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Bung Enterprises, based in Hong Kong, was a part of the dodgy videogame copier business for many many years, starting as early as the Famicom, reaching it's
peak with a wide range of Super Nintendo copiers as well as a highly popular Gameboy copier/flash cart called the GBXchanger. Nintendo however finally managed
to drag Bung to court in 2000 and the company closed in March that year.
The people who used to ran Bung quickly formed a new company called Mr. Flash, but the new company only existed for a very limited time.
Bung became very popular as it was the first company to provide a working N64 copier, called Doctor V64, the device however wasn't easy to operate, it was quite
slow and easily broke. The funny thing though was that Discovery Channel once broadcasted a program about game programming and when browsing the one of the
Acclaim studios, a Doctor V64 could be seen.
Now fast forward to the point where Bung decided that it was time to redesign the Doctor V64. Instead of being attached to the expansion port of the N64, the
new device, called Doctor V64jr and later renamed to E64, would attach to the N64 just like a regular cartridge.
The new V64jr quickly became popular as it was light weight so it wouldn't cost a fortune to have it shipped to you from one of the very few online retailers
like Liksang or from Bung directly. The original version of the V64jr had 256mbit ram, equal to 32megabytes, which was enough to play any game available at the
time the device was released.
Soon after however the first games to exceed the 256mbit limit of the V64jr and the device was upgraded to a 512mbit version, the maximum size for a Nintendo64
game. Unfortunately the 512mbit version was released close to the closure of the company and the V64jr512 quick became quite sought after. Even the Mr. Flash
version was only available in very limited quantities and sold out fast.
No fancy packaging was made for the release of the V64jr, unlike the original Doctor V64, not even the a fancy manual but just a piece of paper and a packaging
being nothing more than a sort of blister packaging, but hey it did the job of displaying the product anyway, heh.
The major advantage to the V64jr was the speed improvements to the upload of games despite it still being fed by a parallel port connection and not USB as many
had hoped for. The major downside to the V64jr was that eventhough it had the capability of storing a rom due to a batterybackup feature, requireing 6 AA
batteries, the device needed a PC for every ROM upload.
Bung themselves only supplied a DOS program for uploading games to the V64jr, but fortunately a lot of members of the "N64 scene" wrote a wide range of programs
to ease the upload of roms to the V64jr. The Windows program that runs best with my XP installation seems to be Loada's WinRom64 program, but also WT_Riker's DOS
based ZiyalII and EvekII are great tools for v64jr owners.
There isn't a whole lot of details to tell about how to operate the v64jr as no GUI exists on the cartridge, usage is pretty simple and straight forward by
uploading the ROM, powering up the N64 and you're ready to play. Though a regular cartridge is needed for the infamous lockout chip all Nintendo cartridges
include, except gameboy and Nintendo DS. The Nintendo cartridge goes into a slot on the backside of the v64jr.
It maybe a black area device even though Bug tried to sell it as a game development device, but either way it's a fantastic piece of the N64 history wether
Nintendo likes it or not :-)
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