Bandai - Consoles

Consoles

During the late 1970s, Bandai sold the TV Jack console line: a series of pong based consoles. The last of the series was the Bandai Super Vision 8000 console released in 1979. It wasn't a simple pong based console system but a cartridge system with an 8-bit NEC D780C (Z80 clone) as CPU.

During the early 1980s, Bandai distributed a number of videogame machines. In 1982 the Bandai Arcadia, a variant of the Emerson Arcadia 2001, was released in Japan by Bandai. There were also four Japan-exclusive game releases which were the only known Arcadia titles written by other companies than UA Ltd. They also released local variants of the Intellivision and vectrex game consoles.

Bandai produced a running mat called the Family Fun Fitness System for the Nintendo Entertainment System starting in 1986. A series of games was released both in the US and in Japan, including Athletic World and Stadium Events for the NES. Shortly after its release, Nintendo purchased the rights to the FFF mat in North America, replacing it with their own redesign, the Power Pad. In order to maintain branding continuity, Stadium Events was pulled from shelves after a short period of availability at Woolworth's stores. Due to the fact that the game was pulled from shelves and discontinued before many copies were sold, Bandai's Stadium Events is universally accepted as the rarest licensed NES game released in North America. A shrinkwrapped copy of the game sold for $41,270 on eBay in February 2010. The sister game to Stadium Events, called Athletic World was initially released with a label that indicated compatibility with the Family Fun Fitness mat, but was later re-released with an updated label that mentions the Power Pad instead. Stadium Events was not released again, but instead was slightly modified and relaunched as the Power Pad pack-in game, World Class Track Meet.

In the '90s, Bandai teamed up with Apple to make The Pippin. They also made their own game console, the Playdia. Neither was a mass-market success. In 1999, Bandai created the WonderSwan portable game system. It, and its update, the WonderSwan Color, sold modestly well, but were unable to seriously challenge the dominant Game Boy Color and later, the Game Boy Advance. It was discontinued in 2003.