Video games have often been twinned with education to create fun, interactive experiences which both entertain and enlighten, but one of the oldest examples has to be Fukutake Publishing's Studybox, a tape drive peripheral for the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES) which ran tape-based games that featured actual recorded audio.
Using audio tapes for games wasn't anything new at the time — home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 did that trick earlier in the '80s — but the concept of adding such functionality to a console in order to create an "Edutainment" platform is pretty unique.
This could also be seen as the precursor to early CD-ROM technology like the Sega Mega CD, with the key benefit of using audio tapes being actual speech and music — a trick that CD-based add-ons would bring to other consoles of the same period.
Needless to say the Studybox never made its way out of Japan. Games included an English language course and a "Newtonland" science lesson series. You can view the system in action in the video below.
[source inside-games.jp, via tinycartridge.com]
Comments 11
I'm more impressed by the old Game Boy display the uploader is using as his Famicom monitor! I remember playing Game Boy demos on one of those kiosks at Toys 'R' Us when I was a kid.
Wow, that's pretty neat. I've never heard of this before!
I'm impressed that the heads still work and that the tape didn't stretch and warp.
Ha!! I read the headline as adult entertainment system!! Lost all interest now I know it's not that
I love hearing about old tech... what an oddity, but I'm sure it was considered revolutionary around that time.
@FlaccidSnake hah, same here.
@Discostew glad I'm not the only perv around here then!
@FlaccidSnake I.....now wait just a dang minute!!!
top loader club ftw!
@Damo "This could also be seen as the precursor to early CD-ROM technology like the Sega Mega CD, with the key benefit of using audio tapes being actual speech and music — a trick that CD-based add-ons would bring to other consoles of the same period."
Pah - Mel Croucher was doing this in the early 1980s with the ZX Spectrum!
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=^Deus+Ex+Machina$
@FritzFrapp I never knew Forster wrote anything along those lines, let alone that it influenced the game - will have to check it out!
I only actually tried out Deus Ex Machina a year or so, having wanted to since I heard about it as a kid - that link I posted has an MP3 rip of the audio cassette as well as the program tape image, so you can play it in an emulator!
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