A cautionary tale concerning knockoff video game consoles has surfaced in Tennessee, where one woman is reporting she found phallic images in one of the games intended for children. The images were pretty explicit, apparently, and not just a matter of "Oh, that kind of looks inappropriate, huh?"
Tennessee's News 4 is reporting that Jennifer Leigh purchased what she thought was a retro game console as a Christmas present for her 12-year-old daughter. The console looks a heck of a lot like the popular SNES Classic from Nintendo but, if you read the box, it's clear that this is a third-party fake. The machine is called a Super Mini SN-02, and it reportedly boasts 821 built-in video games. The legitimate console, of course, only includes a couple dozen games such as Super Mario World and Super Metroid. At a glance, though, unwary folks would be forgiven for assuming the consoles were the same.
According to the original report, Leigh wanted to get the console to play with her daughter and "school her on some Mario," which is certainly fantastic motivation. Assuming she was playing a legitimate SNES Classic, though, Leigh discovered she had purchased much more than she had bargained for.
One of the games on the system was a knockoff of a game called M.C. Kids, a platformer that saw a couple of friends transported to the world of McDonaldland. In the game, the player is supposed to help Ronald McDonald retrieve a magical bag stolen by the Hamburglar.
When Leigh selected that game from her knockoff console, she found that it was a super sketchy reskin boasting images of naked McDonald's mascots. Even the kids appeared to be reading pornography while naked in a tent and, according to Leigh, all sorts of phallic images were peppered throughout.
According to the initial report, one of Leigh's friends picked up the console for her at a Retro Games kiosk in the Opry Mills Mall. It seems likely this friend did not realize they were purchasing a knock-off console and, since the box looks almost exactly like the SNES Classic box, Leigh herself also didn't notice the difference.
Apparently the Retro Games folks have been contacted about the incident and Leigh's hope is that they simply stop carrying the knockoff console, since you obviously don't want kids to stumble upon something like that. Heck, I doubt many adults would be happy to discover that little "surprise" tucked away in what they thought was a collection of legitimate SNES games.
Oddly enough, this story kinda-sorta relates to recent events regarding Soulja Boy, who had to shutter his attempted video game business venture as all he was doing was selling slightly reskinned versions of similar knockoff consoles running unlicensed software. In other words: Be careful about what you're buying, folks.
