Rapper Soulja Boy, best known for the 2007 song “Crank that Soulja Boy,” has been expanding his ventures into technology as of late. He now offers his own watch, appropriately called the SouljaWatch, and he even put his own game console up for sale. The SouljaGame has been criticized for appearing to be a marked-up plug-and-play system already sold under a different name, but now it appears it also includes stolen games from companies like Nintendo.
YouTube creator Madlittlepixel purchased one of the consoles so we didn’t have to, and he was not impressed with the package he received. The included system looks almost identical to an Xbox One S, but is remarkably light, and the included controllers didn’t match the ones shown on the box. Additionally, the included North American AC converter didn’t stay on the plug, so he was forced to replace it with one of his own.
Selling a rebranded console with cheap components isn’t illegal, but what almost certainly is illegal is its game library. Once the system boots up, you’re greeted with a list of games from consoles like the SNES and the Sega Genesis, including several of Nintendo’s first-party games. Games like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past come pre-installed, and given how litigious and careful Nintendo has been about its library of retro games, we’re pretty confident the company isn’t cool with Soulja Boy becoming the Soulja Game Boy.
Legality aside, the Soulja Game doesn’t appear to run the games very well, with motion smoothing and bizarre cropping on Street Fighter II. A huge game library doesn’t exactly mean much when you’re not getting good versions of any of the games, but Soulja Boy does also offer a handheld version of the system in case you really want to take it with you on the go.
Soulja Boy hasn’t taken too kindly to criticism of the consoles thus far, accusing the media of trying to squash his dream. On Twitter, he also hinted that another console would be on the way, saying he would have the “last laugh.”
