By patron request, this week's video shifts up the temporal alignment of the NES Works Gaiden series to leap forward from the end of 1984 for Famicom to the end of 1992?! Yes, that's right, we spring forward in time here to look at the Japanese equivalent of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer, except one reliant on an even bigger gimmick than simply packing in universal game chips in order to accept smaller, less expensive sub-cartridges. Bandai dared to push the bleeding edge of what the market would bear here by forcing players to make use of collector cards emblazoned with bar codes in order to be able to play their video game at all. It's a bold innovation! And a terrible one! Learn all about it here.

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Well, I survived. I made it all the way through the Othello Multivision's library. If you thought the first four games were unimpressive, that's only because you had no idea what Tsukuda Original had up its sleeve for 1984: Yet another mahjong game, a glacial Xevious clone, and Video Works' very first (of many...) horse race-betting sim. But at least there's a somewhat inventive golf title and a solid conversion of a beloved (albeit crazy difficult) James Bond game. This version fixes a titling error from the previous upload.

This episode's titles:

• San Nin Mahjong
• Challenge Derby
• Okamoto Ayako no Match Play Golf
• Space Armor
• James Bond 007

Special thanks to Omar Cornut for his assistance with this episode!

While Segaiden has covered every SG-1000 release through the end of 1984 at this point, there's technically still a set of games for the system that need to be touched on. Eight (or technically nine) unique releases for SG-1000 appeared in 1983 and ’84, under a non-Sega publisher, branded for release on a different console. Nevertheless, they're a part of SG-1000 history, as each of them runs on the system with no fuss.

Yes, this episode we look at the SG-1000's semi-official clone, the Tsukuda Original Othello Multivision. With eight unique carts and one built-in ROM, it's worth exploring... but only barely. These games are generally of MUCH lower quality than Sega's own releases. In this episode, we explore:

• Othello
• Q*Bert
• Guzzler
• Space Mountain

Buckle in. It's a pretty bumpy ride.

Special thanks to Omar Cornut for his assistance with this and the next episode!

The other two mid-’88 releases for Atari 7800 consist of yet another computer port and—wow!—the console's first original creation. Although this original creation ended up being ported to several other Atari systems, which rather undermines its exclusive appeal. Still, it's good to see a game on 7800 that hadn't already shown up in arcades and on computers four or five years earlier, you know?

Video Works is a patron-funded project. For early video access, exclusive podcasts and mini-zines, and more, please support my work at patreon.com/gamespite — thank you!