Dynacom MegaBoy Compact Educational Video System

Summary

The Atari 2600 is one of the most popular game consoles of the late 1970s and there were some companies that produced legal and illegal clones. One company from Brazil was Dynacom, who copied games in addition to an illegal clone. The MegaBoy Compact stands out. The device is compact in any case, because it has approximately the dimensions of a GameGear, fed with four AA batteries (or a power supply). A display did not have the console, the playback takes place via a TV. The Atari 2600 modules are inserted in the back.

A particular module that was delivered with the console is a quiz game in the fields of mathematics, English, music and science. Because of the educational games, the subtitle Educational Video System is printed on the packaging, because Dynacom wanted to use the console in the educational field. And since cables in classrooms always seem a little awkward, especially when the console is passed around, Dynacom donated a special feature to the compact console: it contains a transmitter, so that a normal TV receives the games like a TV program. A better picture is obtained by a clamped cable. While Brazil relies on the PAL-M standard, the NTSC format applies in the USA, for example. On a US TV, the color signals are therefore ignored and all issues are black/white.

With 64 KiB, the game collections belonged to the largest module, twice the size of “Fatal Run”, a game with 32 KiB and only one other module exists with 64 KiB.

The console is very rare today, even in Brazil. Dynacom has more clones, all rare.