Epoch Video Game Consoles Timeline

Hi Folks!

Been quite a time i haven't posted on my blog and to start the year 2023 (err...mid-year), i will talk about the timeline of video game consoles released by Epoch. Some of you must be asking...why ? Well i've been digging information regarding the Epoch Cassette Vision and the Hanimex HMG-7900 and both these share so much but this will be another story.

So before presenting the "connection" between the Cassette Vision and the HMG-7900, let's see what Epoch has released over the years:

EPOCH TV ELECTROTENNIS (also AKA TV Tennis)
Released on September 12, 1975.



Not only this is the very first game console released by Epoch but was also the first game console made
in Japan. Based on the Magnavox Odyssey technology (it all TTL - aka discrete logic), Japan has it's first ever video game released on the (Japanese) market. Only one game you could play (Tennis) but has the option to play versus the game console (Robot mode). Just a quick note: It was also released in Japan under the "Entex" emblem in January/February of 1977 as the テレポン TVG-200 for 8,000 Yens. The Entex version was also sold in the United States & Canada in 1976 as the Entex Gameroom Tele-Pong and in the UK under Binatone.

EPOCH VIDEOGAME (TV TENNIS SILVER EDITION)
Released in 1976.


This is the same as the TV Tennis by Epoch but was sold through Hitachi affiliated electronic stores.

HITACHI VG-104
Released around Mid-April 1977.

Yes...Hitachi! This Pong console is made by Epoch for Hitachi as Hitachi sold Epoch previous Pong console. There is a logo of Epoch on the back of the console in case you don't believe it.

EPOCH SYSTEM 10
Released late August 1977.



This is Epoch first LSI chip Pong console as it uses the uPD770C made by NEC (which means Nippon Electric Company). It has 10 different Pong-type games and uses a light gun for the shooting games (which was also compatible with the System 10M2, the Toshiba TVG-610 and the Cassette Vision). There is also an article saying that it was planned to be exported to the United States through Magnavox around September 1976. Looks like this never happened.

TOSHIBA TVG-610
Released October 01, 1977.



Uses the same LSI game chip as in the Epoch System 10 and System 10 M2.

EPOCH SUPER 10
Unreleased (1978).

This was the first Epoch game console to be using a Microcontroller instead of an LSI. This game console was never released due to too numerous Pong consoles on the Japanese market. Finally became the "Big Sports 12" game cartridge for the Cassette Vision.

EPOCH TV BASEBALL
Released August 21, 1978.


This is the first Epoch game console using a Microcontroller (the uPD778C). It was after released
as the "Baseball" game cartridge for the Cassette Vision.

EPOCH TV BLOCK
Released May 17, 1979.



Epoch made a deal with Atari to released the Atari Video Pinball (model C-380) LSI chip but with
their own game console body. This is the same dedicated game chip found inside any Atari Video
Pinball ligth grey/cream edition.

EPOCH SYSTEM 10M2 (MK-II)
Released June 13, 1979.



Same as the previous model (System 10) and using the same LSI chip (uPD770C). Some says that
this model has an improved chip like faster speed to serve. Anyone can confirm this ?

EPOCH CASSETTE TV GAME
Released October 8, 1979.



Epoch imported and sold the Atari 2600 (the heavy sixer) in Japan. Epoch was the third distributer
of the Atri 2600 VCS. Picture from Video Game Kraken.

EPOCH TV VADER
Released August 1980.



This is the second Epoch game console using an Microcontroller (the uPD774C). It was after released
as the "BATTLE VADER" game cartridge for the Cassette Vision.

EPOCH CASSETTE VISION
Released July 30, 1981.


Epoch first cartridge game console (not counting the Atari 2600 VCS they distributed) which was using
Microcontrollers instead of programmable ROM chips. Only 11 game cartridges (total) was released for
it and two "known" games from previous TV game consoles (TV Baseball and TV Vader).

EPOCH CASSETTE VISION JR
Released July 19, 1983.



Revised version of the Cassette Vision. Two games cannot be fully played of this model (Baseball
and Big Sports 12).

***********
Starting from here, i only briefly describe Epoch game consoles for the timeline sake since i will
talk about the connection between the Cassette Vision and the Hanimex HMG-7900 (or Soundic SD-200).
***********


EPOCH SUPER CASSETTE VISION
Released July 17, 1984.



Next Gen game console trying to compete with the Nintendo Famicom...who do you think won the battle ?

EPOCH SUPER CASSETTE VISION LADY SET
Released July 18, 1985.



Pink version of the Super Cassette Vision. This was intended/aiming the "girl" game players.

EPOCH EXCITE PING-PONG
Released March 2001.


It has been 16 years since the last released game console by Epoch. Now they are in the "Plug & Play"
type genre as it was pretty cheap to manufacture and sell. There is also a version sold by "Mizkan"
which has a pink box.

EPOCH EXCITE BLACK BASS FISHING
Released July 2001.



EPOCH EXCITE STRIKER
Released Early 2002.



EPOCH EXCITE BOXING
Released July 2002.



EPOCH EXCITE STADIUM DX
Released July 2002.



And Epoch released many Plug & Play consoles (about 30 more) until 2010. 

So the next time i'll talk about the relationship between the Epoch Cassette Vision and the Hanimex HMG-7900 (or Soundic SD-200). Until then take care Folks! ;)

Nelsonic Simon Game Watch simulator

 Hi folks, just wanted to post about a WWG simulator that Garrick of http://www.liquidcrystal.co.nz/ has made an online simulator of the Nelsonic Simon game watch! He made this after i have sold him mine since the one he had died out. 

And now, everyone can enjoy playing this very rare Nelsonic game watch. Fun fact: The Simon game was invented by Mr.Ralph H. Baer, which he also made the Magnavox Odyssey (now celebrating it's 50th anniversary!).

To play, go here: Simon Game Watch Simulator. Have fun folks! :)

 P.S. : I forgot to mentioned that the time which is displayed is the one in New Zealand, so now you know which time it is over there. ;)

The Microcomputer Mahjong (マイコン麻雀)

 Hi folks! It's been quite a time i haven't posted anything, especially since i'm in the mist of selling about 75% of my personal video game collection. The most obscure and exotic game consoles have now been sold but still have a few ones left but this is not the subject (selling the collection) but rather about an very obscure game console called the "Microcomputer Mahjong" or in Japanese "マイコン麻雀".

This was only sold in Japan in 1982 and was distributed by Japan Mail Service which you had to buy by mail order. The cost of this console was 48,000 Yens (which is now about $360.00 USD as August 2022 - heck that wasn't cheap back then) and there is two models...er...rather two different colored casing: The fist one (showned above) is the white model which has the inscription "マイコン麻雀" on the left corner-top on the console and with three drawing of Mahjong pieces and the other model (the grey), which is just plain grey with a black lining:

At the price it was selling (back then in 1982) and the distribution (mail order only), no wonder this game console is very obscure! There is almost "NO" information regarding the Microcomputer Mahjong so it was a challenge and took at least 15 years to gather all the information i am posting here. I finally discovered that not only there is two different colored casing but also the white edition was sold in November 1982 and the grey edition was sold in December 1982....some of you must be saying when reading this: "What the F%$? ?!" Yes, both models were sold one month apart! 

Check out these scans of the magazine "All Mahjong Feature" of November 1982:

(Cover of the magazine)

(the November 1982 ad - white version)

And here is the mail-order form which is in the back of the ad (inside the magazine) with a description and some specification of the game console.

Then, just one month later in the magazine "Special Selection Mahjong" of December 1982, it is the grey version:

(Cover of the magazine)

(The ad of the grey version)

And the mail-order form which again, is also on the back of the ad inside the magazine.

 Since i just know a few Japanese words, don't ask me what is written on the ads and mail-order forms as i'm not influent in Japanese and will eventually OCR these scans to try to translate. 

Here's a video (not mine) of the Microcomputer Mahjong in action:

As i've said, not much information regarding this game console but before i've sold mine, here's some few pictures:

The inscription on the left is "Power On/Off" and on the right is "Power input".

The inscription on the left ..ah! no need to translate ;P, the one in the middle is "Monitor output" (composite video out) and the one on the right is "TV output" (RF out).

And the power supply which is 6 volts DC at 1 amp and has a negative tip.

And here's a look inside (yup...the guts!) of the game console:

So this game console runs on a Z80 CPU and has 1k of RAM and 1k of VRAM. The main program is 16K and the graphics is 2K. Here's the list of all the major parts:

IC1 = 74LS166N

IC2 = MSM2716AS (graphics ROM)

IC3 & IC4 = MSM2114L3RS (RAM)

IC5 = 74LS245P

IC6 = N/C

IC7 to IC10 = M5L2732K (program ROM)

IC11 = 74LS20P

IC12 = SN74393N

IC13 to IC15 = 74LS157P

IC16 = 74LS138P

IC17 = Z80A (CPU)

IC18 & IC19 = MSM2114L3RS (RAM)

IC20 =  74LS02P

IC21 = 74LS00P

IC22 = 74LS75P

IC23 = 74LS367AP

There is al lot of TTL chips! And before i've departed of my Microcomputer Mahjong, i dumped the EPROMS to preserve them and especially, to be able to play with the "eMuCom Mahjong" emulator done by Hiroaki Goto aka GORRY. He made an emulator of this very rare and obscure game console but it doesn't include the dump of the EPROMS because of copyrights in Japan.

 

You can get the emulator with the roms and ready to play here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GkLJtRU6QW3i_-f3Ld6nYHyf9gWH5rAu?usp=sharing

I also included a (rough) translated instruction on how to use the emulator as originally the instruction were only in Japanese. So hope that this was very informal and helpful.

So until the next post, take care folks! =)

It had to happen one day....

 Hi folks,

Well...it had to happen sooner or later but i thought it would be ssssoooo much later but with the inflation that is still raging and continues to to scale i have no choice...i finally decided to stop collecting video games. It's either live in a cardboard box with my collection or keep my house with a small collection so...

In less than a year, prices for video game collecting have sky-rocketed like mad. Hell! Everything have gone up like mad....sigh. So for the past two weeks, i have made a list of what i will be selling soon:

* Atari 7800 * Atari Video Pinball C-380 * Bally Astrocade * Bandai Playdia * Bandai Terebikko (model 1 & 2) * Coleco Telstar Alpha (A/V modded) * Coleco Telstar Classic * Coleco Telstar Colortron (A/V modded) * Coleco Telstar Combat * Commodore 64 Game System (C64GS) (NTSC mod) * Conic M-1200 * Connors Video Smarts * Diasonic TV Game HVG-220 * Elektronika Videosport-1 (with Light Gun) * Elektronika Videosport-3 (with Light Gun) * Entex Game Room Tele-Pong * Epoch Super Cassette Vision * Epoch TV-Block MB * Executive Games Face-Off Hockey/Soccer (A/V modded) * Fairchild Channel F II (A/V modded) * Fountain Force 2 (VC4000 clone) * Gakken Compact Vision TV-Boy * GI AY-3-8610 Prototype (with docs) * Leisure Dynamics Leisure-Vision * Magnavox Odyssey 500 (A/V modded) * Mahjong Computer * Milton Bradley Microvision * National Semiconductor Adversary 300 * Nintendo Block Kuzushi * Nintendo Color TV-Game 15 * Nintendo Famicom * Nintendo Kousenju SP Rifle (boxed) * Nintendo Racing 112 * Sears Tele-Games Speedway (Canadian version) * Sharp KJS TV Game * Sony PSP (PSP-1000) (boxed) * Soundic SD-290 * Soundic Victory MPT-02 * Telegames Personal Arcade * Tomy Pyuuta Jr. * Toshiba Visicom COM-100 (A/V modded with 4 carts) * Unisonic Champion 2711 (A/V modded with all carts) * Videomaster Star Chess * W.O.W. Action Max * ZapIt Games Game Wave And yes...even my Magnavox Odyssey (signed by M.Baer with also the briefcase signed) will be up for sale (snif!) :( Everything will be detailed (box, games, accessories, ect) with pictures and i working condition (or not). So if anything interest you, please contact me. - Sly (All good things must come to and end...) DC -

Archive.org updates

 Hi folks,

Just wanted to share that i have uploaded some few files on archive.org (go HERE to view all the files) which are (in the Electronic Games Stuffs):

* Coleco Pac-Man (1982) (English/Francais)

* Rosy space Venture

* Shinsei Warp Invader (Japanese)

* Super Impulse Tiny Arcade - Table Top Edition

* Tomy Tron

* Yonezawa Screen Tennis/Soccer flyer (Japanese)

And in the 3rd Generation Video Game Systems Manuals:

* Bandai Terebikko Video Phone (1988)(Japanese)

* Some Mattel Captain Power scans

* and some ILG Video Buddy scans

That's all for now. :)

New update for the Chip-8 Database

 

Hi folks!

I have updated the Chip-8 Database (https://archive.org/details/chip-8-games) which is on Archive.org with new games and demos for Chip-8, Super Chip, XO-Chip, ect. as the last update was in January 26, 2021.

I also uploaded a big file called "Chip8-to-type" which is about 300 Megs in size which contains all the "Non-Typed" games/programs that i could find over the years and that's more than 200 which need to be typed and preserved. Also included in the ZIP file is Martijn Wenting (Revival Studios) "Hex Coder" program to help out typing.

For the list of the "Non-Typed", please check the Chip-8 Archive List (April-01-2022).xlsx under the section "Chip-8 Games" that are in orange color.

 Have fun folks!

 - Sly DC -

The story behind the first Colecovision adult games (BUSTin-Out series)

 Hi folks,

Last night i was doing some cleaning on one of my hard drives and found an old text that Daniel Bienvenu (now aka Amy Marie "Purple" Bienvenu) sent me on December 12, 2000 (yup, 21 years ago) about a cheat code for any BUSTin-Out games...Holy crap! Completely forgot about this! But right after, a flooding of memories when Daniel, Marcel Thériault and me were having discussions about doing an adult game for the Colecovision on Yahoo Messenger.

So many (good and stupid) ideas came out of these conversations until Marcel send us (Dan & me) some pictures of one of his girl friends (Julie) and that what inspired us to make the very first adult game for the Colecovision! (Thanks Julie for inspired us).

 So Daniel started coding to see if the pictures would display on the Colecovision (remember, it was 2000 and not so many tools existed and Daniel all made his own tools!). We took black & white pictures as these took less space than a color pictures. Daniel was the coder and i helped with finding pictures that could look good with the help of one of his tools (CVPHOTO and CVPHOTOC). The first "ROMS" were actually pictures of Julie and some Playmates and until version 0.4, these Roms were unplayable as we couldn't move the paddle since it was just to see how the pictures were displaying (too bright or too dark or too pixelised).

As you can see, some are too dark, too bright or some too pixelised. If we had the tools that exists now, things would have been much different but that was then, we did what we could. But for 2000, this was indeed a great effort. 

We didn't wanted to do a porn game or anything explicit or smutty, just something exotic/erotic like the magazine Playboy. But since the screen of the Colecovision was only 256 x 192 pixels, that didn't leave to much details so we took only women which we could see from the head to their belly-buttons so that left seeing their natural busts (now you know why it's called "BUSTin-Out") ;)

What i don't remember is how many Volume 1 we made & sold but it sure wasn't a 100 copies. Here's the original cover for Volume 1:

 And this was the cartridge label for Volume 1:

But since we couldn't fit many pictures into a cartridge, Dan had the idea of making a serie of volumes and put a reference dubbed "collect'em all!" which he took from the Pokemons (catch'em all), so after making volume 1, Volume 2 came out right after:

And as for Volume 3, i don't ever remember doing a cover for this edition and i have no picture(s) in my database, but at least i do have the cartridge label:

 All cartridges, boxes (VHS), covers were either made by us to sell to members of the C.C.J.V.Q. or was made and sold by John Dondzilla for the rest of North America/Worldwide. At one of the C.C.J.V.Q. meeting (March 24, 2001), Dan & me we signed a couple of BUSTin-Out while having fun (and goofing around):

In case some of you didn't know, Dac-Man was Daniel very first game published!

And no...Dan didn't pinch my ass if it's what you're thinking...just me goofing. ;P

So if anyone of you has a copy signed by both of us, these are the rarest ones.

But that's not all, we even wanted to make a newer series called "Super BUSTin-Out" which instead figuring real women, we were going to use Hentai-type (but nothing smutty) girls from the waist up and in color this time. But with the poor success we had with the previous serie, we just did two different labels. The first is a Pre-Super BUSTin-out featuring a girl in bikini:

 But this was done before we wanted to use cartoon girls and if you did read the label, it states "(BUSTin-Out Volume #3)" which was also before we made the other Volume 3 label. So this label is a sort of in between projects (Volume 3 & Super BUST-in Out). After this label, this was the one we were going to use for the first Super BUSTin-Out:

 And again, still states "(BUSTin-Out Volume #3)" as we were not sure if we were going to release Volume 3 or Super BUSTin-Out !! There is a ROM of Super BUSTin-Out that exists but it's only a demo of the title screen:

 Click "HERE" to download the ROM.

After this project, Dan & me worked on another game and that one was a hell of a success. Just a hint: it's the non-official sequel of Space Fury. ;) I think Daniel released the ROMS not long after when we "retired" the BUSTin-Out project. He released Volume 1 to 3 and also a Volume 0.5. 

A couple of years later, someone at CollectorVision asked Dan if they could re-release all three volumes of BUSTin-Out and redone the covers:

And i would bet this was the guy who asked to do these re-editions:

 I'll give you some hints: this was his first C.C.J.V.Q. meeting on November 10, 2001 and has been a long time partner (still is) of CollectorVision and is the owner of the only prototype "Energy Quiz". Can you guess his name ? ;)

So if anyone of you want's a copy (or all three) of BUSTin-Out, then i invite you to buy them on the site of CollectorVision. Oh and almost forgot! The cheat code for any BUSTin-Out ROMS (Volume 0.5, 1, 2 or 3) - (original French text from Daniel):

Truc pour voir toutes les pitounes
dans BUSTin-Out Volume #1 et #2:

Quand tu démarre le jeu. Tu vois la fille, tu entends le son de mon logo.
Tiens la touche correspondant à # (ou * si tu utilise VirtualColeco) jusqu'à ce
que tu entendes un bruit après que la musique soit terminée.

Au menu, tu fais 5 pour enter dans le mode de visualisation.

Ça marche pour tous les BUSTin-Out ce truc là... et c'est le seul truc!

And here's the English translated text:

Trick to see all the girls
in BUSTin-Out Volume #1 and #2:

When you start the game, You see the girl, you hear the sound of my logo.
Hold the key corresponding to # (or * if you are using VirtualColeco) until
that you hear a noise after the music is over.

On the menu, you press 5 to enter the viewing mode.

It works for all the BUSTin-Out that's out there... and that's the only code!

So hope you have like the story and have fun folks! :)