They had to tell the kids ‘one sticker each’ because the line was so long.Ĭasio expected to produce around 200,000 Loopy units in 1995. Hidekazu Tanaka, Casio’s sales head, described the 1995 Christmas season: Kids wanting their own stickers made large queues at the stores. Public reactions to the Loopy were still positive, despite its divergence from the new norm. Other 5th-generation consoles allowed players to experience three-dimensional gaming realms because of their increased power and storage capacity. While the Loopy hit shelves, the gaming world witnessed change. By Carlos Noguera from Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY-SA 4.0). A Casio Loopy with the Magical Shop attached (a Loopy mouse and controller are also present). Despite its features, Magical Shop wasn’t popular because it was so expensive, at close to 15,000 yen.

Unfortunately, the console could not share these images with others on the internet. It was also possible to print these original images. Animeland and Dream Change, for example, allowed a player to design characters with different art assets.Ī physical add-on for the Loopy, Magical Shop was a capture machine that could link with other devices like a VCR, to send images to the console, so that a user could edit these pictures. The console’s built-in thermal printer could produce high-quality colour stickers. Sticker printing was a central feature in most of the games. Kenji Terada, a scenario writer of the first three Final Fantasy titles, worked on the story of Bow-wow Puppy Love Story, a game that sees a girl and her dog go on surreal adventures. Its games cost approximately 7000 yen per copy.Īt launch, there were 6 games available for the Loopy: Animeland, Dream Change: Kokin-chan’s Fashion Party, Bow-wow Puppy Love Story, Portrait Artist, HARIHARI Seal Paradise, and Magical Shop. The console cost 25,000 yen, which undercut the 37,000 yen price of the PlayStation. The Loopy reached Japanese consumers in October 1995. All the games featured pixel art because of these size constraints. This meant that, instead of the hundreds of megabytes of CD games, Loopy’s games could only consist of a couple of megabytes. For one, the Loopy used cartridges, like the previous generation, including the Super Nintendo System. They hoped that girls, an underserved consumer in the gaming space of the day, would also enjoy the product.Ĭasio’s Loopy was part of the 5th console generation, but it differed from its brethren in various aspects. The company then targeted female customers because of this enthusiasm in their own teams.

By Piotr433 from Wikimedia Commons ( CC0 1.0).ĭuring development, female Casio employees loved designing their own stickers with the machine. Casio FP-12 Mini Thermal Printer from the 1980s. This influenced their decision to design a console around a sticker printer. In the 1990s, it also produced popular thermal printers that were popular with Japanese kids. A vision stretches into a pictureĬasio, is, of course, known for its watches, calculators, and electronic instruments. It was the only console to fully focus on female gamers. Months after the PlayStation's release, Casio introduced the world to a new option, the Loopy. Some, like the PlayStation, grew into household names. Various challengers entered the fray with the hopes of glorious rewards. Background: 90s Dots by Miriam Meza’s Design Images. By Incog88 from Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY-SA 3.0).

Casio loopy for girls