The black version of the Pippin Atmark (ピピン アットマーク, PA-82001) is a Pippin console that was sold by Bandai in Japan. This rare variant is a repackaged version of Pippin @WORLD units that had originally been manufactured to be sold in the United States.[2][3]
Hardware
Manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric,[4][5] the Atmark was nearly identical to Bandai's own Pippin @WORLD which was released in the USA and very similar to the Katz Media Player 2000 which was released in Europe and Canada. The Atmark's original revision 1.0 "KINKA" ROM was updated to revision 1.2 to support external SCSI and MO 230 drives. All @WORLD consoles shipped with the newer 1.2 ROM.[6]
Peripherals
Matching black versions of AppleJack controllers, modems and keyboards were produced, but are rare.[6] The black keyboard with Japanese characters on the keys is particularly rare.[2]
Marketing after discontinuation
On February 27, 1998, Bandai announced that it would abandon the Pippin platform and close its subsidiary Bandai Digital Entertainment on March 13, 1998. Bandai had sold only 30,000 units in Japan and 12,000 units in the United States,[7] missing its original sales targets of 200,000 and 300,000 units, respectively.[8]
Unsold inventory that had been intended for the United States was instead repackaged for sale in Japan as the now-rare "Black Atmark".[3] The back panel identifies black units with the same model number (PA-82001) as the platinum/white versions, though there is no printing or label on the bottom-left frontside to identify the model like the Pippin @WORLD or KMP 2000.[2]
In March 1998, J-DATA became involved in the liquidation of Pippin titles and accessories in Japan.[9] Bandai continued to support the consoles until December 31, 2002.[6]
Gallery
References
- ↑ Spec. by chemy cano, Pipp!n@Archive. Archived 2007-02-05.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Bandai Pippin Image Archive by Bryan G. Villados, The Mac Geek. 2017-04-15.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Video Game Bible 1985-2002, p.59 by Andy Slaven, Trafford Publishing. 2002.
- ↑ Apple's Pippin: A Pip--or a Pipsqueak? by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek. 1996-04-01. Archived 2013-06-04.
- ↑ Mitsubishi to license Pippin games system, Telecom.paper. 1995-10-11.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Hacking the Pippin, Vintage Mac World. 2007-10-22. Archived 2017-08-17. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "hacking" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Bandai Says Goodbye to Pippin by Chris Johnston, GameSpot. 1998-02-27. Archived 1998-12-05.
- ↑ Power Ranger - A Japanese Toymaker Invades Cyberspace by Cesar Bacani and Murakami Mutsuko, CNN. 1996-04-19.
- ↑ That's Why Pippin (Japanese) by Koichi Hara, GeoCities. Accessed 2018-06-29.
See also
External links
- Bandai Pippin Museum & Archive at The Mac Geek
- Bandai Digital Entertainment's Japanese page (archived 1997-10-25)
- Pippin ATMARK Developer Support Center (archived 2001-06-20)
- Apple Bandai Pippin at Wikipedia