I Found an Entex "Adventure Vision" Game System Today for Five Bucks

I knew this looked extremly odd and I didn't remember it at all from the period when I was deeply invested/involved in video games (as a young teen).

I couldn't check it in the store but I figured for $4.99 I'd give it a whirl and pick up some batteries.

And it does work, and visually (red L.E.D.) it has a weird depth and wavering quality that make you feel the magic of technologies that are no more.

And it's a complete system in near mint condition. Don't have the box or other ephemera like instructions but have it complete with all four games and they are all functional!

Somebody was selling this for $5500.00 on EBAY but I have no idea if it was a successful auction (plus they had the box, I think). Also comments there seem skeptical but I was thinking at first this might go for about 500-800 dollars, so not a bad find!! (Now I think that might be a low estimate. See link further down for value estimates.)

I was trying to do the games but I sucked at them. I'll ask Lee or Chas to play them but I want to film it in action and film the look into the weird depth of it and how oddly game play proceeds. It was apparently constructed in a very weird manner, the playing field...I'll link to the Wiki article explaining that...

Here's the auction listing for it...none are for sale on all of EBAY right now...

Adventure Vision by Entex (1982)


"The Adventure Vision uses one vertical strip of 40 red LEDs and a spinning mirror to produce an apparent screen resolution of 150X40"

How cool is that? That's what makes for some of the weird visual effects and the disorienting feeling.

This reminds me of a strange passage in the one Malraux novel I translated, where a spinning mirror device is used to hypnotize and capture birds. The game system does have a hypnotic feel. You sense the spinning, at first strongly as it's powering up, and then almost subliminally.

Here's Wiki on it...

Surprisingly, Nintendo revisited this type of technology in the nineties!

Here is a cool club or community of retrogramers in Amsterdam who owns one, which they say may be played by the members...there's an image there of the system...mine is in much better shape but theirs probably gets a lot of use...

Here it is in a retrogaming club in Amsterdam.

This site seems pretty well-informed and realistic about price and desirability for collectors, so I'm guessing somewhere in the $700.00-800.00 price range is realistic for what I found today. And if you get two collectors going at it, it's quite possible it might break a thousand and keep climbing. As you can see above, that one gamers magazine wrote it up as an article when one came up for auction about a year ago on EBAY. There are none for sale on EBAY right now (and possibly nowhere else online either). The games alone (I have all four) are listed on this knowledgeable site as being worth $60.00 each. I see it earned a "10" on a scale of 1-10 for desirability for collectors. A link to a YouTube clip demonstrating the games in play would be a great marketing strategy for a game like this and would direct more traffic to an online auction.

A sense of value and desirability...

I also found three great oil paintings, one of a frog among waterlilies that's a decent size. That's already in my fantasy bathroom behind my collection of weird aquamaniles shaped like sea beasts.