Hello from El Salvador!

[xfce-enjoyer]

Hi!
Thank you for adding me! I enjoy old systems and think the creativision is a perfect system for starting, found out about it as I have a friend that collects newspapers that has and ad and a suing related to the creativision, I always wanted to learn game development and assembly language, and the CV seems a really solid system for that.

I am planning to get high quality scans of those documents (currently on a shelf) and maybe assemble the Derivavision from LeadedSolder to learn more about the system.

[Scouter3d]

Hi xfce-enjoyer, welcome to the forum! Cheers, TOM:0)

[Mobsie]

Hi, welcome here.

Yes it’s a great system, a beast. You can for example check the source codes from the japan developer Luca has posted.

It’s great combination of c and asm and a good point to start.

[MADrigal]

You are very welcome here!
I understand you are from El Salvador.
Was the CreatiVision sold in your country? Was it popular? Do you have any information about CreatiVision being sold in central and south America?
Cheers
Luca

[xfce-enjoyer]

Hi, while I'm too young to have lived the CVs lifespan, I saw it once on a retro shop in a flea market, they sold games and consoles in box, they wanted $450 for a Creativision in box with like 10 games or so(at least three had spanish labels "Pollo Loco"(Crazy Chicky), "Futbol 82"(Soccer) and "Ataque Aeromarino"(Air Sea Attack), seemed delusional considering they sold original Famicoms NIB for $150; It had a Kismet label(Kismet was kind of our Dick Smith here, selling all sorts of DIY circuits and tech/AV/Radio stuff, went bankrupt in 2010 or so...) with a original price of (Special offer Chistmas 1982) of ₡399,95(roughly US$200 at 1983 exchange rates).

I wish I knew what it really was, but was mostly focused on the Amiga stuff(the Amiga 500/1200 were HUGE here), as in El Salvador until 1989, we had heavy import taxes and regulations for videogames, and not as strict ones for computers, so micros were way more common than consoles, to import consoles importers got into convulted schemes to pass off consoles as computers(Famicom BASIC, Atari 2600 with a Keyboard, Bit90, all sorts of Famiclones with keyboard, PC cards that emulate consoles in hardware and so on...), so the Creativision may seem would have been a sellable console here, if it wasn't for a local micro maker that had a similar machine(Atlacatl, from Grupo Atlacatl Comercial, had a 6502A, TMS9918 with a video in for genlock, SN76489, 48K RAM and a TI Speech synthetizer), even sued Vtech for the machine(Have no idea what happened to that...), As I have told MADrigal, I have a friend with newspapers from the era with that report, I'm waiting for scans...

I wish I had bought, or knew who could have bought the CV in that flea market, documenting that piece of history would have been very important for you, it's now long sold and possibly lost to history, in similar fashion to the Atlacatl micro line.

[MADrigal]

Wow that's really interesting! I suppose you use 110v/NTSC system in El Salvador, so that must have been a US NTSC variant.

Never heard of Kismet and Atlacatl before - it would be GREAT to get the scans of articles and especially the product catalogues from the 1980s!!!

Thanks

[xfce-enjoyer]

Yes, we're US Plug NTSC, and if you wonder how a "Creativision but with genlock and more RAM on TV graphics" looks like so here it is: https://youtu.be/cEgWhkJ6re8?t=63 (forgive these guys' Argentinan-VHS-logo skillset, it was the very early 80s and was a shoestring budget station, they got better once they got an Amiga( https://youtu.be/SS_Ah64ERz4?t=40 )

Kismet was really big to the point they made a Record Label selling all over Central and even South America(https://www.discogs.com/es/label/963854-Kismet-7) The founder, a woman, was frequently face of their ads(in similar fashion to Dick Smith) https://historico.elsalvador.com/histor ... ental.html but also frequented Willie Maldonado in their TV ads (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... nes+kismet)

[MADrigal]

This is really interesting news! I look forward to reading more about it - if you can source more info!

[mr_bogus]

Wow, this is incredible to read! Can't wait to see any scans you night be able to get your hands on

[Mobsie]

The Atlacatl is in Wikipedia, that’s not bad.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... ocomputers