The computer's real name was Spectravideo SV-318 (SVI was only used later, in the MSX era) and it had the same expansion capabilities as its big brother, the SV-328. With the addition of the SV-601 or SV-605 expander, it could use floppy disk drives, modems or even 80-character displays.

The games for both the 318 and 328 models were, for the most part, distributed and made by Spectravideo, the Finnish importer company Teknopiste being one exception.