A History of Game Consoles, As Seen on TV 61
PC World is running a great retrospective on videogame consoles, looking all the way back to Atari's pong. The best part is, they're doing it via television ads for the systems. The article features highly entertaining blipverts for Pong, the Fairchild, the VCS, the 2600, the Intellivision, the Odyssey, Vectrex, Colecovision, the Atari 5200, and many, many more. From the article: "Gamers were tiring of PONG consoles, and Fairchild Instrument and Camera's Channel F console offered a fresh new alternative. It featured programmable 'videocarts' containing ROM chips and code, as opposed to the dedicated circuits that the Magnavox Odyssey's plug-in cards used. The cartridge concept emerged as an industry standard, and is still used in handheld gaming devices today."
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I was born in 1975 (Score:1)
LK
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I had that thing up until about 5-7 years ago..and tossed it I think while trying to unload junk that was getting to be too much with frequent moves ever couple years.
Upon reflection...I wish I'd have kept it and the cartriges...could have at least given it a good new home on eBay or something.
That system was really something in its day when my other friends only had black and white pong or Odes
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I had a Fairchild too. That thing rocked - my friends were so damned jealous hehe. But that's ok, I'd let them play once in a while. I remember I had blackjack, and some airplane game that had a 2 player mode - Red Baron or something. Breakout of course, and maybe a couple others. Ahhh this has brought back memories. Then, idiot that I am, I forgot to unplug it one week while I was away in boarding school, and when I came back something h
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I had some sort of 'drawing' game that I would use to draw out a race-track, then see how fast I could move my cursor through it without erasing any blocks. I spent hours on that, breakout, and baseball.
I'm just glad to see that some people realize that video game consoles did not start with the Atari 2600, or even worse, the NES.
I was born in 1966 (Score:1, Funny)
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have cut his teeth on a C64.
PreacherTom is an Astroturfer (Score:3, Informative)
Spread the word, perhaps?
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PCWorld for the win! (Score:5, Informative)
The Intellivision wasn't lacking third party titles. Everyone from Activision, to IMagic, to Atari (!) released games for the system. You can see a full list of games over on IntellivisionLives [intellivisionlives.com].
While Intellivision focused more on thinking games rather than arcade action*, it was pretty much successful right up until the Video Game Crash of '83/84. At that point, Mattel Electronics died, but the Intellivision lived on as part of the newly formed INTV Corp. Some of the best games were produced under INTV (Diner, Thin Ice, Thunder Castle, Hover Force, etc.), and they didn't close their doors until 1991. (IIRC)
Except for the fact that Donkey Kong was on the wrong side of the screen.
Suprisingly, not that many players noticed this little gaff.
Not entirely true. It was released in Europe as the Phillips Videopac+. It took collectors a while to realize that the Videopac+ (O^3) was different than the Videopac (O^2), and that the new console had actually been released. Albeit in small quantities. Of course, the extra hardware enhancements the article talks about (like the modem) were not in the European release.
* Don't get me wrong. The Intellivision had some great action games. Dreadnaught Factor is one of my favorites, as is Space Spartans.
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There was nothing revisionist about it. It just wasn't obvious to consumers.
From a 50,000 foot level, what happened is that game consoles had been flooding the market with new hardware and titles at an unsustainable rate. At the same time, console makers had been trying to turn their consoles into full computers in an attempt to make their systems more appealing. Commodore attempted to improve the computer market by advertising that com
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The majority of the companies that were in the video game industry at the time were completely devastated. The ones that didn't already have huge bank rolls or weren't backed by other revenue (Mattel) went under in the blink of an eye.
The US lost most of it's dominance of the industry to Japan, and for a time, until the NES came to America, retailers refused to sell consoles due to the bath they had to take in losses when the crash occurred.
Yes, there were OTHER industries out there that fill
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Dude, Coleco made that port. That's why Donkey Kong is on the wrong side [intellivisionlives.com] in that version too. The Mattel guys were actually pretty upset about the quality and wanted to do their own version to show it could be done right. That's probably why IMagic did Beauty and the Beast [intellivisionlives.com].
Actually, it was a travesty. But players were just happy to have Donkey Kong, so they
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Both games were simple but engrossing enough to transcend low-res graphics, blinkity-blinkitiness and the fact that TVs are wide rather than tall. I never noticed the "wrong side" issue on Donkey Kong -- not that my Colecovision owning friends would ever let me get my hands on its runty little joystick.
I had every Atari cartridge system through the Jag, and just recent
Blipverts??? (Score:2)
Earliest game (Score:4, Funny)
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all these "messages" (Score:1)
Antikythera mechanism (Score:2)
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128-bit (Score:1)
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(Filler content to make this post long enough.....there, that should be plenty.)
XBox commercials (Score:2)
We want to see the vids, not RTFA :) (Score:5, Informative)
pong : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X53eJ8AWQ9Y [youtube.com]
fairchild : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-763921347 2647728205&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en [google.com]
vcs :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU3gHAGbi0Q [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_XrIx2eUGc [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROb1vWNiig [youtube.com]
Magnavox Odyssey 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oG1TlryN88 [youtube.com]
Mattel Intellivision : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXet1I2TuXE [youtube.com]
Vectrex : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1KQ4i5oRrM [youtube.com]
ColecoVision : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GpptJusOjM [youtube.com]
and Expansion Module for Atari 2600 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6T7755ux2M [youtube.com]
Atari 5200 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAlmxV8e7tE [youtube.com]
Odyssey 3 Command Center (never released) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv1a9U-6rJQ [youtube.com]
Sega Game-1000 Mk II : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iImQcL5Vs-g [youtube.com]
NES $250 deluxe set : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cssV9F6JhbE [youtube.com]
NES power glove : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93iDhnBcMGo [youtube.com]
NES power pad : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzH732OFTqg [youtube.com]
"NES rap" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHOCyJWFDE [youtube.com]
Sega Master System : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLEeoOaze_A [youtube.com]
Atari 7800 Pro System : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A46SSY9q3n8 [youtube.com]
Atari 2600 Jr : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_nOWJd4H_A [youtube.com]
NEC TurboGrafx-16 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmR1xJAho_c [youtube.com]
Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUtIWT7CLTw [youtube.com]
Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOM01F4Ihcc [youtube.com]
Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWZARgoipGw [youtube.com]
Neo Geo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ0aEjlTYms [youtube.com]
SNES : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKPZNHUlSHA [youtube.com]
SNES : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRjVXIWZfeM [youtube.com]
Philips CD-I : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ROwwU29xCw [youtube.com]
TTi TurboDuo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEvzN5YcR80 [youtube.com]
Amiga CD32 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMd5lMV4uFI [youtube.com]
3DO : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTRqsS-ftgQ [youtube.com]
Jaguar : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaro-yjBqI [youtube.com]
Saturn : http://ww [youtube.com]
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Is Zelda Rap present? (Score:1)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-27139941
Dupe? (Score:1)
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PS3 over priced?! (Score:3, Informative)
In constant dollars.
It would've cost as much as a high end ps3.
The Fairchild didn't even support BluRay!
Remember This Atari Game? (Score:2)
Anyone remember it?
Re:Remember This Atari Game? (Score:4, Informative)
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My cousin used to kill me at that game (since it was his and I only got to play when I'd visit).
Time to go into training for some payback...
My machine was better than 2600 (Score:1)
Before that I had a Unisonic pong/skeet shooting game that had a gun for the shooting.
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Minor Branding Issue (Score:2)
Damn, well, that fills my Geek Quota for about a month... I'm outta here.
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Popups. (Score:2)
Well, fuck them. It wasn't very interesting anyway.