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History
Epoch Company, Ltd. was founded in May 1958 by Taketora Maeda and three others, in the Kikuyabashi area of Taito ward, Tokyo. Maeda became president and began planning, manufacturing and selling games. The company started with a capital of 1 million yen, and eleven months later it had increased its capital to 2.5 million yen. Its first products were plastic baseball boards, and it then moved on to toys, board games and playing cards. Epoch became one of Japan’s biggest toy companies in the 1960s and 1970s, partly because it was a family-run business.
Epoch took part in the first Japanese international toy trade fair in 1962 and moved to its current headquarters in Tokyo in 1963. In 1970, it exhibited at the Nuremberg International Toy Fair in West Germany and has participated every year since. After 20 years, in 1978, its capital had grown to 200 million yen, 200 times the original startup cost.
Epoch entered electronics in the mid-1970s. In 1975, the company released the TV Tennis Electrotennis, the first video game console released in Japan. It was made in cooperation with Magnavox. Epoch then released a series of dedicated consoles, including the TV Baseball (1978), the TV Block and the TV Vader (1980). In 1979, Epoch released Atari’s console in Japan as the Cassette TV Game. Epoch’s own cartridge-based console, the Cassette Vision.
Starting in 1981, Epoch dominated the video game console market in Japan with the Epoch Cassette Vision. Although very limited compared to its North American rivals, the Cassette Vision had virtually no competition in Japan until 1983. At that time, the Japanese Console War started, and seven consoles battled for domination. With the release of the Nintendo Famicom, most companies were forced to drop support for their consoles, as the Famicom quickly dominated the market. Although Epoch had nothing to compete against Nintendo, it decided to fight fire with fire. To give itself time to finish its upcoming 8-bit console, Epoch released a trimmed-down version of the Cassette Vision, called the Cassette Vision Jr., on July 19, 1983, at a price of ¥5,000, a third of the price of the Nintendo console. Meanwhile, it worked tirelessly to create its new console the Super Cassette Vision.
After the release of the Super Cassette Vision, Epoch decided to push the even further their foothold in the video game market by releasing the first Japanese handheld with interchangeable cartridges.
Release
The Game Pocket Computer, also known as the Pokekon in the Japanese market, was released in 1984 by Epoch.
The Pokekon is the first handheld with interchangeable cartridges to have been released in Japan. The Pokekon was a brilliant piece of technology for the time. The only system that resembled the Game Pocket Computer was the Milton Bradley Microvision, released in 1979. Obviously, technology had advanced tremendously during that time, and the Epoch handheld was superior in every aspect.
Aside from some minor drawbacks, Epoch had done everything right for the time. The console was able to produce graphics equivalent to the Cassette Vision (similar to the Atari 2600), and it offered a circular D-pad and six action buttons. The battery life was also very good, at about 30 hours of use. The main complaint we hear nowadays is the awkward form factor, but the size is consistent with the technical limitations of the time. The only real missed opportunity is the lack of volume control, as the Pokekon only has an on/off switch for the sound.
Demise
Today’s critics also mention the available games as the downfall of the console, pointing to the high number of puzzle and board games. But puzzle and board games were very popular in Japan at the time, and the rarest cartridge on the system is by far Astro Bomber, the action game, which tends to prove that the craving for more action-focused games was not the cause of its downfall. The reason for its downfall was the same as for all the cartridge-based handhelds that came before the Nintendo Game Boy: the market was simply not ready for cartridge-based handhelds. Another problem was the size of the console. Although the name suggests otherwise, the console does not fit in a pocket. While this is not a problem at home, it is definitely an inconvenience on the go.
Technology
Like the Cassette Vision, Epoch used an NEC CPU for the heart of its console. The Pokekon uses a NEC uPD78C06 clocked at 6 MHz, with 2K of RAM, and supports cartridges with either 8K or 16K of ROM. The LCD has a 75 × 64 pixel resolution and is 2-tone monochrome. The system has only 1 sound channel and uses 4 AA batteries.
Games
Only 5 games were produced for the console. All games were produced internally by Epoch.
- Astro Bomber
- Block Maze
- Mahjong
- Reversi
- Sokoban
Two built-in applications/games could be accessed if no cartridge was inserted:
- Slide Puzzle
- Drawing Tool