MAMEWorld Forums - News - Zed's Mame 271 What's new

Glad that one of the commenters explained to someone why none of the System 23 titles were not shown in the videoclip, but good to know more improvements have happened recently.

For those that want to see more video gameplay of some of the plug n play games, see any of the videos that are dated within the October 2024 month period done by the plug n play group.

Haze video clips https://m.youtube.com/@mamehaze/videos

Oodles of plug n play with quite a few of them guaranteed to have a better time with compared to 2023 addition of LJN Video Art.

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LJN Video Art is Now Emulated in MAME, and It's Still Awful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LHwdqs9GNXE
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History info of LJN as explained by ozzyguy100

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I got nothing to say about the Video Art other than it's really awful & obsolete for it's time (you got Microsoft Paint [Paintbrush at the time, as the Video Art was released in '87], & PC Paintbrush for DOS, all of those have much better features, SNES/SFC: Mario Paint even has better features [that was released in 1992, 5 years after the Video Art was released], even NES/Famicom: Color a Dinosaur is better than the Video Art [still an awful NES game, but at lease it has a fill feature]).

LJN was formed on Nov 30, 1967 as Lewis Toys by both Jack Friedman & Norman Lewis (on Wikipedia, it says 1970 as the forming date, but according to the SOS of New York the company was actually formed in 1967 of Nov.), was company was renamed to LJN on Jan 16, 1970 (LJN is Norman Lewis's initials backwards). After Lewis left the company (to focus on his own company Norman J Lewis Associates [a company formed three years prior]), Friedman focused on licensing toys from movies production companies, other studios & companies (notably; ET, WWF, Thundercats).
MCA bought LJN on Mar 26, 1985, LJN enter the video game industry in 1987, releasing game on the NES/Famicom based on licensed properties (Mostly on Movies & TV Shows, all those games where developed by Atlus (Makers of Megami Tensei, Persona, & Catherine), Rare (yes, that Rare), & Beam Software, & most of the games where pretty bad [but there's some okay games they've released]), & releasing the Video Art in 1987 (I wouldn't want to say thing is a console, nor a toy). LJN did face controversy with their Entertech brand (a water gun toy line that have water guns that look like real Firearms, the brand was short lived however & their future owner Acclaim sold off the brand too in Sept 1990).
MCA sold LJN to Acclaim in Apr 1990, Acclaim closed LJN's toy division. Before Acclaim acquire LJN in 1990, Friedman left LJN in 1988 & moved to California & formed THQ on Apr 30, 1990. & left THQ in 1994, & finally forming Jakks Pacific on Oct 17, 1995 (Maker of the Plug-&-Play consoles ⁅some units developed by HotGen, some units by Digital Creations Studios⁆), Acclaim shuts down LJN in 1994, but Acclaim did used the LJN name as a fictitious trade name for releasing Dreamcast: Spirit of Speed 1937 ⁅developed by Broadsword Interactive⁆ released in June 9, 2000 ⁅EU⁆, June 27, 2000.

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