Complete Koei Pasogo Collection

[krae_man]

This has taken me almost 10 years to acquire.

 

For people who didn't even know this existed: Yes, Koei released a handheld video game system in April 1996(the same year the Game Boy Pocket came out), dedicated to the board game Go. It cost 39,800 yen(approx $370us at the time).

It has a 5.6", 320x240 screen and got 20 hours of battery life off of 6 AA's.

 

For people that did know it existed: Yes, all 11 games did in fact come out  and here is the proof:

 

[masschamber]

7 hours ago, krae_man said:

This has taken me almost 10 years to acquire.

 

For people who didn't even know this existed: Yes, Koei released a handheld video game system in April 1996(the same year the Game Boy Pocket came out), dedicated to the board game Go. It cost 39,800 yen(approx $370us at the time).

It has a 5.6", 320x240 screen and got 20 hours of battery life off of 6 AA's.

 

For people that did know it existed: Yes, all 11 games did in fact come out  and here is the proof:

 

oh boy, 11 different kinds of GO!

I have one of these odd balls to, but I don't think I'm going to try and track down all 11 games.

I love this thing as it seems so strange and such a terrible idea, which I guess it was since it seemed to have complete cratered in terms of sales.  The only reason I can think of for its existence is Koei was hoping to appeal to professional go players hoping to practice different scenarios while travelling.  Though with that small of a niche and high of a price tag maybe it was successful for the purpose it was designed for.

[krae_man]

My guess is they thought there was a market for it since Go is extremely popular in Japan and any of the portable games released on the Game Boy etc didn't use a full 18x18 board since the screen size and resolution would make that less than ideal. I found a youtube video for a GBA Go game and it only had a 9x9 board for example.

 

Interesting fact: The game box colors actually mean something. The Blue box games you play against an AI opponent. The green box games are teaching games, and the red boxed games just replay classic games from specific world class players, from specific tournaments etc with some interactivity like guessing what the next move should be then finding out if you are right etc. Not sure about the black boxed game. It appears to be like the blue games, but I don't know if it has a different theme, or they just gave up on the coloring convention by then.  

Edited May 3, 2020 by krae_man

[masschamber]

It is definitely up there with that bbc bridge companion on the let's get this niche as small as possible school of design

[DragonGrafx-16]

Was this thing just a ploy to see if they could get people to buy the same game 11 times?

[krae_man]

On 5/8/2020 at 6:12 PM, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Was this thing just a ploy to see if they could get people to buy the same game 11 times?

The games are all different!