Tomy Tutor

The Tomy Tutor ( in Japan and Grandstand Tutor in the United Kingdom) is a home computer made by the Japanese toy company Tomy and manufactured by Matsushita. It works like the TI-99/4A inside, but neither are compatible.TI-vs-Tomy, Floodgap.com It was released in Japan in 1982 and the United Kingdom and United States in 1983.

Overview
Tomy said the Tutor is good for games and education and easy for eight-year-old children to learn to use without needing an adult.

Its hardware is similar to the TI-99/4. For example, the CPU is a TMS9995, which is related to the TI-99/4's TMS9900. Both CPUs were 16-bit when most other home systems used 8-bit CPUs.

The Pyūta Jr. was a console version of the Pyūta. It was only released in Japan, and came out in April 1983.

Tomy wanted to make ¥5 billion from the Pyūta and sell at least 90,000 of them in its first year in Japan. To help with this, they sold it as a "drawing computer" for elementary and junior high school students. Almost 40,000 Pyūtas were shipped in its first 4 months. It sold much less after Nintendo's Family Computer (the Nintendo Entertainment System in other countries), which did more for less money, came out in 1983. It also failed outside of Japan. The original model was soon replaced with the Pyūta mk2 in Japan. It replaced the original chiclet keyboard with a better mechanical one, but also failed. The Tomy Tutor stopped being made and sold in February 1985.

As of May 1984, 120,000 Pyūtas had been shipped.

Some games needed a special adapter to work on the original model.

Specifications
 CPU: Texas Instruments TMS9995
 Video: TMS9918 VDP (Video Display Processor)
 Resolution: 256 x 192 pixels
 16 colors (up to 2 per cell)
 Up to 32 monochrome 8x8 pixel sprites (up to 4 on each horizontal line)
 No hardware scrolling
 Memory: 20 KB ROM built-in, 16 KB RAM, 256 bytes CPU RAM
 Keyboard: 56 keys, JIS compliant
 Audio: SN76489AN
 Weight: 
 Media: ROM cartridge, cassette

Games
 Baseball 3D (Japan-exclusive)
 Battle Fighter 3D (Japan-exclusive)
 Bomb Man (Japan-exclusive)
 Car-azy Racer (USA-exclusive, developed by Wordwright)
 Cave Crawlers (USA)/Maze Patrol (Japan)
 Deep Six (USA)/Marine Adventure (Japan)
 Donpan (Japan-exclusive)
 Frogger (Japan-exclusive port of the 1981 Konami arcade game)
 Hyperspace (USA)/Tron (Japan)
 Jungler (USA/Japan, port of the 1981 Konami arcade game)
 Loco-Motion (USA)/Guttang Gottong (Japan) (port of the 1982 Konami arcade game)
 Mickey Athletic Land (Japan-exclusive)
 Mission Attack (Japan-exclusive)
 Monster Inn (Japan-exclusive)
 Mr. Do! (Japan-exclusive port of the 1982 Universal arcade game)
 Mystery Gold (Japan-exclusive)
 Night Flight (Japan-exclusive)
 Pooyan (USA/Japan, port of the 1982 Konami arcade game)
 Rescue Copter (Japan-exclusive)
 Saurus Land (Japan-exclusive)
 Scramble (USA/Japan, port of the 1981 Konami arcade game)
 Super Bike (Japan-exclusive)
 Torpedo Terror (USA)/Bermuda Triangle (Japan)
 Traffic Jam (USA/Japan)
 Triple Command (Japan-exclusive)
 Turpin (Japan-exclusive port of the 1981 Konami arcade game)
 Yonin Mahjong (Japan-exclusive)

References

Other websites
 Tomy Tutor at Floodgap.com
 Review of Tomy Tutor from Your Computer magazine, October 1983

 Emulator on C64

Category:Computers