One of the most precious gems on my pages! This system was
developed in joint-venture between JSB (owner of the Japanese
satellite TV channel Wowow), the coin-op company Taito and the
Japanese software editor ASCII and was presented in 1992 in a Tokio
Game Show
(Since this is a very obscure system and these pics
are not good, I'll repost them with a better quality soon!)
The (very) small (and really cool too!) prototype has a
built-in CD-Rom with which it could play games on CDs. Note the
beautiful design of the system, the essential pad, the Wowow logo on
the left of the system and what it seems to be a sort of smart cart
(white) inserted in front of the system near the two joypad ports
(probably it was used to gain access to the download system and/or to
insert a credit card to buy games online!).
The most innovative idea was the other media: the system could
receive games via a satellite antenna (transmitted like a TV or radio
station) and you would pay only the time you really play the game you
choose. If only it was marketed today... with internet instead of
satellite dish...
Here you could see a TV set displaying a choice of games (I
could see: Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Island, Parasol Star, Kikikaikai,
Rastan Saga, Darius and a vertical shoot'em'up I could not recall).
When the pic was shooten Darius was loading.
I have no technical informations, anyway I suppose that the system
was based on a Taito coin-op technology since the companies promised
coin-op graphics and sound quality. So it was almost certainly an
advanced 16-bit system.
The system was (unfortunately) never marketed but it seemed a
powerful system and a tremendous idea! The same idea was later used
succesfully by Nintendo with their Satellite adaptor for the Super
Famicom.
The only informations I have (and all the pics) were originally
published on a french videogame magazine called "Console Plus" (one
of the best magazine I know!).
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Pedrazzini
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