TLD1985

There is an upload on this topic from some guide on how to repair (electronics) that went over what the diagnostics cart did with some 'screenshots' The test apparently required a higher ampage adapator for whatever reason.

Is a bit strange tho that there are 2 copies of math fun and both box versions of Casino I... I dont see why an employee would want both revisions.. of a different box.

Welll it's "interesting" to see that it doesn't say "TV Casino II" but "TV Casino series" which would indicate was produced later as they seemed to drop the numerals and just put games as a "series"

All the chips seem to be RCA, Motorola or Mitsubushi Apollo80

I'd like to open 1 of the clone carts BUT I think they have 2 screws underneath the label.. so no way of opening them without damaging the label.

I googled their old Address. didn't bring up anything apart from some address finder site that said the building number was "250 Thornton Road" Google mapping shows this building/company at that location: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.7969948,-1.7686986,3a,71.6y,335.25h,85.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szGj4i8Wqj9BbjPv-wFhsEw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en Googling again that company brings up this detail: Now of course it could be a co-incidence but the Academy Apollo 80 seems to have been released in 1978. It wouldn't surprised me if this was another one of those stories of a electical/engineering company trying to make pong machines... so I guess I should e-mail them to see if they were "Academy"

Does anyone know or got any source of finding out about the actual company "Academy" as I've had a look and can't find anything on them at all.

Don't treat this as 100% accurate but quickly charted up all the clone systems and seen/known of games that are/were in peoples hands Computer Quiz has yet to even surface in the wild for any of the clone/studio III systems Next rarest are Tennis/Baseball/Gunfighter. So far only seen on the MPT-02 systems. It seems all the colour games are the common ones, except for Bingo which seems slightly rarer.. perhaps because people knew what "Bingo" was compared to "Biorhythm".

Not that interesting but not yet shared these. Scans of the Academy Apollo 80 carts' Front, Back and Top. General note for maybe the 1 person who cares.. sometimes the label was stuck on the opposite way round Side with sticker: MISSING and WANTED URGENTLY! #4 - Math Fun (Known to exist) #7 - Baseball (Only known evidence is the picture of the cart on the box) #5, #8, #12, #13 (Bingo, Tennis, Computer Quiz, Gunfighter (unknown which is which and unknown if they even exist for this clone))

10th? 1)Toshiba Visicom 2)Trevi M-1200 3)Conic M-1200 4)Mustang 9016 5)Hanimex MPT-02 6)Soundic MPT-02 7)Academy Apollo 80 8)Sheen M-1200 version 1 9)Sheen M-1200 version 2 is that correct?

finally got some raw footage of the Academy Apollo 80: Planning to edit this with some commentary explaining documenting things but this is stuff in some raw format: I stupidly forgot to add Biorhythm to this video but it will be in the final video.

wow... a completely unknown studio-ii clone. (and just found the other photos/topic about it).. Really fascinating. Defiantly rarer than the Academy Apollo 80. On a real system it would be -impossible- for it to look like that. as colours "bleed\overwrite"each other when you try to do anything to complex.

The order of the colours and their respective notes are: 3 - Red © 4 - Blue (D) 5 - Violet (E) 6 - Green (F) 7 - Yellow (G) 8 - Aqua (A) 9 - White (B) 0 - Black © then background has a darker blue and a darker green out of all the games "PInball" has the most colours on the screen at once. I think it's 5 from memory.

Yes, the colours in the clone systems are not "random". different colours have been set on purpose altough it may well be (use colour 1,2,3,4,5..) rather than anything else. The Toshiba has a smaller colour set (3 colours from memory) whilst the euro/aus clones have (8 from memory) I still need to video my Academy Apollo 80.. have some free time soon. As Blazing lasers said.. math fun and bioryhthm have "colour" information in them. Plug them into any euro clone and you get them in colour. Plug the others in and you just get them in darkblue and white. I do find it interesting that Biorythms box matches the colour output of the game as that means whoever made the box art knew the "game" was in colour and what it looked like.

I got a replacement adapter for the system today and tried it on a TV and it works! So will get some rough video footage soon!.

the only two games I not seen on any clone system are: "School House I: Computer Quiz" and "Tennis/Squash". All the others have been released on one or more of the systems.

The manuals for the MPT-02s list the available games for it and one of the Sheen systems list the available games on the box: M1200-01 - School House 2 / Math Fun M1200-02 - Biorhythm M1200-03 - Baseball M1200-04 - Fun with Numbers M1200-05 - Star Wars M1200-06 - Bingo M1200-07 - Pinball M1200-08 - Concentration / Match M1200-09 - Tennis / Squash M1200-10 - School Hose 1 /Computer Quiz M1200-11 - Speedway Tag M1200-12 - Space War Intercept M1200-13 - Gun Fighter / Moonship Battle Sadly the Apollo 80 has no such list anywhere.

I have never seen any School House I: Computer Quiz for any clone system... it is possible none were made even tho they are listed as releases... might be 1 or 2 "prototypes made". If any were released... I am going to guess that no question booklets were made and they simply said you had to make your own questions.. I've only seen the MPT-02 Victory scan of the Bingo cart. I do not have Bingo for the Academy Apollo, I know one other member on here has a Sheen version of Bingo. I think he would have mentioned if it it came with anything tho. Tennis/Squash is the only other game that's listed for release on clone systems but I have never seen a copy for any clone system. This is what I have scanned so far: One person on here has #4.. so hopefully they can get me scans at some point. Others are MIA

Does anyone actually know much about the company "Academy"? As scanning in the manuals for the games I have and Biorhythm has Conic's name in a disclaimer. It seems that the Apollo 80 is the laziest/cheapest of all the clones I have seen. It looks like they just got all the resources given to them by Conic and then just printed them without changing anything themselves. None of the game manuals mention "Apollo 80", they most say "Victory - 3". All the game manuals are on thin bits of "toilet paper". Apollo 80: MPT-02 Victory: It is interesting that the example dates on the Academy manual differs from the ones on the MPT-02 Soundic Victory manual. Maybe the Apollo manual is the first/prototype revision (1977) and the Soundic Victory was the final revision (1978) Apollo 80: MPT-02 Victory:

Yes Blackjack is in all the clone systems, however if I remember correctly it's a slightly different version (improved version, I assume done by RCA) as you can bet a higher number. (Can compared them in an emulator to check).

I've not been able to get my Academy Apollo 80 to power on to see what it "looks" like, might go out tomorrow to try and get a replacement adapter. In terms of games, they are just the same exact games on all the other clones. It has the ROM chips on board. So it seems that only the Hanimex has no on-board games as the ROM chips missing. Here's the manual I have, that I scanned in today.. sadly it's very creased. Again "Victory - 3" is mentioned all over the place. The manual is just one long sheet of paper that's printed on both sides and folded. This is how the pages are arranged for anyone who may care: .-----.-----.-----.-----. |Page1|Page2|Page3|Page4| Right '-----'-----'-----'-----' .-----.-----.-----.-----. |Page5|Page6|BLANK|Cover| Right '-----'-----'-----'-----'

I do find it interesting that in that b/w photo of the prototype the cartridge looks like the number 7 which is the same cart used in the image for the Apollo/Victory 3 Box. Anyway I was very careful and unscrewed the board from the base and lifted it up slightly to get some photos of underneath, sadly no interesting writing apart from a number. Wednesday, I'll probably start scanning in a bunch of things, like the system manual, etc. Any questions? and I'll try to answer..

Here's the post from slydc about the "Victory-3 prototype" Finally discovered about this mysterious game system after 12 years! The picture was taken from the Creative Computer Sept/Oct.1978 issue (page 39) and is called the "Victory-3" by Accurate Electronics Industry Ltd. (aka Conic) which was showned at the 1978 CES (June 11-14 in Chicago, IL). This prototype did indeed had color and the sound comes out the tv (and not from the system itself like the RCA Studio II). Just another note about the sound, same goes to all European clone. The sounds comes from the CDP1864 and not from a LM555 like in the Studio II. The "Victory-3" name was inspired from two different names actually: the "Victory" part was reused for the Soundic Victory game system and the "3" comes from the Studio III (the Studio II color prototype). So this picture would be a prototype of the Studio III in a way but the Victory-3 was a PAL system (not NTSC). To achive exactly a Studio III (3), you would need a Studio II (2) and mod it with a CDP1862 plus a VP-595 Simple Sound board and also a extra 1k RAM for the Color (VRAM), which this would make a NTSC version of an European clone. What is weird is that history was repeated with the the Magnavox Odyssey 3 prototype, which finally became the Philips Videopac+ (G7400 and other clones) in Europe. ---Sly DC --- I have managed to disconnect the top part of the unit from the top as the wires are not hardwired onto the unit. I would like to disconnect the board from the bottom casing to see if any wording is on the back of the board (such as Victory - 3) but.. I am a little worried of breaking the tiny/flimsy cable that connects it to the powerjack.

and now for some internals

First thing first.. the box of the Academy Apollo has a photo of the machine branded "Victory III"/"Victory - 3" and including the cart. I remember "Victory III" was the prototype name given for the clone systems. Unit itself doesn't Sadly quickly trying to power the unit up and plugging a game in and the unit doesn't seem to turn on. The plug is rattling tho.. so that might be the reason. Sadly don't currently have anything on me to test or a replacement plug. I wonder if the 12 month warranty is still valid?