"It's an interesting slice of history from a time where sanity was optional, unlike today where, of course, sanity is strictly prohibited." Now *that's* quote-worthy.

the tiny printer thing printing the menu with its tiny little whirrs was absolutely adorable

Somewhere out in the multiverse is a timeline where the Mega Duck actually beat the Game Boy somehow and this... thing ended up in schools everywhere worldwide.

That's the most elaborate opening to a Snake game I've ever seen.

The reveal of that screen was ... sad.

Snake Roy looks like a good painting that’s been sabotaged by the woman who created Potato Jesus.

„I‘m so drucking this“ You make us Germans happy, Stu. I tried to get my hands on some of the Hartung Consoles a while ago. Next to impossible and expensive. I respect your dedication to cheap clone hardware.

"Rechtschreibung" is a spell checker. Bum isn't a word so it gave you Bombe as its guess for what you meant. When you got a sum wrong and said it spoke more than you expected, it said "Probiert nochmal" (Try again). "Melodie Wählen" is choose melody. Eingabe is input, and the error it was giving you was "Insufficient input" or something. No idea what the hell it was on about. I also notice Snake Roy is made by a company called "Sachen", which just mean "Things". What a great name for a company.

It's like a parody of those progressively more ridiculous Gameboy peripherals that he showed us a couple years back...

Okay I haven't seen it in the comments before, so as a Person who speaks german (I'm swiss btw^^), I'll translate the words you couldn't pick up yourself: 1. Rechtschreibung: spell check. You can put in one german word and it checks if you spelled it correctly. When you typed in an english word it says "Falsch Buchstabiert" which means "spelled incorrectly". Vorschlag means suggestion, so it recommends you the correct german word. So when you typed in the correct word it says " Richtig buchstabiert", which means "spelled correctly". 2. Bilder Wörterbuch: Dictionary with pictures. I guess you can put in certain words and it shows you a picture of this word....? You read the wrong word there it said "eingabe drücken" which is a different word than "drucken" and means something else because of the umlaut. It means "push enter".

For being built from a Game Boy clone, it's surprisingly capable.

Snake Roy looked like a genuinely competent little game. Which is not something that can often be said about games featured on this channel.

Glad to have finally connected you with Snake Roy! This really is the most super of computers..

We heard you liked keyboards, so we put a keyboard in your keyboard

Missed opportunity for not calling the printer "Mega Drück"!

This reminds me of the "workboy"; a company called Fabtek had planned a keyboard accessory for the original gameboy, with an accompanying cartridge and stand. The cartridge would give the gameboy various PDA like features, including currency conversion, basic text storage, basic accounting software, and even a dialer which would autodial contacts by holding a phone's mouthpiece to the speaker.

Translating the 5th app thing out was hilarious "Word to be examined" Potato "Annotation" SPELLED WRONG "Suggestion" cup, goblet, or plate depending on how it's used

We may laugh at it when compared to modern tech, but for what it is and it's age, this actually seems pretty cool. I would have been pretty excited to have one as a kid.

The makers of Snake Roy sure loved Bartók... used the Romanian Folk Dances as some of their background music. That's some competent music. Rare to hear that in a videogame.

"Hang on, I am so drucking this" is this what the cool kids say these days?

I want a snake roy remaster in 4k. I don't care if it is normal snake as long as they stick that face on the snake.

I'm 7 minutes in and I have never experienced such a joy that would compare to listening to Ashen mispronounce German words.

Am I the only one who expected Stuart to play his intro on the Keyboard and then finish it off with a "Hello!"? XD

damn. ashen's with the musical grooves. can't spell "spielfunktion" without "funk"

Since this has a crappy musical keyboard on it and an headphone out, the 8-bit Guy could make a 8-bit keys video about this thing. (I think he also said he can speak german)

I can picture Stuart doing a great crossover with Techmoan.

7+3=🐓

Knowing how expensive thermal receipt printers are, I wonder if that printer is more expensive than the 'super computer' laptop.

It is the year 2030 Technology has gone so far as to confirm that there certainly WILL be King Roy 2.

Och! Ze Brits have discovered our secret superkomputer! They may have solved our simple arithmetic problems and mastered ze drawing of diagonal Eichhörnchen...but they have not yet unlocked ze mighty power of ze printing of Snake Roy.

Dear Stuart: Never say "Talk to me, senpai" ever again. - Dr. Germany, inventor of Germany.

The tune that was playing during the Snake Roy opening cutscene thingy was obviously Light my Fire by the Doors

It's ironic, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed that! It definitely has VTech connotations, but two things I did spot. First off, it has two channel polyphonic music in the game! It's a shame that the keyboard doesn't allow two tones to be played though. The other thing is that the BASIC programming editor, may only understand the German equivalent of the language commands, I.e RUN would probably be LAUF?

Thank you Mr. Ashens for all your work. I appreciate it a lot

See, this is what happens when we germans attempt this "humor" thingy...

Snake Roy should be in a museum. It's breath taking.

"The whole thing is in german and I speak no german whatsoever." This is gonna be fun

"We have to aus it" - Ashens, 2018

I mean, I'm sure in 1993 this thing was leaps ahead in cheap technology for kids toys.

Someone needs to port doom to it

Don't forget Stuart, the Mega Duck was originally from Hong Kong by Welback Holdings (as you said four years prior to making this video), but Hartung did gain the license to create that super computer variant for whatever reason.

That thing looks like a VTech laptop had sex with a Game Boy in Germany. (the styling is VERY similar to the PreComputer Power Pad Plus I had when I was a kid, which sadly didn't have a musical keyboard built in.)

I wonder how the MegaDuck ranks on the Top 500 Supercomputer list?

Honestly, if this was in English and I had one as a kid, I would've loved this thing.

The voice of the computer sounds like one of those cursed sw number stations

I always wanted to get a kids fake laptop and put real hardware in it

Aw I wanted to see Armour Force

13:52 - "Hänschen Klein" A German folk song from about 1860. It sounds like this: "Hänschen klein, ging allein, in die weite Welt hinein. Stock und Hut, stehn ihm gut, ist gar wohlgemuth. Aber Mutter weinet sehr, hat ja nun kein Hänschen mehr. Darum besinnt sich das Kind, läuft nach Haus geschwind." (Short Version) It's about a wandering boy who ultimately returns to his mother because she misses him.

A piano possibly with basic? Seems like something for the 8-bit guy.

The music in King Roy for the opening sequences is a series of extracts from Romanian Folk Dances by Bela Bartók and the game end/start from Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker, a surprisingly sophisticated series of choices - given the Eastern European repertoire plus that this was made by a Berlin manufacturer I would hazard a guess that this has some kind of East German heritage before a newer incarnation as the MegaDuck. This may explain the clunky oddness, was this a product of a successor to VEB Robotron?

I've had a frustrating evening because one of my lawn tools refused to start and I'm mad about it, so now I'm watching a youtube video I've seen before and I know I like to feel better. Thanks Dr. Ashen!

Ashens - one of the most charming and comforting KZfaqrs I watch.

Speaking of the snake game, anyone remember the old RM Nimbus pcs from school in the early 90's? they ran software for kids called smile disks? snake game was on smile disks, along with a cool game where you had to guide a train along a maze track by changing the numbered points/gates.

Oh man that was driving me nuts! The music in the Snake Roy game is Ritual Fire Dance from "El Amor Brujo. I wonder if that was driving anyone else insane or if it was just me. (Well, up until it suddenly played the Nutcracker)

The Snake Roy cover is up there in the top 20 things that have made me laugh the most in my entire life.

'Who cares - it's in now', as the actress said to the Bishop.

At least it has a headphone jack

I REALLY wish something like this still existed in today's market. Like, load up minesweeper and solitaire into the games section, and obviously use the modern equivalent of the cheapest screen on market, and it'll be a pretty cool little kids PC. It'd probably be Raspberry Pi or something, but still, I like the concept.

*FINALLY* I've been hoping you would do this one. I am so happy now

I think Ashens has informed me more about old obscure PCs and cheap handheld hardware than anyone else on KZfaq. Also about what games to avoid when emulating any of those ( via his fantastic books ). I look forward to enjoying your videos over and over for years to come.

I want a entire snake roy play through!

Stuart can become the new Jean-Michele Jarre with the power of the MightyDuck and a laser pointer!

*Mega Duck Computer* what

They sould have named it the Giga Duck.

I thought the only Megaduck was Launchpad McQuack

You know.... You've reviewed too much electronic tat! Seeing this on my homescreen I thought, "Oh an old ashens video I've yet to watch!"

...I get the mental image of Ashens doing a movie now, 'Game Child vs. MegaDuck'...

“Ashens & the quest for the Mega Duck”

Haha .. when you switched to the gamed, your reaction was 1:1 what my students reaction is. "oh games!!! :D ... oh, ... math games :/"

Thing's more kitted out than my 70's laptop...... more than 2 games?! Dammit I need one now!

"What is it teaching me? It's teaching me how to hate". So pretty accurate to most school experiences then lol.

That voice at around the 20 min mark I kept expecting Stewie to say : " King ?" " Well , I didn't vote for you !! " .

*hits a note* Hang on... *tries another one* Hang on.... *two more* Hang on...

"What a game, What a man, What a snake." -Ashens, 2018

This is going to read stupidly trivial, but when you put a semicolon at end of line 10 of your basic lines, it made me particularly happy.

Today my anxiety is killer but you are so calming and funny mate. Really great distraction which is very much appreciated, thank you 😍

"very low resoution screen" I think you're mixing with the Hartung Game Master, Stuart. The Mega Duck have a 144*160 pixels screen, which is the exact same resolution than the Game Boy.

Tchaikovsky bit killed me

I swear that last melody it played was "soft kitty"

Honestly, if i was younger, I would have thought this was the coolest thing every. I was born in the years of those Vtech laptops, so yeah, that stuff always fascinated me.

For: "die Amis": NO, the song at the end is NOT Soft Kitty, but Hänschen Klein, a German children's song. I know many people have already stated this, but I just wanted to clarify it as long as I remain top comment. And don't lose your shit about the word 'Anschluss'. All it means is 'connection'. Even today jokes about our darkest times are still present in German YTPs. Most (in)famously, when someone says a word that contains the 'Es' syllable, the syllable will almost always be repeated...

very interesting ashens thank you

Honestly the digitized speech caught me off guard because that was an exceptional rarity on the Gameboy... I'm almost impressed.... maybe....

actually really love the design of this, especially the keyboard.

But can it run Crysis?

I really wanted to hear the Ashens Theme during the piano section

I never knew I needed this. Damn you, Ashens!

Love your videos pal I was 13 then when this come out and still had my C64.

i'd love to watch the entire screen get painted 24:00 cuz that would be awesome

TBH Ashens - In 93 that would've been kinda cool... The fact that it actually has some functionality other than games makes it not as sheit as you are making it out to be.... I do agree that screen is a joke - however - again - functional... kinda...

YAY Saw you on the retro tech's channel couldn't wait to see when you reviewed this

About the word "drücken". "drucken" (without the 2 points above the u) means print/printing, "drücken" (with the 2 points) means press/pressing. Its like in "Druckerpresse" (Printing Press)

Ahhh, of course, Ashens uploads remind me how broken my sleeping pattern is

When is Skyrim getting ported to this?

Snake Roy versus Trogdor. Now that would be a fucking franchise.

Awesome review on a shocking device and great video as always

I think it's quite awesome in a dumb way, just a mad multimedia project like LABO. Seen stuff like this at thrift shops and mostly just wonder why they think tiny, tiny screens will work? I'm sure they could spend a little more to make one at least twice that size for a "deluxe duck" model.

So Nintendo got their own back by stealing the printer idea from Megaduck's creators; Hartung. A fitting punishment. :D

I absolutely love your channel my dude, but there needs to be someone who gives these things the love they would have gotten were one to get one back in their heyday.

I would have bloody loved that little printer thing as a kid.