Bandai Playdia

Summary

The Playdia is designed for younger children, and despite its appearance, it is more of an interactive video player than a console. This can be easily seen by the typical symbols on the controller, which is also wireless and sends an infrared signal instead. For fast action games such an imprecise control would be unsuitable, but it fits the software library of the Playdia. The 39 published titles (all produced by Bandai themselves) are educational games and interactive films based on franchises popular with Japanese children such as Hello Kitty, Dragonball Z or Ultraman.

In the mid-90s, this kind of Japanese pop culture still seemed exotic in the West, and translating the software would have been expensive. There is little on-screen text because the target audience is very young. Instead, almost all dialogue is spoken and would have required extensive dubbing. Distribution outside Japan was therefore out of the question.