Entex Adventure Vision

Adventure Vision is a cartridge-based video game console released by Entex Industries in either August or October 1982. The monitor, game controls, and computer hardware are all contained within a single portable unit. The LED monitor can only display red pixels. Four games were released, all of which are arcade ports.

Entex Adventure Vision
ManufacturerEntex Industries
TypeVideo game console
GenerationSecond generation
Release date1982 (1982)
Discontinued1983[1]
Units sold50,757[1]
MediaROM cartridge
CPUIntel 8048 @ 733 kHz
PredecessorEntex Select-A-Game

Adventure Vision was Entex's second-generation system following the Entex Select-A-Game, released a year earlier in 1981.

Description

Control is through a single multi-position joystick and two sets of four buttons, one on each side of the joystick, for ease of play by both left- and right-handed players. Rather than using an LCD screen or an external television set like other systems of the time, the Adventure Vision uses a single vertical line of 40 red LEDs combined with a spinning mirror inside the casing. This allows for a screen resolution of 150 × 40 pixels. The mirror motor draws a great deal of power from the batteries, which can be avoided by using the built-in AC adapter.

Games

Entex released four Adventure Vision games:

  • Defender, based on the Williams Electronics arcade game of the same name
  • Super Cobra, based on the Konami arcade game of the same name
  • Turtles, based on the Konami arcade game of the same name (similar to Pac-Man)
  • Space Force, based on the Venture Line arcade game of the same name (similar to Asteroids)

Technical specifications
  • CPU: Intel 8048 @ 733 kHz
  • Sound: National Semiconductor COP411L @ 52.6 kHz
  • RAM: 64 bytes (internal to 8048), 1K (on main PCB)
  • ROM: 1K (internal to 8048), 512 bytes (internal to COP411L), 4K (cartridge)
  • Input: 4 direction joystick, 4 buttons duplicated on each side of the joystick
  • Graphics: 150x40 monochrome pixels

Legacy

A similar display technique combining red LEDs with a moving mirror was used by Nintendo in the 1995 Virtual Boy.

On March 31, 2013 at the Revision demoparty, the first ever homebrew/demo ROM for the system was demonstrated[2] by MEGA - Museum of Electronic Games & Art. MEGA also released[3] the source code for the demo as well as all development tools.

The system is supported by the MESS emulator and AdViEmulator.[4]

See also

References
  1. Forster, Winnie (2005). The encyclopedia of consoles, handhelds & home computers 1972 - 2005. GAMEPLAN. p. 53. ISBN 3-00-015359-4.
  2. Revision 2013 demoparty entry on pouet.net
  3. Open Source Adventure Vision development kit including demo source code
  4. AdViEmulator, a specialized Open Source Adventure Vision emulator
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