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PlayChoice-10

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PlayChoice-10
Developer(s)Nintendo
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Platform(s)Arcade
Release1986
Genre(s)Retro
Mode(s)Up to 2 players
Arcade systemCPU: Main: Z80 @ 4 MHz
Game: See NES Technical Specs

PlayChoice-10 was an arcade machine which consisted of 10 different games that were previously available only on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) home console.

Description and history

By the late 1980s, console systems were quickly catching up with the arcade machines in terms of popularity. Therefore, the video game companies decided that they try to cash in on this trend by making stand up arcade machines out of their existing console systems. Many companies tried this tactic. Sega presented a machine which contained several Sega Master System and Sega Genesis games. SNK's NeoGeo was another cartridge-based system that was simultaneously available at the arcade and for home console use. In fact, several of their machines can still be found in arcades.

Nintendo, being the industry leader at the time, was especially successful with this concept. Nintendo basically packed its most popular games into a machine case and called it the PlayChoice-10. The machine was basically compatible with the NES, but with some key differences. An extra CPU controlled the gameplay timer, game select, and displayed hints for the current game on a separate monitor (on single-monitor systems, a button would switch between gameplay and the hint screen). Normal NES cartridges could not be used; rather, the PlayChoice used special expansion cards containing (usually unmodified) NES games along with an extra 8KB ROM to display hints. Due to the fact that the PlayChoice-10 outputted RGB video using a slightly different palette, games did not look exactly the same as they did on the NES. Interestingly, it is in fact possible to replace the NES PPU with the PlayChoice-10 PPU, allowing it to output RGB natively.

Each machine had a different mix of games in it. Instead of a player getting to play one game until it was finished, the player got a fixed time limit to play as many PlayChoice games as they wanted to.

Nintendo also created a standalone PlayChoice which only had a single available game [1].

List of available games

The following is a list of all the games that were made available on various different PlayChoice-10 machines.

References

  1. ^ PlayChoice history (Accessed June 9 2006)
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