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Cassette Vision

The Cassette Vision is a console developed by Epoch. It was released in 1981. It was one of the first Japanese consoles with interchangeable cartridges, but included a full CPU in each cartridge — the console base was mostly buttons and wires.

The Cassette Vision Jr (1983) used the same software, but dropped the paddle controls.

PD777 by W88DodPECuThLOl is a Cassette Vision emulator. libretro: pd777 is a libretro port.

This system scrapes metadata for the “cassettevision” group(s) and loads the cassettevision set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

BIOS

No Cassette Vision emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.

ROMs

Place your Cassette Vision ROMs in /userdata/roms/cassettevision.

ROM file handling is slightly awkward because of the two-file ROM format.

  1. Zip-files (bundling one .bin777 and one .ptn777) are supported.
  2. Supply a .bin777 file to load; the core looks for a similarly-named .ptn777 file in the same directory.

There is not yet a suitable single-file format for the Cassette Vision. If ROM loading fails, the core will run a built-in balloon demo, as in standalone emulator.

Emulators

RetroArch

RetroArch has its own page.

libretro: pd777

libretro: pd777 configuration
ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all systems this core supports
ANNOUNCE COURSE SWITCH global.cassettevision_announce_course_switch Show the new setting of the Course Select Switch when changing it with up/down buttons.
⇒ Off disabled, On enabled.

Controls

Here are the default Cassette Vision's controls shown on a Batocera RetroPad:

Troubleshooting

"Pattern file not found or damaged"

PD777 uses a two-file ROM image, which can be zipped together. Start the emulator pointed at the ZIP-file or .bin777 file, and it will try to find the .ptn777 file starting from there.

You can use the known-good homebrew game (by W88DodPECuThLOl, the author of the emulator) at

to test your ROM naming and placement.

Further troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/cassettevision.txt
  • Last modified: 3 months ago
  • by mittonk