Nichibutsu My Vision

My Vision Console History

My Vision was released in 9th of May, 1983 in Japan for ¥39,800 by Nihonbutsubun and was dedicated solely to playing video versions of popular board games. Nihonbutsubun, or more officially Nichibutsu Nihon Bussan Co., is a Japanese company, founded in 1970, that was know for manufacturing arcades. So Nihonbutsubun, having the experience of manufacturing arcades, decided to enter the home consoles market with My Vision, distributed by Kanto Denshi, a company know for distributing office equipment such as personal computers, while some of the games were developed by Kanto Denshi's filial company, Logitech. So the console was sold only in computer stores.

My Vision Console Lifespan

At that time, Epoch Cassette Vision was dominating the market, with a much lower price (¥13,500). Two months later, Sega and Nintendo entered the market with one cassette-based video game console each, Sega SG-1000 and Nintendo Famicom with much lower prices. Sega SG-1000 was sold for ¥15,000 while Nintendo Famicom was sold for ¥14,800. Nihonbutsubun lowered the price to ¥19,800, however the price wasn't the only disadvantage of My Vision. Sega's and Nintendo's newly launched consoles were superior in terms of specs. My Vision demise was unavoidable.

My Vision Console Disadvantages

My Vision had various disadvantages compared to it's rivals. The biggest liability would be the controller. The controller was like a keyboard, which wasn't friendly for action games. In addition, the only way for two players to play together was the second player to own a My Vision console also since the console didn't support a second controller. Instead, the use of a link cable that would connect through a communication port on the back of the unit was necessary. And lastly, the sound was produced by an internal speaker and not from the TV. All this advantages, along with the high price, led to the quick demise of My Vision.

My Vision games

There are only 6 cartridges known for My Vision home console, all released at the same time with the console at the price of ¥4,500. The list of My Vision games are the following:

• Gomoku Narabe Renju

• Hanafuda

• Mahjong

• Mastermind

• Reversi

• Tsumeshogi