Bandai RX-78

The Bandai RX-78 is a Japanese 8-bit microcomputer manufactured by Bandai. Its name comes from the RX-78-2 Gundam. It was released in July 1983, and employed a SHARP LH0080A (Zilog Z80A clone) CPU. It ran at a clock speed of 4.1 MHz, and shipped with 30 KB of RAM and 8KB of ROM. It had two joystick ports in a proprietary format using 8-pin DIN connectors.

The computer can generate 27 colors, created from 3 levels of intensity of each RGB channel, arranged into VRAM video planes, with a maximum resolution of 192×184 pixels, and is capable of displaying 30 x 23 text characters using a 6x8 pixel font. Sound was generated by the Texas Instruments SN76489 chip, providing 3 voices in four octaves and noise generator. Software was available on cartridges or cassettes.

The RX-78 had a release cost of 59,800 yen, and was sold with a dozen of games and software, including a BASIC interpreter cartridge featuring a cassette tape interface.

Software
The Bandai RX-78 was primarily a gaming machine, with two joysticks included. Software was released on ROM cartridges ("Sen'you Soft Cartridge") and compact cassettes ("Sen'you Tape Cassette").

Games
About 20 games for the Bandai RX-78 were released:


 * Cannon Ball (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Card World (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Challenge Golf (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Champion Racer (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Combined Fleet
 * Donjara (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Excite Baseball (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Excite Tennis (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Hamburger Shop (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Fight! Ultraman
 * Hitsuji Yaai (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Mobile Suit Gundam: Luna Two no Tatakai (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Perfect Mah-jongg (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * The Pro-Wrestling (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Rengo Kantai (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Sekigahara (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Sheep
 * Space Capsule (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Space Enemy (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Super Motocross (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Tatakae! Ultraman (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Yellow Cab (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Zero Fighter
 * Zerosen (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)

Educational (Education Series)
A smaller number of non-gaming titles were released:
 * ABC Tangou Game (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Graphic Sugaku (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Keisan Enshuu Drill (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Sansu Tsuma Zuki

Applications (Culture Series)
A smaller number of non-gaming titles were released:
 * 3-Dimension Graphics (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Animation Graphics (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * BS BASIC Ver.1.0 (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Creative Graphics (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Healthy Life Plan (Sen'you Tape Cassette)
 * Kanji Word Processor
 * Music Master (Sen'you Soft Cartridge)
 * Z80 Assembler