The third company offering a VCS expander is Unitronics, and its product, appropriately enough, is The Expander. Unfortunately, as we went to press, the company was engaged in an extensive redesign of its unit, so we can't offer you very many details. The Expander is something like the Arcadia Supercharger. It's a cassette deck which sits atop the VCS, and it contains chips which expand the memory of the VCS to 16K. VCS cartridges played through the Expander play just as they've always played, but games specifically designed for the Expander can take advantage of the additional memory to produce striking graphics and enhanced game play. The games are supplied on cassette tape.
Cassettes cost much less than cartridges.
To turn the Expander into a computer, you plug in the Keyboard. Here are a few details about Spectravision's entry into the market of VCS computer converters. The CompuMate has a flat keyboard, which means you can't press down the keys. It's hardly the ideal keyboard. Many of the keys have musical symbols on them, since the unit has a built-in music composer program.