{"id":1029,"date":"2014-02-24T20:36:18","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T01:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2014-02-24T21:16:25","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T02:16:25","slug":"1retro-scan-of-the-week-pro-200-super-electronic-handheld-gaming-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1029\/1retro-scan-of-the-week-pro-200-super-electronic-handheld-gaming-system","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Pro 200 Super Electronic Handheld Gaming System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/pro200_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/pro200_small.jpg\" alt=\"Protech Pro 200 Super Electronic Handheld Gaming System Catalog Advertisement 1998\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Plays the 200 variations of Tetris that Pajitnov rejected.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I must admit that I wanted this &#8220;Pro 200 Super Electronic Handheld Gaming System&#8221; upon seeing it in 1998 &#8212; even through I knew it was almost certainly a piece of junk.  Not to play it, per se, but to collect it and to admire its gloriously gimmicky nature.<\/p>\n<p>If history is any guide, I&#8217;m guessing that the Protech Pro 200 didn&#8217;t actually ship with 256 (or even 200) built in games.  Rather, it likely contained 250 variations on a handful of distinct games &#8212; like most &#8220;1000-in-1&#8221; cheap off-brand multicarts from back in the day.<\/p>\n<p>16 years since its release, I have still never played the Pro 200, so I can&#8217;t say if it had any play value.  I did find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iF1n1AxK1Dg\" target=\"_blank\">this commercial<\/a> on YouTube though.<\/p>\n<p>Has anybody out there played one of these?<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Spilsbury Puzzle Co., Holiday 1998, rear cover]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What&#8217;s the cheapest, crappiest piece of video game hardware you&#8217;ve ever bought (think peripherals too)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plays the 200 variations of Tetris that Pajitnov rejected. I must admit that I wanted this &#8220;Pro 200 Super Electronic Handheld Gaming System&#8221; upon seeing it in 1998 &#8212; even through I knew it was almost certainly a piece of junk. Not to play it, per se, but to collect it and to admire its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,27,26,9],"tags":[249,150,320,759,758,756,760,755,753,60,752,754,757],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","tag-249","tag-advertisement","tag-catalog","tag-cheap","tag-crap","tag-handheld","tag-multicart","tag-portable","tag-protech","tag-retro-scan","tag-spillsbury-puzzle","tag-super-200","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}