Jeremy Parish

August bonus #2: NES Works Gaiden 56 - Gakken TV Boy Pt. 1 (Patreon)

Published:

2023-08-14 12:34:41

Edited:

2023-08-14 12:35:25

Imported:

2024-04

Tags:

Gakken TV Boy bonus exclusive nes works gaiden

Content

A brief digression from Epoch here, as my modded TV Boy console finally arrived back from Sound Retro Co. and allowed me to embark on this: A six-game journey through one of the most utterly failed consoles ever to ship in Japan. The Gakken TV Boy is so weird! I encountered it last year at Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and immediately fell in love with the absolute stupidity of its design. So, it's only fitting that I edited together this first episode about the console while traveling home from this year's Long Island Retro Gaming Expo.

Don't worry, this won't be too much of a distraction from Epoch. The thing only had six games, after all. For now, please join me as I bask in the inanity and insanity.

Files

Hey, I'm Gakken here: TV Boy / Excite Invader | NES Works Gaiden (Gakken) 56

Let's take a break from the world of Epoch to look at an even more forgotten corner of Japanese console history... and, in this case, rightly so. Educational product publisher Gakken really had no business releasing a console just a few months after the Famicom. And certainly not a console that amounted to a stripped-down Tandy CoCo. And absolutely not a console that looked and controlled like... THAT. But we're here to celebrate video game history, both the good ideas and the bad, and while Gakken's TV Boy falls indisputably into the "bad" column of the ledger, the weird little thing wasn't entirely without precedent. And exploring the shape of its short life and meager library helps put other also-rans like Epoch into perspective... and does a lot to explain why Nintendo and Sega emerged from the Japanese console explosion of the early ’80s as the sold survivors. Special thanks to Christa Lee for modding this TV Boy for composite output and allowing for fairly clean video capture. Gotta preserve those tiny four-color pixels in all their glory. Production notes: Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, bonus videos, eBooks, and more! TV Boy footage recorded from original hardware, modded for S-Video output by Christa Lee of Sound Retro Co. NES/Famicom footage captured from @analogueinc Nt Mini; SG-1000 footage recorded from Analogue Mega Sg Video; arcade footage generally captured from a MiSTer. All capture upscaled to 720 with an xRGB Mini Framemeister.