I wrote this little mini review of the Tomy Pyuuta Jr. a few months ago when I first got it but never really posted it anywhere, so I figure I'll post it here in case anybody's curious about the system. Most of the screenshots are ones I took myself, others are from an emulator.



As you can see, there actually are a few keys kept from the keyboard. Specifically 1,2 and enter. You need those to tell the system if you want a 1 or 2 player game, so they couldn't be removed. The rest of the buttons are used for the built in paint program, which is still there. I think they should have just left it out since there's no cassette drive port on the thing so you can't save pictures. And when you boot the thing up, you've got to go through a menu to choose the cartridge or built-in paint program, so it just slows things down. BASIC's gone, though, since it wouldn't be much good without a full keyboard.



Bermuda Triangle

You're a little submarine scooting around the ocean being chased by other submarines and dodging depth charges from above. Blast them before they blast you. There's a big ol' underwater base at the bottom of the screen that you've got to destroy (while dodging the submarines/depth charges) in order to get to the next level. This game moves REALLY fast, which gives it a nice manic feel. For about 2 minutes, then it gets boring. Things go so fast it's very easy to die by accident.


Don Pan

My favorite of the bunch. You're a little balloon creature bouncing through town. You have a meter showing how much air is left in you, and it decreases as you bounce along. You can move back and forth with the joypad, and control how high you bounce with up or down. Thankfully there are other baloons floating around, and by running into them you replenish your air supply. Some even have presents attached to them that give you extra points. However, there are also birds flying around that pop you if you run into them. You can shoot gusts of air at them to kill 'em, but doing so uses up even more of your air supply. And if you shoot balloons with your air gusts, they pop. As your air supply dwindles, your balloon creature actually gets smaller and smaller. Once you shrink to a certain size, you can no longer blast things until you get more air. Level one has you bouncing through a town (as shown), but in level two you're bouncing across the ocean with sword fish jumping out of the water. Level three has you bouncing across a beach filled with crabs and whatnot. When you complete the third level, you're crowned king of the balloon people and you start all over again. Cute game that's pretty fun, hampered only by sluggish controls. There's also an MSX version that looks identical, as well as a CoCo version.


Jungler

Port of an obscure Konami arcade game, but the Tutor version actually looks better than the arcade original. You're a segmented snake like creature in a maze with other snake like creatures. You've got to destroy them before they destroy you. You can either do this by shooting them or eating them, but you can only eat/shoot the last segment of the snake. Each time you do so, the snake gets one segment smaller until there's nothing left. If you hit a snake head on, either you or the enemy snake dies instantly. I don't know what decides who lives, though. Pretty fun, and it looks like a perfect port of the arcade game. I think there's also an Emerson Arcadia 2001 version of this game, but it doesn't look as good.


Triple Command

Basically Time Pilot except the first level is boats, second level is tanks, and third level is planes. It's about as fun as Time Pilot, which is to say it's fun for awhile but gets boring quick. They did succeed in making a game just as playable as the original, though. The main difference is that unlike Time Pilot, there are obstacles you can run into (and die) when you're in submarine and tank mode (rocks strewn around in both cases).


Mystery Gold

Sort of a mix of Mr. Do and Dig Dug. You're a little miner underground, digging holes to get to treasure chests. Sometimes the chests contain money, sometimes just a ghost that attacks you.There's these little creatures following you that can dig too, and you've got to kill them all to get to the next level. You do this by shooting at them (I don't know why your miner has a gun, but he does). There are also water resevoirs scattered around the level. If you make a tunnel to one, water gushes out and kills anything it comes in contact, including yourself. I've only played this game a little, but it's pretty fun so far. I don't know how long it'll hold my interest, though.


Mission Attack

Standard vertical shooter except it's at an angled view, like Silpheed or Space Harrier, and except you can only move back and forth and shoot one bullet at a time like in Space Invaders. You' fly around, ships come at you, you shoot them. You've got a fuel gauge, but shooting enemy ships seems to resupply it. I was never in danger of running out of fuel. The game consists of 4 levels. First level has you flying around as shown in the picture above. In the second level, you're flying towards some mountains and there's obstacles restricting your movement to only the center third of the screen. Third level has you flying towards an impressive looking military base or castle of some sort. Fourth level has you flying down a corridor. Eventually you reach some sort of giant robot or alien, you shoot it and... you start all over again from the first level! Even though there are 4 or 5 different kinds of ships to shoot at, some of which only appear at later levels, they all pretty much act the same. So while the game's visually entertaining to look at, it isn't too much fun to play. It's challenging, but not interesting.


Monster Inn

Imagine Mr Do's Castle or Lode Runner or Space Panic, and then slow it down until it's not very fun. Little guy in a castle has to dig holes for enemies to fall into and then bury them. There's also a door you can use to warp from one part of the level to the other. The game would be more fun if it changed a little from one level to the next, but as it is the only thing that changes is the number of enemies and how fast they move. There's also a significant delay in controlling your little fellow. If you hold down left on the joypad, there's a second delay before he actually moves. I don't know if this was deliberate, but it detracts from the gameplay (which isn't anything to write home about to begin with).


Mr. Do!

It doesn't look as good as the arcade version, but it plays just as well. The intermissions are even there. Pretty impressive port, and a damn fun game. Personally I think this version looks better than the Colecovision and Atari 5200 versions, too. My only complaint is the monochromatic sprites. Mr. Do and all the enemies are one color each. Other Tutor games have multicolored sprites, why couldn't they do the same in this one? Even in the cut scenes Mr. Do is just one color. For a system that boasts about how many colors it can do, this seems like a stupid limitation. It makes it look more like a TI-99 or MSX game.



Frogger

It's... Frogger! Not much more to say about it, except that there are less rows of cars and logs than the arcade version. Other than that, it plays pretty well. There are certainly better versions out there. One interesting thing about playing it or most other early games on a Pyuuta Jr. or a Tomy Tutor is that the text is gibberish. This is because the original Tomy Pyuuta and Pyuuta 2 have a Japanese character set built in, whereas the later Tomy Tutor and Pyuuta Jr. don't.

Conclusion:

All the games I've played have been at least decent, and a few have been suprisingly good. Don Pan, Mr. Do, Mystery Gold, and Jungler are very enjoyable. They aren't fantastic, but they're much better than you'd expect to find on such an unknown system. The Tutor had good graphics for 1983, a very reasonable price (like $150), a good built-in BASIC, and at least some support from Konami. Yet the system didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. Why? The home computer market was already flpoded with competitors, with most of the market already claimed by Commodore and Sinclair. On top of that, there isn't a single application written for the thing. It's a computer, but all that's available for it is about 20 games and one educational title. And to top it all off, it's made by a toy company and the thing looked like a toy. A technically superior computer with good games that was just released at the wrong time by the wrong company.


Here's a few pages to look at for further information:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/tomy/carts.html screenshots of several games.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/tomy/ General information on the Tutor/Pyuuta.