Console video games
A console video game is a interactive entertainment computer or electronic device that manipulates the video display signal of a display device (a television, monitor, etc.) to display a game. The term video game console is used to distinguish a machine designed for consumers to buy and use solely for playing video games from a personal computer, which has many other functions, or arcade games, which are designed for businesses that buy and then charge others to play.
History
The Magnavox Odyssey is the first home video game console, released in May 1972, predating the Atari PONG home consoles by three years. The Odyssey was designed by Ralph Baer. Unlike most video game consoles, the Odyssey is analog rather than digital. Also, unlike any conventional console today, this system was powered by batteries. The Odyssey and its variants also lack sound capability.
Atari Pong (1975)
In 1973, after the success of the original PONG coin-op, an Atari engineer by the name of Harold Lee came up with the idea of a home PONG unit. Since the PONG coin-op that Alan Alcorn designed was nothing more than the game board connected to an actual television set, he thought it would be possible to scale it down a bit and modify it for use at home. Released in 1975 in partnership with Sears stores, Sears would sell PONG under it's own specially created Tele-Games label.
The Odyssey 100 was an analog system. It did not use cartridges and played two games: Tennis and Hockey. A switch selected the games, and the system was either powered by six batteries, or by an AC adaptor. The Odyssey 100 was very basic and didn't have the common features of the million-seller PONG systems of the next years.
Magnavox released an improved version of the Odyssey 100: the Odyssey 200. It was same as the Odyssey 100 but with two additional chips from Texas Instruments, which added a third game called SMASH and some on-screen scoring. The Odyssey 200 could be played by two or four players (the first system to offer this feature), and displayed very basic on-screen scoring using small rectangles (it still had the two plastic cursors to record the scores). Each time a player marked a point, his white rectangle would shift on the right. The winner was obviously the first whose rectangle would reach the rightmost position on the screen. Although the scores were not yet digital, the Odyssey 200 remained more advanced than the first home version of Atari PONG because it played three different games for two or four players.
Atari Super Pong (1976)
Super Pong was a variation on the original PONG console that offered four different variations of the original pong concept.
Coleco Telstar (1976)
Telstar was released in 1976 and played only three games with three difficulty levels. It was the first system to use GI's AY-3-8500 chip and was deemed a success: over a million units were sold.
The AY-3-8500 chip played six games with more difficulty levels, and the games could also be played in color. At least 15 different games were released in two years with the only difference between the "pong" systems being the number of games, the addition of difficulty levels, and the type of picture(color or black and white).
Magnavox continued with the Odyssey 300 in 1976, which was one of the first system to use a single game chip containing the major circuitry of a PONG system.
The Magnavox Odyssey 400 played the same games than the Odyssey 200 and used an additional Texas Instruments chip to display digital on-screen scoring (it was the first analog Odyssey system to display digital on-screen scoring). Like the Odyssey 100 and 200, the Odyssey 400 used the same three knobs to move the bats and control the "English" effect on the ball.
The Odyssey 500 was very advanced for that time considering the technology used. The white paddles representing the players in a traditional Pong style game were replaced by simple color graphics: two tennis players with their rackets (TENNIS game), two squash players (SQUASH), or two hockey players holding their sticks (HOCKEY).
Fairchild Channel F (1976)
Fairchild released twenty-six different cartridges for the system, with up to four games on each cartridge. The games included sports, such as Hockey, Tennis and Baseball, educational, such as Math Quizzes, board games, such as Checkers, and shooting games, such as Space War. The cartridges had labels that contained the game instructions on them and each were given a sequential number. In this respect Fairchild started a trend in trying to boost game sales by numbering them and so appealing to consumers who wanted to complete their collection.
Atari Video Pinball (1977)
Video Pinball appeared as another Atari coin-op to stand-alone home console translation by bringing the game Breakout to home players. Bumper controllers on the sides or a dial on the front were used to control the games depending on the game selected. There were three game types - Pinball, Basketball, and Breakout.
== Atari Stunt Cycle (1977) Inspired by Evel Knievel, Stunt Cycle gave the player a first person feel of riding a motorcycle, even though the image on the screen wasn't first person. You could jump cars and buses, if you played with the controls just right you could jump right off the screen, lots of fun!
== Atari VCS 2600 (1977)
The Atari 2600, released in 1977, is the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. It was originally known as the Atari VCS, for Video Computer System, and the name "Atari 2600" (taken from the unit's Atari part number, CX2600) was first used in 1982, after the release of the more advanced Atari 5200. The initial price was $199 with a library of 9 titles.
== Coleco Telstar Combat (1977) Telstar Combat was one of Coleco's attempts to break away from the Pong-clone video game rut. It's certainly unique as no other company manufactured a dedicated console with such elaborate controls. The console plays four variations of a tank battle game, very similar to the Atari 2600 Combat game cartridge.
These Odyssey systems were more elaborate variations of the pong style video game which featured many colors and gameplay modes.
The Odyssey² was Magnavox first "second generation system, which was significantly different than the various Odyssey PONG systems. It was a computer with BASIC programming, but many people regarded it as a home video game console. It came with two controllers, RF switch with TV box, power supply, and the Speedway, Spinout and Cryptologic game cartridge.
The Odyssey² was the first home video game console to introduce what was to become the standard joystick design of the 1970s and 80s: a moderately sized black joystick unit, held in the left hand, with an eight-direction stick that was manipulated with the right hand. In the upper corner of the joystick was a single 'Action' button.
The area that the Odyssey² is best remembered for its pioneering fusion of board and video games: The Master Strategy Series.