The Playdia was developed under the name BA-X and was never released outside of Japan. It was intended for a young audience and its small library of 37 titles contained many edutainment titles, such as animated quiz software, as well as a few games from the Digimon and Ultraman series.

The marketing did not put the machine in the games market, but more of a multimedia system, and has an unusual feature in that it has one infrared controller, which when not in use has a caddy on the top front of the console.

Software was almost exclusively by Bandai, apart from VAP, who published a single title Le Naki Ko.

The Japanese edutainment market was lost to the Playdia by the Sega Pico, which had strong sales in Japan in 1995, this led Bandai to try and reposition the console to an older audience, and software featuring the stars of the Japanese equivalent of pop idols were produced.

Bandai discontinued the Playdia before development started on the joint Apple Bandai project the Pippin, in 1996, unsold consoles were repurposed by Banpresto, a subsidiary of Bandai, into coin-operated machines called Micha King that played anime clips in Japanese arcades and stores.

Manufacturer: Bandai
Date: 23rd September 1994

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH59954. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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