Video Game Consoles You've Never Heard Of with Lewis Packwood, Vividlope

[00:00:08] Welcome to Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and gaming culture in Japan's capital. Your host, Mono, here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo. Author Lewis Packwood returns to chat about video game consoles you've never heard of, all which are chronicled in his amazing book, Curious Video Game Machines. We dive into obscurities like consoles you strap to your body, the American handheld game that inspired the Game Boy, consoles for girls, barcode gaming, and many other amazing topics.

[00:00:38] I guarantee we touch on something you've never heard of. And in the game section, I check out the Y2K-era-inspired indie puzzle game, Vividlope. Let's jump into the feature on video game consoles you've never heard of with Lewis Packwood. Today's feature is about video game consoles you've never heard about.

[00:01:02] A bit clickbaity, I know, but all of these fascinating and obscure consoles are housed in a single book, Curious Video Game Machines. Joining me to chat about this book and a lot of video game hardware I guarantee you've never heard about is a special guest. So, guest, please introduce yourself. Hello, I'm Lewis Packwood, and I'm the author of Curious Video Game Machines, as well as a freelance video game journalist for The Guardian and Edge and various other places. Thanks for joining me yet again.

[00:01:29] Today, we're going to dive into your book and a lot of the really incredible video game machines discussed in it. And you were recently on my episode where we talked about another obscure topic, Metal Slater Glory. And by the way, did you see that Yoshi Miru of Metal Slater Glory fame reposted our podcast episode on Blue Sky? Oh, no, I didn't see that. That's brilliant. Oh, fantastic. Yes. So there's a non-zero percent chance that he has heard both of our voices, which is very cool.

[00:01:56] But equally cool, your book, which I read after our last podcast episode. And now we're here to talk about it in all the amazing consoles and unknown pieces of video game history you chronicle in the book, Curious Video Game Machines. And listeners, I guarantee you, we're going to get into stuff you've never heard about, hence the click-baity title. But before we get into the consoles, made by car companies, barcode gaming, consoles aimed at girls, and many other things, I want to hear about the origins of the book. What made you want to write a book about all these unusual video game objects?

[00:02:25] Well, I guess it goes back to the start of when I began as a video game journalist, which is back in about 2013. I started off as a freelance writer. And one of the very first articles I wrote was about the Galaxia, which is a Yugoslavian computer that I'd never heard of before, but just found someone talking about it on one of the forums. The story of this was fascinating.

[00:02:47] It was all about this open source computer that was made by this guy, Kovoya Antonis in early 80s Yugoslavia, because Yugoslavians didn't really have access to computers. There were some huge import fees on kind of trying to computers like the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64 into the country.

[00:03:05] So Antonis kind of came up with a way of making your own computer using this kind of clever system where you could use the Z80 chip as both a video controller, like a graphics chip and a CPU. And then he published the instructions in a magazine with the help of some journalists. And it was just incredibly successful. They sold 100,000 copies of this magazine and thousands and thousands of people built their own Galaxia.

[00:03:30] And as a result, the import laws were kind of changed a few years later and people could start importing machines because suddenly everyone had computers and they were clamoring for more. So I thought it was a fascinating story. So I wrote about that and I was like, well, if there's this computer that obviously was really popular in Yugoslavia, if I hadn't heard of that, well, what else haven't I heard of? And pretty soon I discovered the Avatar machine, which was made by an artist called Mark Owens in the mid 2000s, I think it was.

[00:03:59] That is a suit that you put on that makes you look like a kind of polygonal character, like a character from Final Fantasy VII or something, the original, not the remake with all kind of sharp edges. And then it's got a camera with a fisheye lens on a pole sticking out of your back. And then you also wear these kind of VR goggles and then the feed from the camera is transmitted into the goggles. So essentially you're viewing yourself from a third person perspective as if you're in a video game, but in real life. And it was just such a remarkably weird thing.

[00:04:28] I ended up kind of writing about that. And that kind of sparked this idea of like trying to find more unusual kind of machines and write the things that people don't hear about. You know, everyone's heard about the Super NES and the PlayStation and all that kind of stuff. But there's all of this other stuff that hardly anyone ever talks about or doesn't really know the stories of. And over the years, I kind of collected more and more stories of these things and then eventually thought, well, maybe I should do a book about it and pitched it to a publisher.

[00:04:57] And they were really excited to get on board. The reception has been brilliant. I think there's a lot of consoles and computers and arcade machines that are featuring the book that hardly anyone's heard of or perhaps don't know the stories behind. How did you narrow down the subject matter? Did you just already know all of these devices off the top of your head or were you searching for some specific criteria? Well, quite a lot of the stuff in the book is things that I'd already written about before.

[00:05:21] So things like the Cassio Lupi, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute, which I kind of had done some reporting on before. But quite a lot of them were things that were new to me that I was vaguely aware of, but then had to kind of find more information. And originally, I did have a longer list of chapters that I wanted to include. But I had to cut out some things because I just simply couldn't find out enough information about them. And I didn't want to just kind of write a long list of obscure consoles.

[00:05:47] I wanted to kind of actually tell a really in-depth story behind each one and try and, if I can, kind of talk to the creators or at least people who were involved with the machines in some way. And there were just some that I just didn't have contacts or I just couldn't quite get hold of the right people. But having said that, like during the making of this book, I found so many more machines that I could talk about.

[00:06:11] I literally have a list, a big spreadsheet of possibles for a sequel if I ever get around to writing one. So hopefully, you know, if this book does well, then I'll be able to kind of write a sequel. And I've got so much material. There's so many more things. There's so many more weird things that you've never heard of. So what was the most surprising device you learned about or one you couldn't believe existed? That's a really good question.

[00:06:33] I think probably the most interesting one was the Cubo CD32, which I only found out when I was interviewing a collector for the book. He was talking about he was one of the few people in the world who owned a Halcyon, which only exists as a prototype. It was a console from the creator of Dragon's Lair from about 1985. And only about a dozen have thought to exist. It was based on laser discs and voice control, which in itself was an amazing story. There's only a few of them.

[00:07:03] And I managed to track down this console collector in the US who had one. And we talked about that. And while I was talking with him, I kind of said, oh, have you got any other unusual consoles in your collection? And he said, oh, yeah, I've got a Cubo CD32. And I was like, what the hell is that? So I was aware of the Amiga CD32, which was the console that Commodore released. It was like their swan song machine just before they went bankrupt in the 90s. The idea of taking out their Amiga 1200 computer and then turning it into a console, essentially, with a CD player.

[00:07:31] One of the very first CD consoles. Not the first, but almost the first. And he kind of said, well, there was this thing called this Cubo CD32. What it was, was after Commodore went bankrupt, they had thousands and thousands of these unsold Amiga CD32s. And the receivers had to get rid of them somehow. So they ended up being flogged off very cheaply.

[00:07:54] And some of them got sold to a bank in Canada, bizarrely, and got turned into internet banking machines, which is a fascinating story in itself. But a load more of them were sold to this company in Italy, who were mostly known for doing educational software, like encyclopedias on CD-ROM. And then they turned them into kind of arcade machines, essentially. But they wrote their own software for them. So these kind of like quiz games and puzzle bobble clones.

[00:08:23] And they ended up appearing all over Italy in these bars. And I think someone made it to France as well and other places in Europe. And for years, they kind of kept making these machines. And I managed to track down one of the guys who made these games, called Luca Carissa Fuli. And he talked to him about this kind of strange second life of the CD32, which I'd never heard of. All right. So I want to get into the nitty gritty of some of these. We can't get into everything.

[00:08:51] So listeners, you're going to have to buy the book if you want absolutely everything. But since I live in Japan, and of course, I love Japanese gaming, I was mostly drawn to the Japanese side of things. So I'd like to focus on those devices. Though, of course, we will be country hopping a bit. And of course, I'm a huge Nintendo fan. So I was really captivated by the chapter on the MB Microvision, which served as the inspiration for the Game Boy in a way. Can you give us a bit of an overview on the MB Microvision?

[00:09:18] Yeah, it's a console that hardly anyone's really heard of. It kind of came off the back of this wave of electronic games in the 1970s. So in the 70s, there was a very distinct kind of hierarchy between video games or TV games, as they were sometimes called, where you play them on the TV and a little console like the Atari 2600. And then these electronic games like Mattel's Auto Race was one of the first ones, which were just little LCD screen things that you played. And there were quite a few of those.

[00:09:46] And then the Microvision was like the next step for those little LCD electronic games. It came with essentially interchangeable cartridges. It was one of the first handhelds to have interchangeable cartridges. But rather than having a cartridge, you just slot in the top. The whole front of the machine kind of came off and each game kind of had different control layouts that went onto this kind of almost like a touchscreen pad, not quite a touchscreen. But so it was a very strange machine. It was massive as well, which kind of defies the idea of portability.

[00:10:16] But I think that originally it could have been much smaller. But I think MB at the time insisted that it was bigger to make it look like to parents like they were getting more value for money when they bought this thing. So it was a very underpowered machine. It couldn't really do very much, only display a very kind of simple LCD kind of graphic. And this is at the time when the LCDs weren't that common. It was mostly LEDs on the early games. And it didn't do particularly well.

[00:10:42] I think it sold quite well in the first few years and then tailed off dramatically and was wound up quite soon afterwards. There were only a handful of games ever released for it. Interestingly, one of the first licensed games was released for a Star Trek game. But I know that the people in Nintendo, in their development team, were aware of it. And I think it gradually kind of led to the Game Boy, essentially.

[00:11:05] Satoru Okada, who was one of the engineers, said that the MB Microvision inspired the creation of the Game & Watch series, which kind of came out in the early 80s, Nintendo's Game & Watch. They were saying they didn't understand why the Microvision had to be so big. And instead they wanted something small that would fit into someone's pocket. But apparently they liked the idea of the interchangeable cartridges, but realized that the limitations meant that most of the games looked quite similar. So they decided to create bespoke graphics for each one.

[00:11:31] And apparently Gunpei Yokoi, who designed the Game Boy much later on, wanted that console to look more like the Microvision, being more like the Game & Watch series. But eventually it was decided to make it kind of closer to the Famicom. So it was kind of an interesting little bit of history, you know, how much influence the Microvision had. And I wonder whether it was a coincidence that the Game Boy's first game, one of the first games released for it was Alleyway, which was a version of Breakout, which is also the game that came with the Microvision.

[00:12:01] Yeah, I believe we haven't even said it yet, but MB means Milton Bradley. The board game maker in the 70s, they were making the grandfather of the Game Boy in a way. And yeah, I was very impressed by this machine because it was very innovative in its design. The form factor, it is kind of like a giant Game Boy. And this is over 10 years before the Game Boy came out. And it is interesting that Nintendo, they saw it and thought, oh, we're not there yet. So we need to make a Game & Watch, something that doesn't have exchangeable cartridges.

[00:12:30] And then when technology catches up, then we can do the sort of one game per cartridge type of format. But Milton Bradley, they had that idea way, maybe too early. That's something that I think is a theme in the book is that there's a lot of amazing ideas, but they weren't super fully realized or maybe the technology didn't catch up with their design just yet. And yeah, it is funny that they kind of made it too big on purpose because they thought, well, people want big things. So let's just make it as big as possible.

[00:12:59] And yeah, you mentioned in the book that Satoru Okada, the Game Boy engineer, he was a fan of Blockbuster, which is a breakout clone. And Nintendo launched the Game Boy with their own breakout clone called Alleyway. And Alleyway is playable today on the Switch, thanks to Nintendo Switch Online. So the big meta question, would we have the Switch without the MB Micro Vision? Yeah, that's a good question, isn't it? I feel like probably Nintendo would have got there anyway, but it's interesting to kind of see

[00:13:27] how influential these American machines were on Nintendo in the early days. There's a similar kind of pattern with the Coleco Vision and the Famicom, you know, how much Nintendo's designers were inspired by the Coleco Vision. And even earlier than that, you know, Nintendo actually made the light gun for the Magnavox Odyssey, which was a thing I didn't realize until very recently. And they also licensed the technology for game consoles from Magnavox for their first machine,

[00:13:55] the Color TV Game 6 in 1977. So it just shows that there's a really, really close relationship between Nintendo and these American designers. Another really fun Japan-focused chapter is one about consoles targeted towards girls, including the Super Cassette Vision ladies, Master System girl, and Cassio Lupi. Now, I am familiar with the Super Cassette Vision, and I actually have mentioned it on the podcast before, because the first ever Dragon Ball game came out for the Super Cassette Vision. But I had no idea there was a ladies version.

[00:14:26] And before we jump into the ladies version, can you give us an overview of the Super Cassette Vision in general? Yeah, I mean, one thing I wanted to do with the book is to kind of avoid, this is kind of a US-centric view of video game history, where it focuses on the video game crash of 1983. And one of the things I wanted to do with the book was to kind of show that that didn't really happen in other parts of the world. And actually, the way the video game history played out was extremely different

[00:14:52] according to which continent you were on and even which country you were in. And in Japan, as you know, like in 1983, was one of the most exciting years for gaming ever. You know, about something like half a dozen different consoles launched that year. There was the Sega SG-1000, and there were consoles from Casio. And Epoch was actually the market leader at the time. You know, Epoch's Cassette Vision was the biggest selling console in Japan. And then they launched the Super Cassette Vision,

[00:15:21] which was a more powerful kind of follow-up, which didn't do as well, because it ended up losing out to the Famicom. The Famicom, when it launched in 1983, just kind of pretty much steamrolled it all of the entire opposition. They did release this special version of the Super Cassette Vision. I think it was in about 1985, called the Super Cassette Vision Ladies, with the idea that this would be a console aimed at girls, bizarrely. And it would come in a pink briefcase. The console would be pink and come with a game called Super Milky Princess,

[00:15:50] which was a kind of horoscope game with this well-known astrologist in Japan at the time. The game is not that great, but the idea is you kind of put in your date of birth and all the other information in it. It spits out some sort of horoscope for you. And there's also a very kind of basic platformery type game as well. But it was quite a strange idea to kind of, okay, well, here's the console. We've got this console. Now we're going to launch another version that's aimed at girls. Why can't all the consoles be for everyone? Why do we have to have a separate one for girls? It's quite strange.

[00:16:20] But then that happened several times afterwards. The Master System Girl was released in Brazil only. And that's quite a bizarre machine. It was made by Tektoy. They had licensed to manufacture Sega consoles in Brazil, but they also had started to kind of iterate on one chain and bring in new versions. And the Master System was absolutely enormously popular in Brazil, to the point where even after the Mega Drive came and went, they were still making Master Systems. And it outsold the Mega Drive by quite a considerable margin.

[00:16:50] And Tektoy kept making Master Systems for years and years and years, well into the 2000s. I think even today you might still be able to get them. But the Master System Girl was, as its name kind of suggests, was aimed at girls. But it was a handheld Master System. So you kind of had this kind of handheld unit and had an aerial on it that communicated to an RF unit on the back of your TV that you plugged into the back of your TV. And the entire system was contained in this handheld unit.

[00:17:18] So it was quite an odd little thing. But it also came with this packing game that was about Monica. I think it was about this character called Monica. It was a really popular cartoon character in Brazil at the time. The equivalent of Asterix, say, in France. So yeah, it's a fascinating kind of bit of local history that no one really outside of Brazil is really aware of. And these things are highly sought after by collectors now. But I think most people don't even know that the Master System Girl exists.

[00:17:44] Yeah, and the Super Conservation Ladies, I think it looks actually quite awesome because it's this kind of skeleton pink design. And it comes in like a briefcase almost. It comes with all these different peripherals or this set. After I saw it, I'm like, I kind of want to buy this. So I was very impressed by just the design of the Super Conservation Ladies. And pop quiz, do you know what Epoch does today? Well, I know that they're really heavily into Sylvainian families still. That's probably the thing they're most well known for. Yeah.

[00:18:14] Yes, they are a toy company. And their most famous brand being the Sylvainian family, which are like these little play sets, but with animals, kind of like small felt animals. I'm not sure if they're outside of Japan, but they're super popular in Japan. But most importantly, since the 90s, they have been making Mario toys. So even though they were rivals to Nintendo for a bit, now they're best of friends. And the Elephant Mario plushie from Super Mario Wonder was made by Epoch. So something to think about.

[00:18:41] And also, I want to get into a little bit about the Casio Loopy. Since this is not just a, oh, let's just change the color of the hardware type of game machine. It seemed to be really focused towards young girls when they were making it. So can you get into what is the Casio Loopy? Yeah. So the Casio Loopy is a really unique machine. It's a console that prints stickers, essentially. Little self-adhesive stickers.

[00:19:05] And so you kind of play the game and you make a little scene and then you hit the print button and a little sticker pops out, which is quite a charming idea, really. I think it's quite wonderful. And I could see how something like that would really catch on. And I managed to speak to some of the designers of the Casio Loopy back in the early 90s. So it kind of came out just around the time PlayStation was launching, tail end of the Super NES or Super Famicom.

[00:19:29] And it was apparently within Casio, they had a kind of competition to get people to suggest ideas for products they could do. And this idea of a console that printed stickers came up, which would leverage Casio's expertise in printers and digital photography. The idea that it would be aimed at girls, that wasn't there at the beginning. It was just the idea of doing this printing. And apparently the designer said it was only marketing along the way that kind of suggested, actually, let's focus this towards girls.

[00:19:58] So it was never really originally intended to be just aimed at girls. That was purely a thing that kind of came along later when the marketing department said, okay, let's focus on this. But it didn't do very well. It kind of disappeared without trace pretty much. And hardly anyone outside of Japan has heard of it. It's understandable, really. I mean, as a console, it was lacking.

[00:20:18] The games were little more than kind of comic makers or kind of things that were aimed entirely around printing stickers. So there wasn't really much to do. And it only came with one controller as well and only one controller port. So you could only ever play on your own, which seems like a bit of a bad decision in hindsight. But it's interesting how it also kind of came along just as the Purikura machine was rising. Purikura is so. Right.

[00:20:48] I'm sure you're familiar with it living in Japan, but Purikura kind of stands for print club. And it's the idea of these giant photo booths that you and all your friends pile into. And then you all take photos together. And then you decorate them afterwards with lots of graphics and things like that. And then you print them out and they come out as little stickers that you can then put in your scrapbooks or wherever. And this was huge. And you could technically use the Loopy as a Purikura machine because there was this peripheral called the Magical Shop that you could plug into it.

[00:21:17] And it would let you capture stills from the screen. So you could and then annotate them as well. So you could even kind of capture footage from like a TV show or things like that. Or a digital camera rather and then annotate it and then print it out. So but this accessory was quite expensive and the concept itself was quite expensive. So it didn't really take off. Yeah.

[00:21:42] Kind of bad timing with, oh, our competition is the PlayStation, which is, you know, quite an amazing gaming device. And also, oh, you can easily just print these photos very easily at pretty much any arcade center for maybe 100 yen. So they had like an interesting idea, but kind of caught between a rock and a hard place where, oh, there's actually much better options. But now today, I'm sure there are still some maybe Casio Loopy collectors who are trying to find, hopefully, I don't know if they're like burning through their sticker print or whatever.

[00:22:12] I'm sure just like the paper is probably very expensive or hard to find. It is. And the collectors I know who got it are kind of fearful of actually using the sticker printing capabilities because this little sticker tape that kind of comes through it is now so hard to find. It's so expensive that you don't actually want to use it, which is a real shame. And I think I still think it's a great idea. Like the Game Boy Camera and Game Boy Printer, which came out a few years later, they were hugely popular.

[00:22:38] And they kind of showed that there is this idea of, you know, printing stickers, which people love, you know. So if the console itself had been a bit more focused on making good games and then having a nice little sticker printer as a little option, then perhaps it could have done better. But having said that, going up against the might of the PlayStation, it was a tall order for anyone in those days. And the last big thing I really wanted to focus on, the fascinating Barcode Battler and the Barcode Gaming subculture of Japan in the 1990s.

[00:23:07] I had kind of heard of the Barcode Battler, but I had no idea how popular it actually was. So tell us, what is the Barcode Battler? Yeah, so people may have heard of the Barcode Battler in the States or in the UK or in Europe. It was a bit of a flash in the pan over here. It kind of came out in about 1992, I think it was. The idea was that you could get barcodes from any product and then scan it into this machine.

[00:23:33] And it would have, it has this numerical display and it would create numbers for stats for a character, like attack, defense and various other kind of things. And then you would use those stats to fight against another barcode that maybe your friend scanned in. And it also had a single player game where you would fight other players, these enemy baddies by scanning in their barcodes. So essentially the idea that you would scan in a barcode, it would generate a load of numbers and then you could fight them. And you would then go off and try and find more powerful barcodes.

[00:24:02] You know, perhaps this bag of noodles had a really super powerful barcode. And it really did lead to that in Japan, at least. People were hunting around supermarkets or konbinis looking for powerful products that they could use in the game. So it was quite this idea. It was almost a bit like the precursor to Pokemon Go, this idea that it would let you see the world in a different way rather than, you know, looking. If you play Pokemon Go, you look around and you're seeing, oh, that shop, that's a Pokestop.

[00:24:30] You know, it adds this extra kind of layer onto the world around you. And it was a bit like that with the Barcode Battler in the sense that you would see things in a different way. Rather than seeing a packet of noodles, you would see a super powerful warrior, you know, as you were going around the supermarket. But it was hugely popular in Japan, like ridiculously popular. The first version came out in 1991. And then the sequel came out the following year, the Barcode Battler 2, which was actually confusingly the original Barcode Battler in Europe and the US. They only released the sequel. The first one was white. The second one was black.

[00:25:00] But it was massive, absolutely massive, to the point where they had a TV show on Saturday nights on primetime where people would use this kind of Barcode Battler. They put these kind of like magazine racks or these shopping shelves in the studio and people would run up and try and grab an item within a few seconds and then fight the opponent by scanning the barcode. They had these cards, these runs around where you collect cards for it.

[00:25:26] So all of the Barcode Battler cards came with beautiful artwork. It's really lovely artwork, really expressive. And people made special cards to go with it. So there was a train line where they did this card run where you would go and stop off at every station and get a stamp and you would get a card at each station. It was this unique character of a barcode. They had tie-in cards for loads of different other franchises. There were Mario Kart cards. There were Zelda cards.

[00:25:53] There were all these other Japanese kind of role-playing games that had cards. It was huge, absolutely huge. And it was essentially a bit like Pokémania. Not quite as big as Pokémon, but a precursor to Pokémon, that kind of level. And there were even kind of tie-in games like board games, all sorts of stationery you could buy. The merchandise was enormous. Yeah, I was very surprised to learn that there was a Nintendo crossover of sorts because there were Zelda cards.

[00:26:22] There were Mario cards that you could use with the barcode Battler 2. And I'm honestly a little surprised that it hasn't come back or why this went away since it's such a fascinating idea. Although now I guess it would just be an app or they would just upload the most powerful barcodes online or something like that. I think it would probably lose a lot of its appeal now that we have the Internet. I think maybe the closest analog to this would be Yo-Kai Watch, which are really heavily focused on scanning QR codes that you find on special branded toys.

[00:26:52] But for the barcode Battler, it seemed like any barcode would work. Do you think there's any chance that we are on the cusp of barcode battling coming back? Or is that just because of the Internet or because of the way things are now, there's no way something like this could ever happen again? I think it's probably past its time. Like you said, the trouble is the Internet. It's now easy to find the most powerful barcodes possible. It's easy to kind of decipher the algorithm that works it.

[00:27:19] And I think even back in the 90s, they released a kind of barcode maker and printer that you could actually just make your own. And it quickly became so that everyone knew what the most powerful barcodes was. There was kind of a revival with smartphones. A load of barcode related kind of games came out. I think there was even a revival of Barcode Battler on the iPhone, the phone to kind of scan these barcodes. So there was a bit of a revival. And there were some various toys that used barcodes as well.

[00:27:49] I think Scanners in the early 2000s was a toy range where you would scan them and the barcode would create monsters a bit similar to Pokemon. But basically a combination of Pokemon and Barcode Battler. So there have been a few, but I think the trouble is, yes, the Internet. It's easy now to kind of quickly just generate the most powerful barcode and just win every time. All right. There are literally maybe dozens of other devices you've covered in your book that unfortunately we couldn't get into. But what would you say is your favorite chapter of the book?

[00:28:18] I'm quite fond of the Galaxia chapter that I talked about earlier, this amazing story. But one thing that I really enjoyed was the VHS chapter. So this chapter of VHS consoles. Now that was something that was like going down a rabbit hole. I had no idea there were so many VHS-based consoles out there. I knew of the Action Max, which was a console, a kind of light gun console released in 1987.

[00:28:44] It was the idea that you, it was from Worlds of Wonder, the same company that did Teddy Ruxpin. And the idea that you play this video and you shoot the screen with this little light gun and the light gun would register points. Although, of course, every time you played the game, it played out exactly the same because the VHS was exactly the same. So it was kind of limited, which people quickly realized at the time as well. But the idea that you'd have these kind of film quality graphics as opposed to like these blocky little characters, it's quite exciting. So I knew about that.

[00:29:12] But then there were just so many more that I came across, like the Video Challenger that was released the same year that kind of did almost the same thing as the Action Max. And a tie-in games with Godzilla, which I didn't know about. And then there were all these other ones. Sega released the VHS console of sorts called the Family Driver, I think it was called in Japan, which is a little car that's stuck in front of your TV screen and you controlled it with a steering wheel.

[00:29:37] And there's little light sensors in the bar at the bottom of the screen would pick up on little black and white marks at the bottom of the VHS to tell you whether you're on the road or not. And there were all sorts of other ones. And of course, there was the one that didn't get released as well, the Control Vision from Hasbro, which was originally what Night Trap, the game that eventually came out for the Sega Mega CD.

[00:29:59] That was going to be on the Control Vision and it was made in the mid 80s by Rob Phillip, who used to work at Atari and did Missile Attack and things like that. And that was made for the Control Vision. But then it was just the Control Vision was meant to come out in 1989 and then got shelved because it would have been too expensive and wasn't that reliable. But the idea you could have interactive gaming, we could have been playing Night Trap in 1989 instead of like a few years later on the Mega CD. And that's fascinating, really. So yeah, I'll go into all of that in the book.

[00:30:28] And I interviewed Rob Phillip and yeah, it was a really amazing story. I'm very partial to the MB Micro Vision chapter because it is a classic example of incredible innovation, but it was maybe a bit too ahead of its time. And it didn't get the design just right, but then somebody just figures it out and they make billions of dollars, which is a tale as old as time. Now, let's talk sequel. Are there any plans to follow this book up with Curious Video Game Machines 2 or maybe something in a similar vein of digging deep into obscure consoles?

[00:30:58] Oh, do you know, I would love to write a sequel. Basically, if this does well enough, if I sell enough copies of this, then I think I could probably persuade the publisher to Greenlight a second one. But I would love to kind of delve back into this. But I am writing a completely different book at the moment about something completely different, which I can't quite talk about yet. But there is a new book that's on the way. And I've also just finished another book called The Art of Still Wakes the Deep, where I just went into the background of the making of Still Wakes the Deep, which came out last year from the Chinese room.

[00:31:27] So that's going to hit the shelves first. And then this other secret book that I'm working on. And then hopefully once all that's done, there'll be enough demand for a sequel. But please, yeah, please all buy this book. And then I can write another one because I've got so many more stories I want to tell. Yes, listeners, I also want to read this theoretical sequel. So please buy the book. And if I want to give you a tip, I guess. I've always been partial to the Super A-Can, which is a Taiwanese console from the mid-90s. And it had similar tech to the Genesis and Neo Geo. And it was cartridge-based.

[00:31:57] It was a system with only 12 games, but it was a big bomb. And the company destroyed a ton of the stock and the equipment they used to make it. But it's still around. There's still some collectors that have it. And there are only a dozen games. So I've been very tempted to try to collect all of it. So if you can, please include the Super A-Can in a possible follow-up book. But first, listeners, buy this book so I can get that Super A-Can chapter in the future.

[00:32:22] So that was a look at video game consoles you've never heard of, courtesy of Curious Video Game Machines. So Lewis, where can people find you? And where can people find your book? Well, you can find me at my website, lewispackwood.com. And you can find the book on all good websites and bookshops. It's available on Amazon. But you can also buy it direct from the publisher, which is Pen & Sword in the UK and Casemate in the US. Great. And the links to everything are in the podcast description. And again, listeners, I highly recommend this book.

[00:32:52] You will absolutely learn something. And you can show off your gaming knowledge to all your friends. I guarantee you, you'll learn stuff you never knew existed. So, Lewis Packwood, once again, thanks for joining me. Thank you. Still early in the year and not a whole lot of games have come out. I am very interested in Phantom Brave The Lost Hero. I tried out the demo and enjoyed it. But I can't explain it.

[00:33:19] But I'm just not in the mood for that type of game right now, even though I love the original. I'll get to it eventually, but I've mostly been tackling a bunch of games I bought over the holiday break, including Vivid Lope. It's from solo dev Jack Club, and it seems to be their first game. While this isn't a Japanese game, it's definitely one very inspired by Japanese aesthetics and gameplay. This is one of those games where you just see the icon and think, oh, I need to put this on my radar. It's a puzzle platformer where you traverse stages with the goal of turning all the tiles to a specific color by stepping on them.

[00:33:49] So, kind of like Q-Bert. I guess Q-Bert invented this type of game, right? Though I have played other titles with pretty much the exact same concept. Like, for example, Monochrome World. But those other games don't have the vibrant style of Vivid Lope. I've seen people describe this as a lost Dreamcast game. Colorful but abstract landscapes and a focus on simple polygonal shapes. I'm not quite sure if there's one tidy word for this look. Y2K Core? I kind of thought of Super Flat, which is Takashi Motokami's art movement from this era. But maybe this technically doesn't fall under that umbrella.

[00:34:19] The visual style really reminds me of Super Milk-chan, an anime that I think is pretty emblematic of this era's look. Maybe Mr. Driller Drillland also is in the same vein. But if you have any love or nostalgia for this type of look, for the early 2000s, late 90s, you'll definitely want to put Vivid Lope on your radar. You're a bunny, and like I said earlier, you go through the stages trying to paint all the squares the target color. Sometimes you only need to walk across it once. Sometimes you need to do it twice. Sometimes you do it multiple times, but need to aim for a specific color.

[00:34:50] And once the target percentage of the level is that color, you clear the stage. Each world has about 15 stages, and smartly, you don't need to be everyone to move on. You really only need to clear about half of a world's stages, which I think is great for those who just want to see new challenges without needing to bang their head against one particular map. Early on, you can clear them pretty easily, but later on, you'll definitely be skipping or picking and choosing stages once you get to around, I want to say, world 8 or 9. It's a very breezy game to play, but a hard one to master.

[00:35:19] Vivid Lope is great with giving players a fair challenge, but ramping up the difficulty for those who want to be completionists. To get the coveted V rank, you need to be pretty much perfect. But if you don't care about that, you can still clear the stages as long as you're paying attention to the obstacles in the map layout. It completely nails the awe of 3D that a lot of late 90s and early 2000 era games really reveled in. There are many, many stages where you need to walk under the map, or just like a big cube where you walk on all sides, kind of like Super Mario Galaxy.

[00:35:49] It has a lot of fun with rendering weird shapes in 3D and letting you navigate through them. A lot of weird Mobius Trip-esque stages. And all these stages are floating in a void that kind of looks like a Windows music player background. Again, if you're really into this look, it's hard not to be captivated by just how much Vivid Lope is in love with the aesthetic. The game has a lot of good power-ups too. My favorite one has to be the hammer, where you wield a gigantic mallet that can one-hit KO enemies and also color the tiles. A lot of these items either boost movement or help you paint the stage, or sometimes both.

[00:36:19] The dash is really fun because it lets you mow through enemies while also covering a lot of ground. If you lose a life, you do lose the power-up though. I kind of wish you didn't, but each stage typically gives you maybe two or so power-ups to use, so you can at least try something else, even if you die. Although the map is broken up into squares, it does have analog controls, so while it looks like tile-based movement, you're really free to skirt the edges or spin around in a circle. Sometimes you do need to be very precise, especially when making a jump or avoiding obstacles.

[00:36:47] I will say that the jumping can sometimes be difficult due to the top-down perspective or the shifting camera angle. And there's some auto-jump pads where if you touch them, you need to quickly pick a direction and then you auto-jump in that direction. But it's just way too easy to accidentally touch it and then hurl yourself off the stage. Sometimes you do get caught ping-ponging between obstacles and then just blow all your lives, but I think for many stages, there are areas that you can completely avoid since you don't need to 100% the map to clear the stage.

[00:37:13] But even then, a lot of my frustrations with the game, I do kind of think it comes down to a skill issue. Maybe not the crazy auto-jump pads, but the game is challenging while also still being fair. And like I mentioned before, the game benefits from greatly just letting you ignore levels while still making progress. And if you do want to 100% the game, there's quite an absurd amount of content here. I'm talking hundreds of stages, and all of them are pretty distinct in some way. It kind of reminded me of BoxBoy, where you can clear the game pretty easily, but if you

[00:37:42] want to 100% it, there's plenty of content for you to tackle. And like BoxBoy, it's only $10. I think Vividlobe is a very easy recommendation if you're into puzzle platformers, especially if the aesthetic appeals to you. It does feel like a classic handheld game in a way, where you just pick it up, play a stage or two, and then put it down. I've been playing a lot of random games on and off recently, but I do find myself coming back to Vividlobe, even for just 10 minutes, to see if I can knock out a few more stages. It's a classic example of, quote, perfect on Switch. All right, that's all for games.

[00:38:11] Let's check out some news. It's that time of year, or season, I guess, Nintendo's quarterly numbers. Switch has officially passed 150 million units. I mean, what do we even say at this point? It's one of the most important pieces of gaming hardware ever. That said, it sold 4.82 million this last quarter, aka the holiday season, which is much lower than normal, and Nintendo did adjust their forecast for the fiscal year, between

[00:38:40] April 2024 and March 2025, slashing the total number of expected Switches sold by 1.5 million. Now, if you remember last year, Nintendo forecasted 13.5 million for that year. They then slashed that down to 12.5 million. So with this report comes another slash, this time at 11 million. I mean, 13.5 million was an extremely ambitious number, considering the 2023 forecast was about 15 million, and that year had Pikmin, Mario, and Tears of the Kingdom.

[00:39:08] So everyone wondered, oh, does Nintendo have some sort of heavy hitter for 2024? And while they were consistent with games, they didn't have any big system sellers outside of maybe Mario Party. Everything else was a pretty low-key release, and even Zelda is seen as, oh, this is like a handheld type of game, not a big AAA release. I think if they forecasted 11 million last year, it would be much more reasonable, so I do have to wonder why they made such a lofty prediction.

[00:39:34] In terms of software, the big boy Super Mario Party Jamboree has moved 6.17 million units, making it the fastest-selling Mario Party title ever. Can we give a shout-out to Nintendo Cube, formerly IndieCube? They put out three Mario Party games on Switch, which have sold like 50 million combined, and also Clubhouse Games, which also sold a few more million. And everybody won't do Switch, but hey, nobody is perfect. But they are a major developer for Nintendo this generation, which is something I think a lot of people maybe don't realize.

[00:40:02] Echoes of Wisdom sold 3.91 million, which is a pretty good launch. For reference, Link's Awakening currently sits at 6.5 million. I doubt Echoes will touch that, but it'll certainly pass 4 million, or at least maybe lag its way out to 4.5 million. For reference, Skyward Sword on Wii sold about 3 million. So it's funny to think that this 2D Zelda with completely different game mechanics outsold the major 3D Zelda title in less than a quarter. Mario and Luigi Brothership hit 1.84 million, which honestly is a bit higher than I expected.

[00:40:30] I think a lot of people like this game, but it did have some mixed reviews, and honestly, I didn't really gel with it. But there doesn't seem to be a Mario RPG fatigue just yet. If these games can hit around 2 million, I think Nintendo will still keep pumping them out. But if I was Nintendo, I'd be all hands on deck with getting Super Mario RPG 2 off the ground. As for older titles, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is now at an absurd 67 million units sold, with Animal Crossing at 47 million.

[00:40:56] Oh, and the sleeper hit of the Switch era, Nintendo Switch Sports sold around 2 million last quarter alone, and is almost at 16 million sold. This is a game I think most people completely forgot about after a week, but it is a major evergreen for the Switch. And it is a good game. If you like Wii Sports, you will like this. Bowling is still king. Some other things I want to note, it does seem like another code, Nintendo World Championships and Emeo are still sitting below a million.

[00:41:23] I would at least think Nintendo World Championships with this discounted price would go past a million, but maybe it's a bit more niche than I expected, and the lackluster online features kind of killed its legs. So I don't think we were getting a SNES edition anytime soon. Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is at 1.8 million, which, I don't know, is that good? The 3DS version sold around 6 or 7 million, with 3 being a major breakout hit at over 14 million units sold. I wondered if the fandom around 3 would just pick up 2, but it is a hard sell.

[00:41:52] Hey, do you want this version of Luigi's Mansion that is not as good? I have been expecting Nintendo to put out Luigi's Mansion 1 at some point, similar to the Pikmin 1 and 2 ports, and I still think that could happen. Honestly, if I had to rank them, I'd go 3, 2, 1, but I am curious to revisit 1 since the structure of that game is pretty different from the others. People have been patent digging and have found the patents for Nintendo Switch 2's Joy-Cons, specifically the mouse functionality. So like you would expect, it shows diagrams of people using it as a mouse, aka turning it

[00:42:22] on its side. And interestingly enough, it shows a dual mouse mode. So for example, your left hand is on your left Joy-Con, your right hand is on your right Joy-Con, but they're shifted on their side, so it looks like you are using two mice. This is a really interesting idea, since yeah, there's no control scheme anywhere that lets you use two mice. I have to wonder, oh, how is this going to be used at all? Some people have been throwing out that, oh, maybe you can control a mech. Maybe Virtual On is coming back on the Switch, and you can control it that way.

[00:42:50] I do think Nintendo is going to have a 1-2 Switch-esque first-party release that really focuses on the mouse. So I am very, very curious to see how they use this dual mouse setup. But I believe others see this and think, oh, I can play Baldur's Gate 3 on Switch. I can play first-person shooters on Switch. Listen, if Splatoon 4 has mouse controls, I may go pro. But we need to wait until the April 2nd Nintendo Direct for more details. Nintendo did announce a date. It is 10 p.m. Japan Standard Time. I don't know the other times. I'm sorry. You're going to have to look that up yourself.

[00:43:20] But 10 p.m. is a bit earlier than normal. Typically around 11 p.m. is when Nintendo Directs drop. But the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal trailer was at 10 p.m. So I do wonder if in the Switch 2 era, they would kind of shift the announcement time a bit earlier than normal. The Dragon Quest Carnival returns this time at Corredo at Nipponbashi. Corredo is a big department store, so it is perfect to host the DQ Carnival, which I did talk about on the podcast last year when it was in Yokohama. It doesn't seem like a whole lot of things are new. There is another Dragon Quest Cafe, and there are new food options, but none of them look

[00:43:50] as exciting as the Mimic Burger I had last year. Not quite sure if I'm going to make my way over there, since it is pretty much the same as last year, and honestly, probably not as good. But if I'm in the area, I'll check it out. Last bit of news, Capcom had a showcase, mostly focusing on Monster Hunter Wilds, which is not coming to Switch. But what is coming to Switch is the Capcom Fighting Collection 2, which will hit May 16th. The feature set is the exact same as the other collections, but the games housed in here are either A, amazing, or B, interesting, so I am super excited to pick this game up in a few months.

[00:44:20] Also, Onimusha 2 is coming to Switch in 2025. I actually recently played Onimusha 1 for the first time ever after the announcement of the new game. I thought about covering it on the podcast, but maybe later. I wasn't super hot on it, but the development history of the game is extremely fascinating. Though I'm not quite sure why it took Capcom nearly seven years to get Onimusha 2 out there, but I always assumed it was a licensing nightmare considering the first three games used actors' likenesses. But someone at Capcom is going to have to ring up Jean Reno real soon. Okay, that's all this time.

[00:44:50] Thanks as always for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app. Leave a five-star review as well, it really helps. This podcast is also available on YouTube, so like and subscribe there as well. I'm on Twitter, Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram. Just search for Tokyo Game Life or find the links in the podcast description. If you like the podcast, be sure to share it with your friends and on social media. The next episode will be on February 23rd. See you next time. Matane!