Interesting facts about the VTech Creativision By Dieter Konig, 26-Sep-2001
The first fact is that on the
front side of the box is a sticker that says "Laser 500". You
can see the sticker on the picture of the whole box and on the close-up
underneath. Unfortunately the quality of the photo and scan is not very
good, due to the reason that the writing on the sticker is in a glittering
golden color. Anyway this is kind of confusing, because the Laser 500 was
also a home computer by VTech, allthough released later, in 1985. I don't
think that the former owner of the box put this sticker on it, it looks
much more like the sticker has ever been there. One possibility is that VTech wanted to sell the CreatiVision as a home computer later when the video games market began to collapse. As the CreatiVision looks like a computer with the two controllers forming a membrane keyboard, all they had to do was to think of a name, put a sticker on the box and ... we have a new home computer! And they wanted to place the CreatiVision as a "home entertainment and personal computing system" from the beginning, you can read this on the box. As the CreatiVision had been released in 1983, this could have been maybe in 1984. At that time they had the home computers Laser 110, 200, 210 and 310, so Laser 500 could fit. Another fact is that VTech released the Laser 2001 also in 1984. This is a home computer which is compatible with the CreatiVision. The Laser 2001 has even a cartridge slot for CreatiVision carts. And it seems that there was a series of CreatiVision games in Laser 2001 boxes, like Mouse Puzzle. So this maybe should have been a new small series of compatible computers, with the Laser 500 (alias CreatiVision) a the "beginner" model and the Laser 2001 as a "professional" model with more RAM and a better keyboard.
Another fact is that all the CreatiVision consoles I ever saw are "Mk II". The "Mk I" seems to be much rarer. If anyone out there owns a "Mk I", it would be interesting what differences are between those 2 models. But maybe those differences are very minor, because on the CreatiVision box it says "Mk II", but the console on the box picture has not written "Mk II" on it. On my console "Mk II" is written on the red-green-blue label on the right of the console. So the "Mk I" and "Mk II" maybe really look identical, there are probably only technical differences. Update 04-Apr-2002
Very interesting, especially the Atari adapter! Possible that it was meant to use the Colecovision expansion module #1 (2600 Converter) together with the Laser Colecovision expansion unit. But as the text says "TWO expansion units" it might be possible that an Atari expansion unit was also planned by VTech! Fascinating thought ...
And help and info on the CreatiVision system would be appreciated! Please contact us by eMail. Erstellt am 22.07.98. Zuletzt bearbeitet am 05.08.06. |
Recently I was lucky enough to find a box for
the CreatiVision Mk II. This box shows two interesting facts about this
rare and in some kind mysterious system.
The
second interesting fact is that the CreatiVision is more or less
compatible with 
In
the April 1984 issue of the German home computer magazine "Happy
Computer" I found a report about the 1984 Las Vegas Winter CES with
some info and a photo about the Laser 2001 computer which was introduced
at this show. Here is the translation from German into English: "...
two new models by Video Technology: the Laser 2001 and 3000. The 2001
probably aims more at games; because of two expansion units which allow
the use of Coleco and Atari videogames ..."