4-Bit Video Games: Tron, Scramble, Lupin, and Caveman by Tomy
Tomy made a lot of great handheld electronic games in the 1970s and 1980s, but my all-time favourite is Tomytronic Tron, based on the 1982 Disney movie. Over the years I picked up Scramble (Tomy) and Caveman (Tandy, by Tomy) and eventually noticed they have exactly the same form factor. With a bit of research I found out Scramble also goes by Alien Attack, Astro Blaster, and Rambler (exactly the same gameplay) but there's one more unique game in this unofficial series: Lupin, which has an interesting story as well, somewhat connected with the Cliffhanger laserdisc game. Finally, I have all four games, so here's a video showing them all in action, and I even have a shot at explaining how they work: they use the earliest SoCs ("system on a chip") available, which are 4-bit CPUs with integrated I/O, ROM, and a little bit of RAM, which were originally designed for use in electronic calculators. So these are essentially 4-bit video games.
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This is sort-of a sequel to my earlier video "Mechanical Handheld Zero-Bit Games from the 1970s": • Mechanical Handheld Zero-Bit Games fr...
Closing credits song is "Vacuum Fluorescent Display" by Bedford Level Experiment from the album "Place Without A Computer": https://bedfordlevelexperiment.bandca...
Index:
0:00 Four Tomy games with the same form factor
3:40 Why would people buy these?
5:04 Tron
6:45 Tron Gameplay
12:08 4-Bit Brains: Inside The Games
15:35 Caveman
16:35 Caveman Gameplay
22:11 Scramble
23:10 Scramble Gameplay
29:48 Lupin (including history)
32:51 Lupin Gameplay
37:34 Summary: Visceral
38:14 Thanks!
Watch video 4-Bit Video Games: Tron, Scramble, Lupin, and Caveman by Tomy online, duration hours minute second in high quality that is uploaded to the channel 8-Bit Show And Tell 23 May 2021. Share the link to the video on social media so that your subscribers and friends will also watch this video. This video clip has been viewed 161,125 times and liked it 4.7 thousand visitors.
