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The Picno was released in October 1992. Targeting a young audience, the Picno was a hybrid between a tablet and an educational video game console. The tablet would connect to a normal TV set and allowed to use 160 colors on screen. At the time of release, only a few cartridges were released with the promise of new ones before the end of the year. But Konami was not the only company that wanted to occupy this space as Sega announced the release of the Sega Pico, an educational video game system that was set to release in June 1993 at a target price of ¥13,440. Konami had to reduce their cost if they wanted to have a fighting chance against Sega.

This is why, in 1993, Konami released the Picno2 at the price of ¥15,800. The Picno2 had almost no improvement over the original Picno, aside very few esthetic changes and cheaper manufacturing cost.

The Sega Pico immediately took a huge share of the market, sending Konami as a distant second. Konami continued to market the Picno2 and released new activity cartridges until 1995, but the console was never able to recover from the Pico’s competition.

There are 21 activity cartridges each costing ¥3,800 released for the system. A save cartridge was also available for the price of ¥5,800.

ピクノ (PICNO) とは、1992年に発売されたコナミの電子知育玩具である。

後に発売されたセガ・エンタープライゼスのキッズコンピュータ・ピコなどと共に、電子機器によるエデュテインメントの市場を創造した。