Epoch Super Cassettevision

An obscure, rare and quite wonderful beast, the oddly named and reassuringly cartridge-based Epoch Super Cassettevision was released in 1984 as the successor to the original Cassettevision. The console had 16K of video RAM and thus a palette of 512 colours, could handle up to 128 sprites, came with a RGB output and had roughly 30 games produced for it. Apparently, the Super Cassettevision was particularly good at shmups and arcade games.

Intrigued? Good, for you can grab a working, boxed console via this Epoch Super Cassettevision eBay auction. It is the Japanese NTSC version of the thing and comes with two controllers, power adapter and RF thingy.

Seller ships worldwide.

Epoch Super Cassettevision & 18 games

Marketing departments must be particularly strange places and here's the ultimate example: the Epoch Super Cassettevision has nothing to do with tapes. Or cassettes. Or disks. It's a standard cartridge-based 8-bit console instead. Anyway. Micro-rant aside, I really felt I had to let everyone know an Epoch Super Cassettevision appeared on eBay and is being sold off complete with 18 boxed, rare-ish games without manuals, as well as the required bits & pieces to get the thing running. Seller ships worldwide, though I really couldn't comment on the price; the thing only rarely appears on eBay and I seem to have missed each and every time it did so.

As for the console itself, well, it was a failed and rather late 1984 competitor to the NES, sporting an 8-bit processor, 16 on screen colours from a palette of 512, two built-in joysticks, a numeric keypad, some impressive sprite moving capabilities, a unique design and -shockingly- a proper RGB output! The console, being a flop and all, got less than 40 games released for it and you can find out more about it here and here.