Entex Industries Adventure Vision

Summary

In 1982, Entex Industries developed the Entex Adventure Vision as the successor to the Select-a-game handheld. This tabletop console has a central joystick and four buttons on each side with identical functions, accommodating both left- and right-handed players. Its display uses a rotating mirror to project 40 red LEDs, producing a flickering 140 x 40-pixel image. A battery-powered cassette-recorder motor turns the mirror 7.5 times per second, so the refresh rate falls as the batteries weaken. An Intel 8048 CPU runs at an effective 0.7 MHz. Despite its relatively capable processor, only four Adventure Vision games appeared: Defender, Super Cobra, Turtles and Space Force. The top of the console has storage compartments for exactly four games.

Entex sold only around 50,000 Adventure Vision units and produced the device for just one year, making it valuable to collectors. It has also become a platform for demo programmers, who produce impressive results with its 1 KiB of RAM.