In Series Two, Episode Five of Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz’s 2002 comedy Look Around You, which parodies the BBC’s future technology show, Tomorrow’s World, Patricia (surname is silent) reveals her new invention, which came to her in a dream: The Petticoat 5, a computer made “by women, for women.”
Along with a pink keyboard, it features numerous lady-gadgets, including extended keys for typing with long nails, a place to hold your rings, a pop-up vanity mirror, and an Emory board along the space bar.
While The Petticoat 5 is a spoof on early-80s marketing attitudes, there are actually some real-life examples of games consoles that were either targeted solely at women, or were feminized variants of boys’ consoles, released to tap into the female market and get girls into gaming (and then, of course, take their money.)
Let’s take a look at four such early attempts and get a sense of how they hold up now, after a few decades and some major social shifts.
Epoch Super Cassette Vision
In 1984, the now relatively obscure gaming company Epoch attempted to take back some of the market share it had lost to Nintendo and Sega.
Although its 1981 predecessor, the Cassette Vision, had gained over 70% of the home console market in Japan, just two years later Epoch found itself unable to compete when the technologically superior Nintendo Family Computer and Sega SG-1000 consoles hit the market.
Epoch’s response was the Super Cassette Vision, a console more powerful than its competitors that came with two attached controllers, like the Famicom, but also housed a built-in storage compartment at the front of the machine.
Despite having an 8-bit processor to match its rivals, a range of colorful cartridges allowing quick game selection, and also being released in France under the brand name Yeno, Epoch was still losing out against Nintendo and Sega, and so decided to make a play for the female gaming market, through the 1985 limited release of its Lady Cassette Vision.
Internally identical to the Super Cassette Vision, the most striking difference was that it was pink, and it also came with the following alluring enticements:
A garish pink carry case with space for the AC adapter and other cartridges.
Milky Princess, a biorhythm fortune-telling game styled in—you guessed it—a matching pink cartridge.
Sadly, with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe in 1986 and Nintendo’s gradual domination of the Japanese market, that combination of pink color schemes and Milky Princess proved resistible, and the Lady Cassette Vision went out of production that same year.
Casio Loopy
On to a console that was designed from the start with female gamers specifically in mind.
Having already released the PV-1000, PV-2000, and a couple of MSX computers throughout the 80s, Casio then identified a gap in the market for female gaming, and in October 1995 released the Casio Loopy, exclusively in Japan.
This was a 32-bit system which slotted in with the fifth generation of video game consoles alongside the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, but, through the female marketing angle, it wasn’t competing in exactly the same niche as those titans.
Acquire a Casio Loopy, and opening up a box covered in hearts we find none of the hard, straight boxiness of the PlayStation 1. Instead, the front of the console has a wave-like curve, there’s a giant blue eject button on top, and the main body color is what British YouTuber and tat reviewer Stuart Ashen describes as ‘bleige’, which is an inoffensive cross between blue and beige (didn’t Casio know girls like pink?)
The console came with one controller to fit in its single port, and there’s a mouse which could be purchased separately. However, the main selling point was its thermal printer.
Ultimately, only 11 games would ever be created for the Loopy, with titles such as Bow-wow Puppy Love Story and Dream Change: Kokin-chan's Fashion Party, but nearly all the titles utilized the printer to create full-color stickers from in-game screenshots.
And despite being earlier, Loopy’s printer was superior to the Gameboy Printer, released by Nintendo three years later but only working in black and white.
The Loopy came out around the same time as Print Club or (in Japanese) purikura machines were becoming popular in Japan’s many arcades. These machines were, essentially, photo booths for groups of friends to take pictures together, customizing the shots with garishly colored phrases and hyper-cute graphics, and then printing them out as airbrushed-looking stickers.
However, despite being in sync with the rise of purikura, Loopy software development ended just one year after initial release, and production of the console finally came to a halt in 1998.
Some suggest that the solitary experience of the Loopy, with its lonely single controller, is very different to the raucously social, arcade-based purikura experience, (which still remains popular today), and that this ultimately led to the console’s demise.
Or, perhaps, it was simply that the games were pedestrian and aimed only at making stickers, rather than integrating the sticker-making with engaging gameplay.
Sega Dreamcast (Hello Kitty Edition)
Back to variants on already-existing machines, we have the limited edition Hello Kitty Sega Dreamcast, of which only 2,000 were produced. This girl-targeted version of Sega’s beloved 6th generation console was released in Japan-only in 1999, one year after the debut of the original.
In this case, the console was available in two colors: transparent pink (of course), and transparent blue, and it came with more in the box than the standard Dreamcast. Its exclusive items were:
A transparent Hello Kitty-themed keyboard. Regular edition keyboards could only be bought separately.
A transparent Hello Kitty VMU. A unique (at the time) storage device with an LCD screen that could be used to trade files, play mini-games, and act as a second screen.
A Hello Kitty version of the Dream Passport CD. Allowing users access to basic internet functions.
Hello Kitty no Garden Panic. A puzzle game which wasn’t distributed separately.
Boxed Hello Kitty consoles are in demand among collectors, and in good condition can fetch up to $600 - $700 dollars on eBay.
Sony PlayStation 2 Slimline (Pink)
The Slimline PS2, released in 2004, was much smaller and thinner than the original. It included an ethernet port, but lost the internal hard drive expansion bay, which meant players had to rely solely on memory cards to save game progress.
Several color variants were produced, but let’s focus on the limited edition glossy pink version, which came bundled with a matching controller(s) and memory card.
The console came in either a black or pale pink box with flowery text and, according to Sony at the time:
"The decision to produce a pink version of the console ... reflects the growing and diverse audience for the PlayStation 2. Social gaming franchises like Buzz!, Eye Toy, and SingStar have helped drive and grow demand for the console, particularly with a female audience."
And just to go through those games and peripherals, which Sony at the time identified as having special appeal to female gamers, they were:
Buzz! A multiplayer quiz game that came with a set of four quiz-show-style buzzer controllers.
Eye Toy. The PS2 webcam, which allowed players to interact with certain games using motion and sound, through its built-in microphone
SingStar. A series of karaoke games where players earn points by singing with accurate pitch and timing.
The console was marketed, overall, as a kind of fashion accessory to fit into the lifestyle of a female gamer, and PlayStation has continued, through its many iterations, to dominate the console market.
What Got Girls Into Gaming?
Moving to the present day, a survey of over 10,000 gamers in June 2023 found that 42% of respondents who regularly play console games are female, and yet—while the Nintendo Switch Lite does come in Coral Pink—none of today's consoles are explicitly marketed at female buyers.
All of which leaves you wondering what effect these female-centered consoles of the past actually had, and whether girls got into gaming despite, rather than because of, the early efforts listed here.
Either way though, even with the pink color schemes, none of them quite measure up to the Petticoat 5.
I really love this piece Alex!