having a amazing thanks giving y’all. Same to you Ben.
LOL.
Funny thing, though. A year or two ago, I was browsing gel blasters on AliExpress (gel blasters are those handicapped cousins of airsoft guns), and noticed a futuristic rifle thinger that seemed familiar... Lo and behold, it was based on one image of a 3D model some guy posted on DeviantArt about eight years ago.
He *was* pissed when he found out, though.
Good to see the old benheck.com storys again. I really enjoyed the build storys when I first discovered benheck.com back in 2004.
Wow about a tear for this video. It's great. Good Work BEn
I would guess that the smaller board is a pretty cheap board compared to making the logic board longer. But yeah, it's interesting that they're on different levels. And that the 3 distinct parts (screen, logic board __ and controller board) are not soldered onto each other.
I really loved your old videos that told stories through still pictures. I think my favorite was you trying to open the Wii. You did the hanging-by-a-wire scene from Mission: Impossible.
I love how they even kept the TFT text above the screen.
"TFT Portable Video (game) Player"
Holy crap, a legitimately decent product!😮😮
Noticed that on the bottom left, back of the board has a STM silk screened with the model. I assume it is powered by a STM32...
I think it's just a Famiclone system, so no STM32 as a main processor.
That tune you have at the end reminds me of Mega Man. That was immediately my first thought as well when you first powered it on earlier in the video
"I don't think bodies get any exercise when playing video games"
Wii Sports, Ring Fit Adventure and a lot of VR games: "Allow us to introduce ourself"
Just play DDR while playing Beat Saber.
@@mjaerkens I'm not coordinated enough to play DDR by itself, DDRBS would send me to an early grave:
wow, what a splash of mixed emotions I feel watching this
this should definitely add to your feeling of fulfillment in life, having Chinese folks rip off your 2001 design
Loved it! As always
What would be really awesome is if you were to go full circle and put an SNES Classic inside of it, provided of course that the board is small enough to fit.
I used to go to your old site back in the day! I didn’t realize that guy and you were the same guy! How cool!
I don't understand shit of what he's talking about but somehow it's weirdly entertaining
Fish War looks like knock off of the PC game "Feeding Frenzy".
That microphone, sounds like it's from 1998... and to be far, it Ben... so it probably is.
Actually, that last comma is correct. It's called the Oxford comma - "a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term in a series of three or more terms"
Hey man, Oxford commas for life!
Memoyr Games, a future so rapid no one can spell check, you must be honored to be part of knock-off lore. Well it is vaguely teddy bear shaped, little kids would like that.
I really want to watch an interview with the people who make this thing now.
I think yours is way better!!! God bless you and yours!!!
I wonder if any of these games were made with the new NES Maker tool that came out a few years back. It's a Game Maker style tool but for making NES games, has all kinds of pre-build frameworks that people can start their projects from.
For $20, that is actually more than just decent. Color me impressed.
But you cant write custom firmware... wait it probably isnt checked on boot
12:46 This is pretty legit music. I'd be surprised if it's not ripped off from a western or japanese game of the era. If not... good on the programmer who made it.
czcams.com/video/THh9R7qXyAY/video.html
Make a NON portable version (console) of this portable version of your portable version for even more epicness!
Gunpei Yokoi used to collect gameboy and game and watch knockoffs - he said that if people were copying it in other regions, he must be doing something right
“Hey, where’d you get that from?”
“M’nards.”
But on to the imports at stuff. “sports, action, and puzzles” is the correct usage of commas. It shows that each word is its own category, (three) as opposed to “sports, action and puzzles” which is two categories.
They opened a rift to a parallel dimension! Out came an otherworldly hand held designed by Burt Hack! :-0 CERN has a lot to answer for! Or perhaps someone in China just passed the original design off as his own to meet a looming deadline? :-)
This is great! If you can find a driver board, or find a way to drive the LCD.. maybe directly with a raspberry pi GPIO.. you could easily make a much more capable handheld. and since you have the PCB with the controls on it and nothing else, it'd be SOO easy to wire up the controls.
The battery cover, covers WAY more than exactly where the batteries are, so you could use much larger batteries. And like Ben Heck said, the controls aren't that bad.
Oi, Busy Bar is great. As a concept at least anyway, you slide drinks down the bar like curling with drunks.
2:35 the last one is actually correct. It's called an Oxford Comma, and you put a comma before the "and" if there are 3 or more things written. A bike, a car, and a house. That's correct.
Pretty sure the song @ 6:13 was taken from (or was used in) Disney's Adventures in the Magic Kingdom (NES).
Not their fault that you don't sell your designs as working products. Some of the things you made I'd love to play with. Ain't got to build them though. Or skills to do it, for that matter.
I've seen 'Fish War' at least 5 times on different systems, same music and everything!