Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 223: Epoch's Game Pocket Computer

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey consult with handheld connoisseur Alex "kraeman" Forsyth about the impressive portable system that beat Game Boy to the punch by five years: The Epoch Game Pocket Computer.

All right. And so now we are not at a panel at Midwest Gaming Classic. We are just at Midwest Gaming Classic. in our exclusive high-tech recording studio, and we have procured none other than... Hi, my name is Alex Forsyth, and I've been a retronauts listener for as long as I can pretty much, really, really early on, and I am an avid collector of handheld video games.

And that's great, because this is Game Boy's 30th anniversary, but we are not talking about Game Boy's 30th anniversary right now. We were talking about something adjacent to that. Alex, have you been on the show before? I know you requested the wrestle knots topic, but I can't remember if you were actually on that. I was not on that episode. No, I was not. I did call in to one of the call-in episodes.

Well, we don't remember those ever existing. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I was forced to do that. This is your first time ever to be on Retronauts. That's what we're saying. Anyway, welcome onto the show. And thank you for joining us. Yeah, so, you know, we've been talking a lot about Game Boy's 30th anniversary just because I feel like I've accumulated a lot of knowledge about Game Boy over the past five years and I've just got to do something with it. I've got to monetize it. So here we are. But I do think it's important to talk about the things that existed around Game Boy. That's going to be, you know, one of the topics of our Game Boy anniversary panel this afternoon that we haven't recorded yet. But specifically, I want to talk about, you know, one of the, the, the, the

the precedence for Game Boy, one of the predecessors, that I think tends to be overlooked a lot, and for good reason, because it never came out in America. That is the Epic Pocket Pocket Game Computer. So, Alex, what do you know about the Pocket Game Computer? What can you tell us? Well, it came out in Japan in 1984. So this is its 35th anniversary. Take that Game Boy. Yes. And only five games were released for it, so it didn't seem to, do all that well. Maybe just market wasn't ready for a handheld game system yet, possibly. I think it was also kind of expensive, although, you know, I don't know that that really mattered

because this was, this was bubble era Japan. There was just money to throw at anything. I mean, you've seen OAV animations from the 80s. It was just like, let's just throw a crazy amount of money at this 30-minute cartoon. and then charge $100 for people to buy it. Like, there was just money everywhere. So, yeah, I don't know, I don't know why the pocket game computer didn't fly because it was a really kind of impressive piece of technology.

And it's not like Epic was some fly-by-night company. Epic was one of Nintendo's main competitors in the handheld space in the days before Game Boy. You know, the game and watch came out in, I want to say, 1981. And Epic was one of the companies that immediately jumped into that market and said, we can also do that. It does not look quite ready for the Japanese commuter experience, though. It's a game and watch would or a fat Game Boy would. It's a bit chunky, yes.

The pocket game computer is kind of what you would expect from a portable computing device from 1984. It is not slim. It is like, if you took like five iPad minis and stacked them up, that's about what you've got. It's like, it's, you know, slate-sized and fairly thick. and the cartridges are also fairly thick. They're like... I'd say maybe like four Tic-Tac containers glued together. Sure.

I was going to say they're like Atari 2,600 cartridges that have been shaved down the middle. But they're sizable for a portable system. But, you know, Epic, I actually, I never owned a Game and Watch, but I did own an epic handheld LCD game called Epic Man. Can you guess what that was? Can you guess the amazing secret of Epic Man? I'm going to guess it is a Pac-Man clone. That is correct. No, I was going to say Breakout.

Oh, you were so wrong, Bob. No, no. Prize to Alex. Although, I will say, the Epic Man game was kind of cool because instead of just having like the normal Pac-Man maze, the maze had bridges. So there were like these places where you could, I think, two bridges and you could go under the bridges to hide from the ghosts. So instead of having like the connectors on the sides, you had bridges where you could hide and evade the ghosts or the monies. or whatever. And I played that game a lot. I got to the point where I could max out the score at 99 points and it would stop playing. So you got the kill screen? Yes, I got the kill screen,

which just basically like every LCD illustration on the screen just lit up basically. And it was like, okay, you're done. Turn it off. But anyway, yeah, Epic new handheld gaming. So this was kind of a brave, I think, an ambitious approach, you know, to create what is basically a proto-gameboy. It's like twice the size of a Game Boy, but it's kind of the same thing. It's a relatively high-resolution LCD screen. It uses interchangeable cartridges. It has not just a D-pad, but like an eight-directional controller, even though I don't think the games really use that. Like, you don't want eight-directional control in Sokobon. No, none of the games really, you move on 90-degree angles, basically.

So that's kind of a miss right there, but maybe they had bigger ambitions for this thing. I mean, the only thing that really, the only real precedent for the Epic Pocket Game Computer in the market in 1984 was the Milton Bradley Microvision, which that had a 16 by 16 LCD screen, and it was not actually that much smaller than the Pocket Game computer. and his cartridges actually they were weird like they had like the controls kind of built into them it was a it was a strange and convoluted system the cartridges were like twice the size of the pocket game

computers or maybe even bigger yeah it's narrower but like taller yeah it's it's kind of it's like a bloated remote control with a screen and interchangeable cartridges like there were several games on actually more games for for microvision than for pocket game

computer, but, like, you can only do so much with a 16 by 16 pixel, like, black and white grid. And the, uh, the resolution of pocket game computer is printed on this, the case. What does it say? It's a 75 by 64. That's capacious. That's enormous. Uh, yeah, Game Boy, you know, was like, almost exactly twice that resolution.

But still, that's, that's doing pretty good for 1984. They were fairly ambitious with the hardware design with the, uh, multi, more than four direction control pad and also four buttons. I don't know what plans they had, but the experience I had briefly with the unit is no game really used most of that stuff. I think they probably wanted it to go bigger and for whatever reason it didn't work out.

I've never seen any kind of interview with anyone from Epic because no one cares to explain what happened. But it's not like this killed Epic. Epic continued to publish games. I've covered quite a few of their games on Game Boy Works, including one, I just put an episode together for a game based on an anime by the creator of Doraimon called Parasol Hinbe, which was a platform game. But Epic published that in like 1990.

So they were 91, 90. So they stuck around. They kept making games, kept publishing games. But clearly they just, they didn't have the stomach for the hardware scene. Or maybe the market didn't have the stomach for portable hardware with interchangeable cartridges yet. Yeah, and they also had, like one of the, they also had, like one of the, they had some hard, they had some hard, you guys. home console hardware too, because they had the cassette vision, which was, I guess, one of the first popular home consoles in Japan before the Famicom came out. And then they tried to create

like, I think a super cassette vision or something after that to compete with the Famicom. And it didn't work out. So they stopped making the console hardware as well. Yeah. And both of these systems are things you never see at retro gaming shops in Japan, let alone at conventions like Midwest Gaming Classic. Like, I've never seen Epic hardware aside from, like, the handhelds like Epic Man. Sorry, oops. Shame on me. Yeah, so, so for whatever reason, Epic, just their plans to enter the hardware market were scubbled.

But, you know, I think it's notable that they did create this thing that was, it kind of did what the Game Boy did, but, you know, a few years early, like half a decade early. what is the rarity of this thing because Alex brought a nice little carrying case with it but it was not handcuffed to his wrists when he arrived so I have to assume that it can it's at least reasonable if you want to find one of these if you have an inch to try it yeah um stuff what did you tell about the origin story of how you acquire this since it's relevant and uh yeah like how that compares you know pricing wise to now okay well um about 10 years ago there was an episode of Retronauts where you guys talked about basically every single handheld that Nintendo didn't make. And you mentioned this on the podcast, and at that point, I'd never, I had just started my handheld collecting, and I hadn't heard of it before. So I went on eBay, and I found a listing with a $60 buy it now, so I'm like, hmm, why not? Click the buy button, and then it took several years to acquire all the games, because at the time, you'd be lucky if you'd get one or two listings on eBay of any kind, or even Yahoo Japan in like a year. There'd be

counted one hand the number that would show up at all. Nowadays, there's buy it now is for box systems for like $5, $600, constantly, although they're not really moving. You're probably looking at now it's probably 2 to 300 for a system depending if it's looser boxed and the games range from about 20 or 30 bucks for 200 to 150

for some of the games that are well have more enticing gameplay to them which is relative you know when it comes to the pocket game computer like one of the big ticket items is Sokobon I assume

yeah so the two probably best games for are the Sokobon game, which is called Storekeepers, and it's got, it even has a level editor in it, and you can actually play the levels you create. And it does use all four buttons in the level editor. One button creates walls. One button creates blocks, and then one button creates the goal. And then the other button delete whatever you want to delete. That's pretty handy, yeah. And then so and then the other, probably my favorite game for it is an Astro Bomber, which is a

scramble clone. And, uh, which is pretty good. Like, it scrolls and it's got, um, like a boss at the end of every, every level. It just like repeats and it just gets harder and harder. It doesn't really have like different bosses or like basically the level's layouts are different. Like there's different topography

of the beginning of the level. And then there's like a there's like a, there's like a, cave later on the level and the, the makeup of those change. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much like the standard scramble design. Like you have the open space and then the contained space. And, you know, the scramble is canonically recognized by Konami as, I was like Capcom, by Konami as the predecessor to Gradius. And Gradius kind of maintains that sort of cyclical style as well, like with the waves

of enemies in space and then whatever the actual level is. So it's interesting to see that carryover so faithfully. But yeah, I took both of those for a ride, you know, spin test this morning to check them out. And they're actually in some ways more impressive than the variance of those games you saw on Game Boy. Like the Sokobon clone, I think it has about 60 stages, which is about the same size as Sokobon or Boxel is what it was called in the U.S. on Game Boy. But it plays better. The action is a lot faster. And you wouldn't think, oh, well, Sokobon, you know, it's like a guy moving boxes and pushing boxes in a warehouse. Who cares? But for whatever reason, the Game Boy version is really sluggish. And it turns every level into just a chore to play. Whereas this has like a quick, precise feeling. It's not overanimated or whatever. I don't know what the deal is. But the developer on Boxel was Atelier Double. And I need to have words with them like, guys, this was done better five years before you came.

came out with us. What were you, what, what, what happened here? Um, but yeah, I mean, it is, it is so go bon. So if you have very little excitement about pushing, but not, never pulling boxes, um, then there's not really much for you there. But scramble or sorry, um, Astro bomber plays, I think really well, uh, you know, considering it's a monochrome, uh, shooter with, with that limited resolution, like it, it's precise. And I don't feel like there's a lot of issues. with the collision detection. Like, it's very pixel-perfect. And you have the forward-forward shooter and the forward gun and then the bombs that arc forward,

and you have to kill stuff on the ground in order to refill your fuel tank on the fly. And as you play, you fight more complex hazards. So, yeah, it's pretty well done. Like, I feel like if someone had presented this to me as a child in 1984, I would have said, And yes, I would like more of this, please. But I guess that wasn't the case in Japan. Well, even when I was a kid, because I didn't actually have a Game Boy, I was a kid, so I would always have, like, what I had would be like Tiger handhelds or those other similar type things. And, you know, something like that, I'd be like, oh, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, you look at what was on the market in 1983, 84, in terms of portable games. And there was, I mean, there was Vectrix, but that's not exactly like handheld. that's in the virtual boy class it's a tabletop system and you had a lot of those other tabletop systems like the vacuum the vacuum displays that Colico made

Adventure Vision or whatever it's called well I was thinking the VFT displays that have the fluorescent screen and it was you know Colico would make those based on popular arcade games including Donkey Kong

Gallagher Pac-Man etc like those were great those were so cool at the time But those were like $100 each, I think. I want to say they were pretty expensive. Or maybe it was like $100 adjusted for inflation. And they were also tabletop like Virtual Boy. In handheld terms, you just had game and watch in its clones. Or like, you know, there would be like watches that had a very tiny like microvision scale kind of game on it.

So by comparison, the pocket game computer is kind of incredible. It really is surprising to me that it just bombed so hard. Yeah, like, it's actually one of my favorite parts of my collection because it's like the probably, I guess, the second oldest thing in my collection, but it, um, just, just the games are like far better than you'd expect for a first time out, like the scrolling and Astro Bomber is nice and smooth and. Yeah, I mean, compare that to like Nemesis on MSX. And I'd rather play Astro Bomber. It's, uh, it's just a smoother game. It doesn't have that herky, jerky quality that a lot of scrolling. systems had back then.

So the other games on there, Reversie and Mahjong. Yeah, and Reversie, Mahjong, and Blockmays are the other three games. What is Reversy? I've heard that before that term. It's Othello. It's Othello.

Is Othello, a trademark term? Is that why they call it Reversy? Yeah, Othello is the proper brand name of that game, but the style is reversy. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah, you put the white or black pegs on a board, and you've got to, like, if you put them on the right way,

that you flip over your opponents. I know that is a cool spot. Something like that. Yeah. The licensed version. Yeah. So, I mean, how do you play reversy when you have a display that small and it's black and white? Well, it's got gray in it, doesn't it?

It has two tones of gray scale. Okay. Plus the non-colored. So basically three colors. Yeah. Basically, like the whites are like just an outline and then the soft. solids are fully colored, basically. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. So basically, I think Reversey was popular for systems of this vintage because they just didn't have the computing hardware to do proper Go or, you know, Go style variants.

Those are just very complex. So Othello is what you get. Yeah, and even still, it kind of has to think for a little bit. I think it has like a back move but like a go back one move thing and it takes a second for it to remember what that does and put everything back where it was. What did I do? Where did I put my keys? So, okay, so Mahjong, I assume is just Mahjong. Yeah, I don't, I don't understand any Japanese, and it's probably difficult to read the characters with that lower resolution of a screen. Yeah, I mean, it's hard enough on game.

Game Boy, like, whenever I come across a Mahjong game, I'm like, what is what is Kanji? I'm so confused. You've done a lot of Game Boy research, Jeremy, at this point. How does that screen differ? I've noticed it's not as green. Yeah, it's more like a, it's more like a traditional what you expect from LCD. I, you know, and it has one fewer tone on it. I feel like it's actually a little less blurry than Game Boy's screen.

Like, Game Boy, even though it came later, kind of, kind of crappy. uh by comparison to uh to the pocket game computer the scrolling is not as smooth but it's also not blurry as it was on the right boy i noticed for the uh the one scrolling game i did play on it i i think it's a pretty impressive little system and then there's the one other game the what was it called block maze yeah block maze yeah basically in that game uh it's you like there's these things in the middle of the board and you have to like push them into the uh like into the corners into like a goal and there's enemies in the screen. It was also maybe like a

kind of a cross between like Pac-Man and Salkooban maybe. Yeah, like I had a little trouble figuring out exactly what I'm supposed to do because I was able to push stuff into the corner of the maze, but I felt like there's these ball things that you know, seem like they would be weapon-ish

and yet if you kick them at enemies they don't do anything. So I'm like, well, I don't know. Yeah, then if you kick them when they can't move, they just kind of explode beside you and then nothing really happens. Like, you don't get hurt. Got it.

So, yeah, so why are they even there? Just an added complexity to the puzzle, I guess. Or maybe you could block the path of the enemies, maybe. Oh, so it's got a little bit of a Yankee Olin going on there. Uh-huh. I see. I wanted to ask about the case, too, that Alex brought. I'm going to assume that was designed after the fact, or is that a case that was on the market with the system?

It's just a case from another handheld I have that just. it's had some similar dimensions that just worked perfectly for a truck. It seems conspicuous that there is a slot for every game inside the case. I don't think they'd be that negative upon launching it. Like, there will only be this many games. But, I mean, I don't know if you're able to look at marketing materials or any other sort of accessories. Did it have a carrying case? It seems like it would kind of need something like that.

Not that I'm aware of. I didn't see anything like that or like an officially branded AC adapter. It has a port for it, so obviously there was one. Yeah. And actually has a contrast slider on it as well, which is nice. Oh, I didn't notice that. Well, you know, you say obviously there was an AC adapter because there was an AC adapter port, but that's not always a given.

Like Virtual Boy has a link cable port, but guess what Virtual Boy never got? It never got a link cable. That was a year two, Jeremy. Yeah, right? Well, yeah, exactly. It was in the works. They had plans, but never had. happened. So maybe the pocket game computer didn't make it far enough. Yeah, and the

Vita had that port on the front of it for something that never came out. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the NES had like the bottom port where you could add the disk system that never came to America. So yeah, so they try to future-proof stuff. So, I mean, that seems to be the case with a pocket game computer with the A-Directional controller and the four face buttons. Yeah, maybe the AC adapter was also future-proofing. But did all these games launch with the system? Or do you know if there was a launch window, a lifespan? I'm not 100% sure. I'm, I think the Sokoban game may have came a little bit later, possibly, but I'm not 100% on that.

Was that their one license to get or like one third party game or whatever? Because, you know, that was, it was actually either developed or at least developed with permission of Thinking Rabbit, the original creators of Sokoban. but I, you know, I've never heard of Astro Bomber or BlockMaze. So I'm assuming those have the ring of like generic first party games. Yeah, like the, it has a copyright at 1985 on the cartridge where some of the other ones say 1984. So I'm assuming it came out a little bit later. Thinking Rabbit was like, we got to, we got to strike that market while it's hot.

Oh, too late. Well, let's do it anyway. Yeah, all four of the other games, I say 1984 on the copyright on the cartridge, and then, so I'm assuming, I guess that means that Zocobon game came out some point later. It might not have been a full year. I don't have any information

on the exact month that launched. Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of virtual boy games that launched in 1986, or 1996. So, you know, things kind of lingered for a little while, even when the stink of inevitable failure was lingering. So I guess this kind of goes into the same bucket as that. All right. Well, I don't really think there's too much

more to say about the epic pocket game computer. I really feel like we've covered this to the full extent that is mortally possible. There's got to be more. How does it smell? It smells old. It's heat up. I mean, it's hard to say when the room we're in smells so musty. Is that the must from the pocket game computer or is it just the Hyatt? Wait, what is it powered by? I don't think 4A's. Four double A's. Okay. It is kind of hefty. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for bringing that in, Alex. I'm really at a loss to say anything more about this. It's a cool little curio of history. I might take you up on your offer to borrow it at some point and do videos about it, but there's not a whole lot to do there. So it's a very quick and easy.

Yes. Even easier than Virtual Boy. I can get that out in one episode probably. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, that's it. That's the Epic Pocket Game Computer, and we're done with this segment. Oh, actually, do you want to give yourself a shout out for the where people can find you online? Sure. I mean, you can, I mean, usually, um, on the Reseta forums and, uh, my, Twitter handle is, uh, K-R-A-E underscore M-A-N. Usually, uh, I'm around, I'm usually around on recetera and I'm usually end up in, I go to a bunch

of gaming conventions, so. Yeah, this is like the third time I've seen you this year. You're, every time I look out in, in an audience, I'm like, oh, there he is. He's also at the Talking Simpsons panels, we do. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I travel to two or three things a year, and I quite enjoy it, and I like meeting new people. But you have a YouTube channel, don't you? Because I've used your footage of Pocket Game Computer Games. Yeah, I have a YouTube channel. I don't really have any capture equipment, so I just recorded stuff with, like, my digital camera.

I mean, there is no such thing as a capture... Yeah, I haven't put a lot of stuff up. I started doing... Like, I started doing... Like, I started I put a bunch of videos up for some games that I was playing, like, a long time ago, and I've done a little bit here and there with the PS4's, like, like, captured to automatically upload. I've fooled around with that a little bit, but I don't really actively put any content on there. Okay. Well, thanks again for bringing this in, and I think we're going to bail on this segment now.

We've pocket game computered ourselves out. I'm going to be able to be. And I'm going to be. And I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Thank you.