|
|
|
History
In 1947, Naoharu Yamashina convinced his brother-in-law, a textile wholesaler, to include toy distribution as part of his business operation. After running a toy distribution for 3 years within that company Naoharu Yamashina took over the toy distribution, and created Bandai-ya whose name was eventually shortened to Bandai in 1961. By the late 1970s, Bandai decided to jump into the new trend of the time, video games. By 1977, they released their first video game console : the Video Mate TV JACK 1000, a simple pong-like console. Just a few months later, Bandai released the Jack 1200. The main addition to this console was the addition of two detachable controllers. By 1978, Bandai had released the TV Jack 1500, TV Jack 2500 and the TV Jack 3000. The same years, General Instruments released their GIMINI 8600 concept which was basically a console, which would use cartridges containing Ay-3-XXXX chips that they released 2 years prior. Bandai purchased the concept and build the TV JACK Add-On 5000.
Release
Bandai was very quick to release the TV JACK Add-On 5000 and was able to release it the same year they purchase the concept from General Instruments. Over the course of two years, Bandai released 4 variation of the consoles: beige, blue, yellow and a yellow without an eject button. Each variation also had different pack-in games.
Demise
By 1979, Bandai had already decided to abandon the TV JACK Add-On 5000 in favour of a ROM-based console of their creation : the Super Vision 8000. With the focus of the new console, Bandai decided not release more cartridges for the TV JACK Add-On 5000.
Game cassette
- No.1: Ball game (included to early and late models)
- No.2: Road race (included to the early type)
- No.3: Stunt cycle
- No. 4: Block 10 (included to late model)
The following software has been announced but has not been released.
- No.5: Submarine
- No.6: Invader