Ralph Baer. A name every american schoolkid should know, conceived of the home console back in 1951! I recall with Quest for the Rings circa 1981, you had to initially purchase it at a Magnavox branded retail outlet with like the showroom full of jumbo cathode rays ;)
Played way too much Pickaxe Pete as a kid. I can still hear that sound when he goes through the doors to another level. K.C. Munchkin was pretty cool, too- even had a level editor!
I had one friend with an Odyssey2 and everyone felt bad for him. A couple of my friends had Intellivisions which were ok but they had limited people to trade cartridges with. Mike had a Colecovision. Everyone wanted to be Mike's friend. The rest of us had Atari 2600s.
Had one as a kid too. It was my intro to video games so I've got fond memories of it. It's funny I had a lot of fun with the games but didn't realize until years later that a lot of the games we had were just clones of more popular games.
I have the same story. But the ironic thing is, the Odyssey2 was a superior system to a 2600. But Atari had all the major titles locked up, and back then, nobody did ports. All deals were exclusive.
Saw an Odyssey in a closed shop window one evening back in the mid 70's. 11-year-old me knew instantly that I was looking at the future. (Did not know that a part of my future career was also being suggested to me.) The name told you out was the future (think, "2001, A Space Odyssey") as well as that oh-so-futuristic font on the packaging.
A year or two later, with the family at a friend-of-the-family's place and they had this new video-game machine hooked up to their TV. I think ti was the first time I played a video game.
I was trying to determine which the machine they had (I distinctly remember the odd controller shape). It turns out it was a "Fairchild Channel F" [1] machine. Looks like that may have been the first machine with cartridges.
Thx for posting this. I was a young kid when the Odyssey came out, but I have a vague memory of really wanting to rip it apart and figure out what was inside (foreshadowing a career in engineering; surprising I don't do more reverse engineering.)
Our family resisted buying the Odyssey (despite the kids begging the parents) or the Fairchild F or Atari Pong. I think my dad broke down when he discovered there was a blackjack cartridge for the VCS.
17 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 55.5 ms ] threadhttps://youtu.be/jLGBtkKPj2U
https://habr.com/ru/company/edison/blog/278447/ (russian language / русский язык)
I do remember the game Quest for the Rings very fondly though.
A year or two later, with the family at a friend-of-the-family's place and they had this new video-game machine hooked up to their TV. I think ti was the first time I played a video game.
I was trying to determine which the machine they had (I distinctly remember the odd controller shape). It turns out it was a "Fairchild Channel F" [1] machine. Looks like that may have been the first machine with cartridges.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F
Our family resisted buying the Odyssey (despite the kids begging the parents) or the Fairchild F or Atari Pong. I think my dad broke down when he discovered there was a blackjack cartridge for the VCS.