 When is train controller a console? Before the Nintendo Famicom, Epoch ruled the Japanese home video game market, with their 1981 Cassette Vision console. Gakken Holdings Co Ltd, who went from being a publishing company to making educational toys, best known for their Denshi Blocks electronic kit pieces, moved on to gaming. They had done well with many LCD handheld games. Particularly with a VFD tabletop clone of Pac-Man, Super Puck Monster. Which Coleco rebranded as an official Pac-Man game in the west. October 1983 saw Gakken join the home console market with their own creation, the Compact Vision TV Boy, which unfortunately for them, was released three months after the more advanced Nintendo Famicom. The TV Boy was priced at a budget ¥8,800, compared to the Famicom ¥14,800 and ¥13,500 Cassette Vision launch prices. This was due to the specification of the console belonging to the second generation of consoles, despite being released in the period of the third. Epoch had decided to release a remodelled cheaper version of their console, dubbed the Cassette Vision Jr., which was priced lower at just 5,000 yen. Making Gakken’s console, neither the cheapest nor the most technologically advanced. The Compact Vision TV Boy is an odd affair, looking like some sort of cross between a landline phone and a train game controller. The light grey body of the console has the actual controls on it. In the middle is a red toggle for power, a round pause button, and a LED. On the left, a large handle to grip hold of, with a blue Start/B fire button. Then on the right, a cartridge slot, and a big T-shaped joystick which has the A fire button on the side where your right thumb can reach. You held the console itself in both your hands to control the games. The console itself does not have a CPU built in. But it is in fact it is the game cartridges that house the CPU needed to run the games. The console provides the VDP, Visual Display Processor, a Motorola MC6847 graphics chip. Along with a small 2K of RAM and the wiring needed to interface the controller, RF out to the TV and power. Games use a text display mode for menus, 32 columns by 16 lines. For gameplay section, it can run in either 128x192 pixels with 4 colours or 256x192 pixel with 2 colour displays. The short life of the TV Boy saw only six games being released, each priced at ¥3,800. 1) Excite Invaders, sideways Space Invaders type of game with you keeping the slowly advancing lines of space aliens at bay. 2) Mr Bomb, sees you catching bombs being dropped into your water vessel to diffuse them while keeping it topped up. 3) Robotan Wars, simple looking Robotron 2084 clone where you are attacked on all sides by hordes of enemies. 4) Super Cobra, conversion of the Konami arcade game of a helicopter shooting and bombing their way along a hazardous landscape. 5) Frogger, the arcade classic of a frog trying to cross the road and river to get home. 6) Urban War 200X, a battle in a city against other tanks and helicopters. Ultimately, with the release of the Nintendo Famicom, Epoch’s updated Super Cassette Vision, as well as the Sega SG-1000, the Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy looked dated and undesirable. It never stood a chance. - Asobi Quang DX January 2020 Back |