• 1988

Hardware Description

View-Master Interactive Vision is an interactive movie VHS console game system, introduced in 1988 and released in the USA in 1989 by View-Master Ideal Group, Inc. The tagline is "the Two-Way Television System that makes you a part of the show!" The titles include four Sesame Street games, two games featuring the Muppet Show characters, and a Disney game, Disney's Cartoon Arcade. The system was packaged with a simple controller which includes a joystick and five colorful buttons. It also requires a VCR and videotapes that the system will add graphics to. As the video plays, the characters address the player directly, and ask the player to make a choice by pressing one of the buttons. Simple videogames with graphics similar to the Colecovision are played during the course of the videotape. The Disney game is built around the "arcade-style" gameplay, including fighting ghosts and shoveling coal into a fireplace. The video has two different soundtracks recorded, and graphic overlays that are superimposed over the video. As the game is played different audio and graphics appear in response to the player's decisions.