- Source: Watara Supervision
The Watara Supervision, also known as the QuickShot Supervision in the UK, is a monochrome handheld game console, originating from Asia, and introduced in 1992 as a cut-price competitor for Nintendo's Game Boy. It came packaged with a game called Crystball, which is similar to Breakout. One unique feature of the Supervision was that it could be linked up to a television via an official accessory. Games played in this way would display in four colors, much like Nintendo's Super Game Boy add-on for the SNES. A full color TV link was also in the works, but because of the Supervision's failure to make a major impression among gamers it was cancelled, along with the games which were in development for it.
Though the machine garnered some attention at launch (mainly due to the low price for the machine and its games, which many felt might enable it to make inroads into Nintendo's market share) it was ultimately unsuccessful in unseating the Game Boy from its position as the world's most popular handheld. Reasons commonly cited are the poor quality screen which was prone to blurring and made following the action difficult, a general lack of games and the simplistic nature of those that were released.
Yet another problem was that most of the games that were available were developed in Taiwan or Hong Kong, meaning that fans of big-name Western and Japanese developers were underwhelmed by the apparent lack of support from these companies. Only a tiny handful of games were developed by third parties, including Sachen and the British developer B.I.T.S. Up against Nintendo's list of popular franchises (Zelda, Mario, Metroid) and those of its third parties (Castlevania, Mega Man) - all of which eventually surfaced on the Game Boy - the Supervision's games were of little interest to most.
Marketing
The Watara Supervision's main marketing point was its low price; the Supervision was US$49.95 in 1992 while the Game Boy was US$89.99. Games for the Supervision were also much cheaper than Game Boy games, and advertisements emphasized this price difference, with one British ad for the Supervision calling it "the affordable hand-held games machine". It was also bundled with headphones, batteries, and a Breakout clone titled Crystball.
To keep their costs down, Watara farmed out the international marketing and distribution to third parties leading to various versions:
Watara Supervision: sold in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Tiltable screen configuration.
Quickshot Supervision (QS-800): sold in the UK by the well-known joystick brand. Tiltable screen configuration.
Hartung Supervision (SV-100): sold in Germany and Netherlands.
泰可BOY (Tiger Boy): sold in Taiwan and Hong Kong by Tai-Kerr Trading Co.
Audio Sonic Supervision (GB-1000, GB-2000): sold in Italy, France and other European countries. There are two known models. The GB-2000 looks like a Gameboy and the GB-1000 looks like the Watara, but without the name in the lower left corner of the screen.
Vini Supervision: sold in Denmark and distributed by Vini Spil. Both models were also sold (the tilting one as model #9205).
Videojet Supervision: sold in France.
Magnum Supervision: sold in the United States and Europe by Magnum International. Same appearance as the Videojet Supervision in three different housing colors: Gray, Yellow and Green.
Electrolab Supervision: sold in Argentina by the Electrolab brand, under two different models: the Supervision (in a form factor resembling Nintendo's Game Boy) and the Hipervision.
In the mid 1990s, the Supervision was once offered as a final prize on the television game show Legends of the Hidden Temple (as well as Masters of the Maze). It was also offered as a prize on the premiere of the similarly short-lived The New Price is Right in 1994.
Quickshot's UK version of the Supervision was heavily featured for a time on ITV's gaming show Bad Influence! Presenter Violet Berlin could be seen playing a Supervision in many of the show's publicity photos.
History
A prototype of the Supervision was exhibited at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1992. The Supervision was released before Christmas 1992 with eighteen launch titles, and it was advertised that fifty games were released by November 1992. The Supervision's game library was criticized for being 'too simplistic' compared to that of other consoles, which outweighed the value of their budget price, which ranged from US$8.95 to US$14.95 per game. One critic from Electronic Games said in respect to the Supervision that "it is still possible to be disappointed in a game that costs under fifteen dollars". Soon after the Supervision's release, the Game Boy Basic packaging option was announced, which made the Game Boy more affordable, costing only ten dollars more than the Supervision; this undermined the Supervision's 'budget' marketing strategy.
Similar to the functionality of the Super Game Boy, the Supervision can be connected to a television to allow for a larger screen to play on. A peripheral that would add color support to games was planned for release in the latter half of 1993, but was never released. The Supervision was distributed in the US by Goldnation, and in France by AudioSonic. More third-party games were planned for release for the system in 1993 but never materialized, including movie licences such as Rambo and Terminator.
Technical specifications
CPU: 8-bit 65C02 processor, running at 4 MHz
Screen: 61 mm × 61 mm (2.37 inches × 2.37 inches), 160 × 160 pixels, 4 greys LCD. There was no hardware video acceleration, graphics had to be drawn by software to a framebuffer.
Sound: 2 Tonal and 1 Noise Channel plus additional audio DMA stereo output channel. Built-in speaker and headphone jack with stereo earphones included.
Power: 4 × AA batteries or 6V AC/DC adapter
Communication port: Two Player Link using DE-9 connector.
Cartridge port
Controls for 1 Player
TV adapter (optional)
Tiltable Screen (2 positions)
List of games
More than sixty games were released to exist for this console:
= Multi-game titles
=Block Buster/Cross High [2-in-1] (1992)
Hash Block/Eagle Plan [2-in-1] (1992; developed by Bon Treasure)
Hash Block/Jacky Lucky/Challenger Tank/Brain Power [4-in-1] (1992)
= Homebrew
=As of 2020, the first aftermarket game Assembloids by PriorArt is available for the Supervision.
Preservation
Like many consoles, the Watara Supervision has lived on through emulation (see MESS). Cowering's Good Tools includes a tool called GoodSV, which catalogues 69 Supervision games as of version 3.27.
References
External links
Syd Bolton's "World's First Supervision Page" Archived 2004-10-14 at the Wayback Machine
Supervision: handheld of the less fortunate
Watara rewritable multigame cartridge
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Watara Supervision
- Handheld game console
- Thin Chen Enterprise
- Lists of video games
- Game Gear
- Game Master (console)
- List of Tetris variants
- WDC 65C02
- Analogue Nt Mini
- Supervision (disambiguation)
