Nintendo Famicom / NES Game Console Clone - Dismantled for reference and curiosity
On sale in the early 1990s, the Micro Genius IQ-1000 is one of a number of Nintendo Famicom / NES clones released by the company Micro Genius. It's pretty basic visually and clearly made on a tight budget.
They were traditionally sold in the Middle East and parts of Asia where Nintendo didn't already have an established sales presence.
The IQ-1000 was the last in the IQ line* and it had all the bells and whistles. It was as if Micro Genius looked at the Famicom and thought, 'what's all the junk that the Famicom doesn't have that could boost sales' and then stuffed it all into the IQ-1000.
Nifty Features:
Audio via the Controller: one of the two controllers is plugged into the console and has a headphones jack that lets you listen to the game sounds privately.
IR Controller: in addition to the cabled controller the IQ-1000 has a second, infrared controller. This was petty cool at the time and not something you'd expect from a pack-in controller. The IR controller did not have an earphones jack.
RF 'Transmitter': while you can cable the IQ-1000 to your TV, you also have the option of plugging an antenna into the console's RF port and using your TV's RF receiver to pick up the signal. If you had a video recorder already in your TV's RF port you could use the 'RF Switch' that has its own antenna. This allows you to switch from your TV antenna to the IQ-1000's. That said the RF Switch might not have actually been included with the IQ-1000 as there doesn't seem to be anywhere in the foam packaging where it could have been located for shipping.
From looking at the components it seems that if this unit were to retail in much of the Western world it would have needed some RF shielding for it to gain FFC certification.
The manual lists a number of accessories including a light gun, keyboard and 'other' but I've not found any evidence that they were ever released. I'm guessing the light gun would be the Nintendo Zapper if compatible. Be sure to check out the amazingly convoluted cabling examples in the manual!
* Other Micro Genius models included; IQ-201, IQ-301, IQ-501, IQ-502, IQ-701 and the IQ-901.
