 Calculators, Music Keyboards and Videogames Consoles? Casio are best known for calculators, music keyboards and digital watches. With all this electronic technical know how, you would think they may have done well in the videogame market. They actually managed to release just two home videogame consoles, only in Japan. The one you have probably heard of is the Casio Loopy, a 1995 sticker printing console marketed at girls. But before that there was the Casio PV-1000, released October of that magical year - 1983, the same year Gakken released the Compact Vision TV Boy (see issue 10 Fusion magazine). The same year Sega released the SG-1000, and the very same year Nintendo released their world conquering Famicom. October 1983 was a little late to be releasing a console with technical specification slightly below par of a Colecovision As the technically superior Famicom had launched 3 months prior for the same price, ¥14,800. Physically, the PV-1000 is a good looking hunk of blue plastic, understated in design but with strong modern looks. The cartridge slot sits upon a flattened mound, in the middle, which smoothly curves down to the main body, with a red power LED over to the right. There are distinct grill lines running the length at the back, to mask slits for ventilation. The front right corner topside has the PV-1000 name in green, with a CASIO logo in white. Front side centre of the console, there is two controller DIN ports for player one and two. While on the back, is the connector for RF video and sound on one side, and a barrel socket for the power on the other. To turn the console on/off, there is a rocker switch located on the right side of the main body. Cartridges are decked out in the same blue plastic, with a game label covering the top edge and the front. They have a dust cover mechanism to protect the connectors like some Atari 2600 carts, which only open up when you insert the game into the console itself. The supplied joystick, also in blue, is of the flight yolk variety with a red fire button on top. This is set into a large base, that has a Start and Select button as well as another larger white fire button. Powering the PV-1000 is a 3.579Mhz Zilog Z80A CPU, similar to a ZX Spectrum or Colecovision. Graphically it outputted a 256x192 resolution display, with only 8 colours to choose from. It had 2KB of RAM available with 1KB for a character generator. The audio, to my ear, sounds like a two channel tone generator, but this is undocumented. Both audio and video are provided by the custom NEC D65010G031 chip. Only 13 games exist for the PV-1000, with maybe two more which have never been seen. It is actually impressive there are that many, since the console was only available for a short period before being pulled from shelves the same year. It once again appears to be a case of too little, too late. Casio followed up with three micro computers, the similar specced PV-2000, along with MSX compatibles PV-7 and PV-16. It would not be another 12 years before Casio tried another console, with the Loopy. - Asobi Quang DX April 2020 Back |