This article contains Amazon affiliate links — as an Amazon Associate, RetroArcade earns from qualifying purchases.
The LJN Video Art arrived in 1987 at the height of the third generation of home consoles, an era dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System. Where those machines competed on action, adventure, and arcade experiences, LJN attempted something different with Video Art: a cartridge-based system marketed primarily to children and families as a creative and educational drawing tool. The console leaned into the drawing-tablet concept with television-bound software intended to teach, entertain, and let young users sketch and color with the family TV as the canvas.
Positioned in retail aisles alongside the more recognizable gaming brands, Video Art promised colorful creativity through a library of themed activity cartridges. Hardware-wise, it relied on a Thomson-manufactured EF6805 microcontroller built around the Motorola 6800 architecture, paired with graphics capabilities that the company advertised as supporting up to 16 colors on screen. At a $100 launch price in 1987, the system sat at a price point comparable to entry-level consoles of the period, but it targeted a very different audience than its gaming-oriented peers.
The console represents one of the most ambitious hardware bets by LJN, a publisher better known at the time for producing third-party cartridges for the NES and other platforms rather than building its own hardware. Despite this background in games and accessories, Video Art would remain LJN’s only stand-alone home console, a single attempt that captures both the creativity and the limits of late-1980s consumer electronics aimed at the family market.
Quick Facts
| Specification | Detail |
|---|---|
| Maker | LJN |
| Type | Home console |
| Generation | 3 |
| Released | 1987 |
| Launch Price | $100 USD |
| Media | ROM cartridge |
| CPU | Thomson-made EF6805 Motorola 6800-based microcontroller |
History
The development of the LJN Video Art had its roots in a patent filed in 1986, which would be granted in 1988, outlining the technology behind the company’s drawing-and-coloring approach to consumer electronics. When LJN brought the finished product to market in 1987, it did so with one of the largest promotional commitments the company had ever made for a single hardware product. The firm allocated an advertising budget of $5 million for Video Art during the launch year, buying space in toy trade publications, weekend newspaper inserts, and children’s television to convey the idea that the system was a friendly creative tool rather than a competitor to action-oriented consoles.
Central to the marketing was the promise of drawing precision and visual quality. Internally, the system paired a Thomson-made EF6805 microcontroller, an 8-bit design derived from the Motorola 6800 family, with software that the manufacturer said could display up to 16 colors simultaneously. The bundled stylus and the on-screen menus were designed to guide young artists through templates, free-draw canvases, and step-by-step coloring pages. On paper, the combination of a licensed catalog of activity cartridges, recognizable characters, and a television-friendly workflow made the device look like a natural fit for the family-room market.
In practice, however, the consumer experience did not live up to the promotional claims. The critical reception at the time focused on poor drawing precision, with reviewers noting that the stylus and on-screen cursor combination struggled to track smoothly and produced results that looked nothing like the polished illustrations in the company’s advertising. Parents and children who tried the device in showrooms or shortly after purchase often found that finished drawings arrived on screen with jagged lines and unpredictable coloring fill, undermining the central promise of the product.
The combination of a $100 price tag, a content library that skewed toward very young users, and disappointing hands-on results made retail sales difficult. By late 1989, less than three years after launch, LJN had discontinued Video Art. Remaining inventory was sold at heavy discounts through clearance channels, and the company exited the dedicated video game hardware business entirely. The episode remains a textbook example of how aggressive marketing could not, on its own, overcome the gap between an advertised experience and the actual quality of a consumer electronics device.
The Game Library
Unlike conventional console libraries, the Video Art catalog was built around drawing, coloring, and story activities rather than games with winning or losing conditions. Each release arrived on a standard ROM cartridge and followed a similar template: a menu system, a set of templates or scenes to color, and an open canvas for free-hand work. The following titles formed the core of the system’s library:
- Video Art Activity Cartridge – the foundational release, often bundled with the console and intended to introduce new users to the stylus-driven interface and the device’s basic drawing and coloring tools.
- A Trip To The Zoo – an educational activity cartridge built around zoo-themed scenes and animals, framing the drawing experience as a guided field trip for younger users.
- Disney Coloring Book – a Disney-licensed coloring cartridge featuring characters and scenes from the studio’s animated properties, designed for younger fans of the brand.
- Disney Story Book – a companion to the Coloring Book, this cartridge leaned into narrative content with Disney characters and screens that combined simple storytelling with interactive coloring prompts.
- Looney Tunes – a Warner Bros.-licensed activity cartridge centered on the classic Looney Tunes characters, applying the system’s drawing tools to the recognizable cast of cartoons.
- Marvel Super-Heroes – a Marvel-licensed release that translated comic book characters into the coloring and drawing format, reflecting LJN’s broader reputation as a publisher of branded third-party games on other consoles.
- My Dream Day – a lifestyle-themed cartridge built around imaginative scenes and everyday activities, providing young users with templates for drawing aspirational or fantasy settings.
- My Favorite Doll – a doll-themed activity cartridge that combined drawing prompts with characters and accessories aimed at users interested in doll play and fashion design.
The heavy presence of recognizable licensed characters such as Disney, Looney Tunes, and Marvel was consistent with LJN’s wider 1980s strategy as a publisher, and it signaled where the company believed the appeal of the system would lie. In practice, however, the catalog relied on the same basic drawing and coloring engine across cartridges, so the choice of theme often mattered more to buyers than any underlying technological difference between titles.
Legacy
Video Art occupies an unusual place in console history as LJN’s only entry into the dedicated home video game hardware market. Although LJN was a familiar name to American gamers through its third-party cartridge publishing for the NES and other platforms of the period, the company’s relationship with first-party hardware began and ended with Video Art. There was no direct predecessor console in LJN’s catalog and no successor device released under the same brand once Video Art was discontinued in late 1989.
The console is frequently cited in retro gaming retrospectives as a case study in the limitations of drawing-based systems from the era. Its negative critical reception, focused on poor drawing precision and the gap between advertised and actual results, has become a recurring reference point for discussions of late-1980s educational and creative electronics. The licensing-heavy cartridge line-up also offers a snapshot of how family-friendly brands from Disney, Warner Bros., and Marvel were repositioned for the children’s activity market during the height of the third generation.
Collecting It Today
Original LJN Video Art hardware turns up from time to time in the secondary market, generally as console-and-cartridge lots that have spent decades in attics and storage closets. For collectors drawn to late-1980s oddities or to LJN’s quirkier side of the industry, there are a few practical considerations to keep in mind before committing to a purchase. First, the system requires its own proprietary power supply, so confirming that the correct AC adapter is included is essential, as replacements of the right specification can be hard to source. Second, the stylus-driven interface depends on a working controller or input pen; aging plastic and brittle cables are common failure points on hardware of this age.
Carts and manuals are typically the most fragile components of any Video Art lot. Cartridge contacts oxidize over long storage, so cleaning with appropriate contact solutions is often necessary before a system will reliably boot. Original box art, instruction booklets, and inserts are scarce relative to the consoles themselves and tend to define higher-grade collector listings, even though buyer demand for such accessories tends to be modest compared with mainstream consoles of the same era.
Buyers should also be aware that Video Art has never developed the sort of active aftermarket price support seen for major third-generation consoles, and prices in classified listings tend to be driven more by local supply than by any reference guides. As with any vintage electronics purchase, verifying the unit powers on cleanly, ideally with a tested cartridge, is the single most important step. For readers interested in comparing Video Art against the wider landscape of third-generation hardware, the full consoles hub at RetroArcade.com provides side-by-side entries for the system and its contemporaries.