LJN Video Art
Video Art is an educational game console from LJN Toys, introduced in 1987. Similar in functionality to basic personal computer paint programs such as MacPaint or Microsoft Paint, the platform offered interactive coloring book-style games, as well as math, history, and science lessons, starring characters such as Mickey Mouse.
LJN marketed the console not as a competitor to other contemporary game consoles, but rather as a competitor to TV, with a jingle:
- If you're like me,
- you spend all day just watching TV.
- But then my mom, she got smart!
- She got me Video Art!
The system came packaged with the Video Art Activity Package. Other cartridges available for the system included:
- A Trip To The Zoo
- Disney Coloring Book
- Disney Story Book
- Looney Tunes
- Marvel Super-Heroes
- My Dream Day
- My Favorite Doll
- On the Move
The Angry Video Game Nerd
As part of his 2014 Christmas special, James Rolfe featured the LJN Video Art console on The Angry Video Game Nerd. The console was featured in the twelfth and final episode of the multi-part special "Twelve Days of Shitsmas".
Rolfe was critical of several things regarding the console, including:
- its use of an outdated switchbox that required a user to screw it into the television to work
- the inability to draw much more than straight lines, which he compared to an Etch-A-Sketch
- its outputting of white noise
- the lack of a paint bucket tool, comparing the console with Color a Dinosaur which he had previously considered the worst drawing game ever
- the loud squeak the controllers' joysticks made when attempting to color anything in
- only being able to erase one pixel at a time
Rolfe summed his review up by saying that the styrofoam casing the system came in was more interesting than the system itself.