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History of video games/Platforms/Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy

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  • The Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy featured a truly unique design.
    The Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy featured a truly unique design.

History

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Gakken Founding

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Gakken was founded in April of 1946 to provided educational services during the post World War II reconstruction of Japan.[1] Gakken began making educational electronic kits in the 1970's.[2]

Launch

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The Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy was released in Japan in October[3] of 1983[4] for 8,800 yen.[5]

Legacy

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The Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy is mostly remembered for its unique design. This strange control scheme is both credited as a factor in the failure of the console, while simultaneously hailed as a bold design that has its own fans.[6]

After the Compact Vision TV Boy, Gakken would not completely exit the gaming industry. It continued to manufacture 4-bit educational computers capable of extremely simple games in the 1980's.[7] A new model in this 4-bit computer line, The Gakken GMC-4, was released as recently as 2009, which included several simple games game,[7] and could be reprogrammed to play new games. Importers charged $39.95 for the GMC-4 system in 2009.[8]

Technology

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  The 8-bit Motorola MC6801 Microcontroller is kept on the game cartridges.[5][3] A Motorola MC 6847 video display generator and 2 kilobytes of RAM resides in the console.[3][5][9] This approach gave the Gakken Compact TV Boy some of the advantages of systems that kept the computer in the cartridge, as well as the cost saving advantages of reusing hardware between games.

Game library

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Excite Invader

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Excite Invader[10] was a 1983 game inspired by Space Invaders,[11] and considered to be among the best for the system.[12] The name of this game is sometimes listed as "Excite Invaders".[5]

External Resources

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Wikipedia has related information at Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy, Gakken, GMC-4, Gakken EX-System  and Motorola 6847

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy

References

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Parts of this page are based on materials from:
 Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia.
  1. ↑ a b c "Overview Gakken Holdings". ghd.gakken.co.jp. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  2. ↑ Vis, Peter J. "Gakken EX-System". www.petervis.com. Retrieved 23 February 2021.
  3. ↑ a b c "OLD-COMPUTERS.COM : The Museum". www.old-computers.com. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  4. ↑ "Site News: The True Holy Grails of Video Game Hardware - "The Minors" - Beyond the Mind's Eye - Thoughts & Insights from Marriott_Guy". www.rfgeneration.com. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i "Compact Vision TV Boy by Gakken – The Video Game Kraken". Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  6. ↑ "The 10 Worst Video Game Systems of All Time". PCWorld. 14 July 2009. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  7. ↑ a b "New Gakken 4-bit Micro Computer Kit". Retro Thing. https://www.retrothing.com/2009/07/new-gakken-4bit-micro-computer-kit.html. 
  8. ↑ "Gakken Gmc-4: 4-Bit Microcomputer Kit Won'T Play Crysis". Technabob. 22 October 2009. https://technabob.com/blog/2009/10/22/gakken-gmc-4-bit-microcomputer-kit/. 
  9. ↑ "Motorola 6847". Wikipedia. 16 September 2020. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f "OLD-COMPUTERS.COM : The Museum". www.old-computers.com. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  11. ↑ "OLD-COMPUTERS.COM : The Museum". www.old-computers.com. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  12. ↑ Williams, Samuel (June 24, 2021). "The 10 Worst Video Game Consoles (& The Best Game For Each One)". https://www.cbr.com/best-games-for-worst-consoles/. 
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