The Super Cassette Vision is the home console launched by Epoch in Japan in July 1984. It succeeds the Cassette Vision, whose major flaw it fixes: this time the processor, a NEC µPD7801G clocked at 4 MHz, sits in the console rather than in every cartridge, which makes games far cheaper to produce.
Technically the machine sits between the SG-1000 and the Famicom: only 128 bytes of CPU RAM, but 4 KB of VRAM, a sixteen-colour palette and hardware sprite handling that was decent for its time. Epoch also offered a notable variant, the Super Lady Cassette Vision, a white and pink version of the console bundled with a drawing game.
The Super Cassette Vision was distributed in Europe, mainly in France, by Yeno, making it one of the few Japanese consoles of that generation to have had an official career on the continent. Its catalogue stays modest, around thirty titles, among them Boulder Dash, Doraemon, Pop & Chips, Nebula and Comic Circus. It was swept aside by the Famicom's success and Epoch left the console market soon after.
| Manufacturer | Epoch |
| Year | 1984 |
| Type | Console |
| Media | Cartridge |
| Controller | Mandatory |
Only one emulator is provided for this system, and it is available on every board: Libretro emuscv, the core dedicated to the Super Cassette Vision. Its compatibility and speed are both declared as high.
CRT output is supported. Netplay, softpatching and RetroAchievements are not available on this system. A controller is mandatory; keyboard, mouse and light gun are not supported.
The console BIOS is mandatory: it holds the internal program of the µPD7801G processor, without which no cartridge will boot.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators concerned |
|---|---|---|---|
scv/upd7801g.s01 |
NEC µPD7801G internal ROM (mandatory) | 635a978fd40db9a18ee44eff449fc126 | emuscv |
Place the BIOS like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/scv/
└── upd7801g.s01
The file name must be respected exactly,
.s01extension included. The BIOS checker confirms that yours is the right one.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/scv/
Supported extensions: .0, .bin, .cart, .zip
The usual format is .bin. The .0 extension corresponds to bank-split dumps, and .cart to a cartridge descriptor used by emuscv. The .zip archives are read directly; the .7z format is not accepted on this system.
No game ships with Recalbox for this system: the folder is empty on first boot.