Review
The Konami Q太 (pronounced Q-Ta) is an adapter released by Konami for the Famicom. It does not contain any software on its own, but instead has a cartridge slot built into it that accepts smaller 40-pin cartridges.
The adapter was targeted to educational and training markets. There are seven known cartridges released for it. The Space School series was developed for the NHK Academy and covered fourth through sixth grade math. The Space College series was developed for the petroleum company Idemitsu (出光) as a way to train their employees. All of the games came with accompanying textbooks / workbooks. Because the adapter and carts were not marketed to the general public, they are all quite rare.
The adapter provides some common hardware used by all of its carts, presumably to keep costs down. One such feature is a large (128 KiB) bank of Japanese Kanji characters. Due to limited storage space on cartridges, most Famicom games only use more basic Japanese kana characters, so being able to display Kanji is a rare luxury.
Another feature is Konami’s VRC5 mapper chip. Some larger Japanese developers introduced their own custom hardware chips (often called “mappers”) to Famicom cartridges to allow them to do things that the Famicom could not do on its own (enhanced sound, greater storage, etc.). Konami had seven such numbered chips, called VRC1 through VRC7. The Konami VRC5 is found only within the Q太 adapter.
The known carts are:
- NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 4年生 (上)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 4th Grade (Part 1) - NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 4年生 (下)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 4th Grade (Part 2) - NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 5年生 (上)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 5th Grade (Part 1) - NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 5年生 (下)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 5th Grade (Part 2) - NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 6年生 (上)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 6th Grade (Part 1) - NHK 学園 – Space School: 小学校の算数 6年生 (下)
NHK Academy – Space School: Elementary School Math 6th Grade (Part 2) - 出光 Space College: 危険物のやさしい物理と化学
Idemitsu Space College: The Gentle Physics and Science of Hazardous Materials
(article last updated on October 23th, 2019)
