Life before the NES / Famicom: videoconsoles from the 1st and 2nd generations

I can remember quite well when the Nintendo NES arrived to my country. It was some years after its Japanese release in 1983, but it still had a tremendous impact.


But wait, that was a third generation console. And if I really squeeze my aging brain I seem to remember there were previous consoles. I remember TV ads with catchy jingles, and also full page ads in my weekly comic magazine. Mmmmm...

So yes, in this thread I plan to cover some of the lesser known, early videogame consoles. Some I knew from hearsay, others from school pals, and some other nes I don't think they even appeared in my country. But anyway, for educational purposes...

 

Damn... can't see the edit button again... has it disappeared from the message board? Anyway, if any moderator would be so kind to change that gigantic NES picture for this other one...

 

Magnavox Oddyssey (1974)








The Magnavox Odyssey is a first-generation console. Not only that, it was the first home console, the father of everything that came after. It was marketed between 1972 and 1975 and sold around 350,000 units. We don't know if this figure includes the various clones of the console, such as the Spanish Overkal or the Panoramic Telemach in Argentina. Its development began much earlier, around 1951. Its creator was Bill Baer, an engineer commissioned by Loral to create "the best TV in the world." Baer deduced that the ideal TV should incorporate some kind of interactive game, and he started working on it. He took the project to Sanders Associates in 1966, after convincing them of his ideas, and they assigned Bob Tremblay as his assistant. The team would incorporate other engineers and by 1969 they had built a wooden-box prototype, the "brown box," which they presented to several TV manufacturers until Magnavox accepted it in 1972.

Compared to any modern console, the Odyssey is simply ridiculous. It had no CPU, and its components consisted of 40 transistors and 40 diodes. No chips or microprocessors, and no sound.

With such hardware, games were extremely simple. We're talking variations of ping-pong, cards, roulette, and always for two players. Games were changed by inserting cards, which in turn activated or deactivated part of the hardware and altered the TV signal. A primitive optical gun was also designed, and it's used by some games.

Magnavox was very cheeky when it came to selling the product. Its advertising was ambiguous enough to trick naive users into believing the Odyssey only worked with Magnavox televisions, and the company furthered the deception by selling consoles and TV sets together at bargain prices. Ralph Baer also disliked that they expanded the number of games themselves through "overlays" (cardboards that were superimposed on the TV screen) or only sold the console through their own chain of stores.

Despite its high price (up to $100 at the time), the Odyssey was a sales success. The public loved the "Ping Pong"-type games, and many companies started their own video game console projects.

And it seems the Odyssey was also crucial to the development of Atari's Pong. Apparently, one of its creators, Nolan Bushnell, attended one of the Odyssey demonstrations and got the idea to develop his own arcade game. This incident didn't become known until much later, during the trial between the two developers over the rights of Ping Pong.

Tennis

Because of its unusual construction, there are not Magnabox Odyssey emulators. There's something called a "simulator" of its most popular games called OdySim. The project seems abandoned, but you can still obtain some games from Archive.org.



Odyssim running Pac-Man

--- добавлено 13 окт 2025, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 13 окт 2025 ---

Thank you. I'll try not to bother you again, but this thread is going to be lenghty...

--- добавлено 13 окт 2025 ---

Oddyssey 2 (1978)



By 1978, things had changed a lot. The success of the first Odyssey and its patents had made Magnavox and Ralph Baer very rich. It was time to create a new console, this time distributed by Philips, because Magnavox was now owned by its American branch.

With the Odyssey 2, the goal was to make each game a completely different experience, with distinct graphics, sound, and gameplay. The potential of the idea was immense: nothing less than infinite games.

Odyssey 2 also pioneered the use of a membrane keyboard in addition to controllers, intended for use in educational games.

Unfortunately for Philips, competition had not been left idle, and the new console had to face off against the Atari 2600, the Mattel Intellivision, and the Bally Astrocade. Yes, we'll deal with them later. In almost every market, the Odyssey 2 led the sales alongside the Atari 2600, which outperformed it in graphics and game variety.

The Odyssey 2 had very few third-party games. Notable exceptions were Imagik's Demon Attack (in the American market) and Parker Brothers' Popeye, Frogger, Q*bert, and Super Cobra (in the European market).

Speaking of the European market, the Odyssey 2 was known by a variety of names: Philips Videopac G7000, Philips Videopac C52, Radiola Jet 25, Schneider 7000, and Sierra G7000. They are all the same device, albeit with different colored casings.

The Odyssey and its variants were discontinued around 1984.

Technically, the Odyssey 2 was a console as we know it today, with its CPU, RAM, and dedicated video and sound chips. Specifically:

- 8-bit Intel 8048 CPU at 5.37 MHz (NTSC) or 5.91 MHz (PAL)

- RAM: 64 bytes

- Intel 8244 (NTSC) or 8245 (PAL) video chip capable of 160x200 resolution and 16 colors, of which only 8 were available for sprites.

- Sound: Intel 8244/8245, mono sound only.

- Games came in the form of ROM cartridges with 2, 4, or 8 KB capacities.

- Expansions: The Voice (enhanced voice synthesis and FX), Chess Module (with a second CPU capable of playing chess), and Microsoft Basic, only for the more advanced Videopac+/Jopac models.

We can emulate the Odyssey 2 with the dedicated O2EM emulator or with MAME/MESS. Since O2EM asks for the BIOS and also requires a launcher (it uses the command line), I've chosen the latter. The necessary files are named i8244.zip, odyssey3.zip and videopac.zip.


Baseball


Popeye

Being a console, all you need to do is to insert the new game and then reset the machine.

 

Now comes the time when Atari entered the videoconsole market en masse... As I've done with the Oddyssey machines, I'm going to abandon chronologic order and focus exclusively on them. Atari's competitors will have to wait.

So, as we were saying, the Americans were just getting used to the idea of plugging something into their TVs and play videogames when this arrived:

Atari VCS / 2600 (1977)



The Atari Video Game System (renamed to Atari 2600 after october 1982) was the first videoconsole to popularise the use of microprocessors and interchangeable cartridges with games. Of course, their specifications seem laughable now. At its core, the 2600 had an 8-bit MOS Technology 6507 CPU @ 1.19 MHz, 128 bytes of RAM and game cartridges had a never seen before capacity... of 2 Kb., although they eventually reached 32 and 64 Kb.

And even better, it had a "killer app", the conversion of the arcade Space Invaders:



But this pitiful hardware had some hidden features. It could modify graphics while drawing new lines, a trick its competitors lacked, could manage more than 4 Kb. of memory thanks to bank-switching and could display graphics at 160x192 with 16 colors out of a palette of 128.

The 2600 was so succesful that schollars credit it with starting the videoconsole market and the apparition of the first game developers such as Activision, which was started by former Atari employees. Until it was discontinued in 1992 (!), the 2600 sold 30 million units around the world.

Of course, not everything related to Atari and the 2600 is positive. With time Atari stopped paying attention to the quality levels of their games, and this in turn contributed to the 1983 videogame crisis. Probably you've heard of this before. Let's say that a decline in videogame quality, plus the competition from Mattel and Coleco and the first succesful 8-bit domestic computers sent the videoconsole market into a downward spiral. A known anecdote is that Atari had to bury 700,000 unsold cartridges in the desert. Maybe many of them were copies of E.T., one of the most maligned Atari 2600 games.

The crisis ended around 1986, when the NES / Famicom from Nintendo had consolidated, but, guess what. The 2600 was still on the market! It had managed to survive thanks to its gigantic library of games and its low price. It would see game releases until 1990, with the game Klax.

Probably the best emulator for the Atari 2600 is still Stella. It has a comfortable user interface and it's fairly easy to use.



But you may want to check out Gopher2600 as well. It's a newer emulator that boasts a never-seen-before degree of accuracy:


Gopher2600 running Pitfall II: The Caverns

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The Atari 5200 (1982)



This successor to the Atari 2600 was relased in 1982. It was Atari's reaction to the success of the ColecoVision. Coleco had obtained the rights to the game Donkey Kong and Atari needed to recover its possition.

Hardware-wise, the 5200 was pretty much identical to the Atari 8-bit computers they had been selling since 1979, the 400 / 800 and XE models. It had a MOS 6502C @ 1.79 MHz. CPU and dedicated video and audio chips, called ANTIC, GTIA and POKEY. It had 16 Kb. RAM and could output graphics at 384×240 (2 colors) or less resolution and 23 colors. This hardware was much more closer to the arcade machines of the time than the aging 2600 hardware.

Despite their hardware similarities, note that Atari 400 / 800 or XE software usually won't run in an Atari 5200. They weren't 100% compatible.

This time the reaction from the public was pretty negative. They didn't like the new controller, complained that the new games were a rehash of the 2600 ones, and also lamented that (until 1983) the console wasn't backwards compatible with the 2600 games. Eventually, Atari retired the console from the market in 1984.





H.E.R.O. and Popeye, respectively

If you want to emulate the Atari 5200, your best option is likely Altirra. It also emulates the above mentioned Atari 8-bit computers, so you may find its usage a bit complex. And you also will need the system BIOS. But once everything is in place it's pretty much a great emulator:


Altirra running Star Wars: The Arcade Game

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The Atari 7800 (1986)



Many things had changed by 1986, when Atari released its Atari 7800 ProSystem, or Atari 7800. Atari was no longer the leading company in the videoconsole market. The competition from the ColecoVision and the NES / Famicom had taken its toll. They also were under new management, going from being owned by Warner to the hands of the fearsome Jack Tramiel, former head of Commodore.

Under this circumstances, Atari did what they was best. First they put the hardware development on the hands of an external company, GCC, and later exercised their control on the games to be released, all needing from an Atari license.

The hardware again took inspiration from the contemporary arcade machines. It consisted on a SALLY CPU @ 1'79 Mhz, itself a variant of the MOS 6502. The graphics and sound were handled again by dedicated chips, this time called MARIA (for video) and TIA (for sound). This was a much more powerful hardware than before, and put the machine pretty much on par with the NES / Famicom, except in the sound department. Developers solved this by adding their own custom chips. The 7800 was also compatible with most of the Atari 2600 games.

The game library was pretty interesting, if a bit aging. Among the launch titles we have Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position II, Centipede, Dig Dug, Galaga, Food Fight, Rescue on Fractalus!, Track & Field and Xevious. The real problem was that by 1986 most game developers had signed exclusive contracts with either Nintendo or Sega. This leaves the 7800 with a game library of only 59 games.


Pole Position II

The 7800 did a bit better in Europe than in the USA. There it had the advantages of a redesigned control pad and having the game Asteroids Deluxe in memory. This however wasn't enough, and in 1992 Atari announced they were discontinuing their 2600 and 7800 videoconsoles, and their 8-bit computers as well. By then Atari only had 12% of the videoconsole market, while Nintendo held its 80%.

As for emulation... want a simple Atari 7800 emulator that will run pretty much everything? Then you should try ProSystem:


ProSystem running Commando

But if you feel more adventurous you should really give Test7800 a chance. It's a newer emulator that attemps to do for the 7800 what Gopher2600 did for the 2600. That is, provide better accuracy. Although it's still in development it should run most 7800 games available.




Test7800 running Choplifter and One-on-One Basketball

 

The Bally Professional Arcade / Astrocade (1977)



The first Atari 2600 competitor I know of is this Bally console released in 1978. It's also the only videoconsole by Bally / Midway, who are better known for their videogames. It wasn't a very popular console on its day, although it has gained some of a cult status over time.

It is also known by a variety of names. When it was announced in october 1977 it was called the Bally Home Library Computer. This is because it was intended to be a hybrid between a video game console and a home computer, just like the Mattel Intellivision. When it finally arrived to stores 1978, the name on the units was Bally Professional Arcade. Perhaps this was just a marketing strategy, or maybe Bally was already abandoning the idea of a personal computer hybrid. Bally stopped carrying the console in 1980 in order to focus on other projects. AstroVision took over that same year and marketed the console as the Bally Computer System, and, from 1982, as the Astrocade.

The console had its own BASIC cartridge, but it came with many limitations. Since the screen content already occupied most of the RAM, it also used the video RAM. Users ended up with just 1,760 bytes of memory for their programs, which they could then save to tape.


The ZGRASS addon



Users who wanted to turn their Astrocade into a proper 8-bit computer needed to buy this addon. It added a series of important features, such as a keyboard, a math co-processor, 32 Kb. RAM, 32 Kb. ROM (which included the GRASS programming language) and tape and disk interfaces. The disk interface made the computer compatible with CP/M.


Technical specs

CPU: Zilog Z80 at 1,789 MHz.

RAM: 4 KB of RAM expandable to 64.

Graphics: 160x102 or 320x204 pixel graphics modes with 4 colors (or 8 splitting the screen) from a 256-color palette. No sprite support.

Sound: 3 channels plus one noise channel.

Displaying graphics at a 320x204 resolution was beyond the RAM capacity of the time, so the machine used DRAM random access memory.


Emulation

The only emulator for this system I've used is MAME / MESS. You'll also need the astrocde.zip, astrocdl.zip and astrocdw.zip BIOS files. Once we have everything the usage it's the usual, select machine from the list, select software to launch and you're all set.



You'll get a menu with severla options, just like in the TI 99/4 computers. The first entries are the games in the cartridge, and the ones that follow the programs the Astrocade had in memory, that is the games Gunfrigt and Checkmate and the apps Calculator and Scribbling.

The game library is what you may expect from a 1978 console: generic sports games plus some arcade conversions like Pac-Man or Galaxian:


Baseball


Pac-Man


Galaxian

It's also pretty small, with only 28 official releases. However, also have a few game prototypes (Conan, Mazeman and Soccer) and even some homebrew.

--- добавлено 14 окт 2025, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 14 окт 2025 ---

The APF M-1000 / APF Imagination Machine (1978)



This was another American videoconsole released in late 1978. APF however didn't manufacture their machines in the USA, but rather in Hong-Kong, where it was cheaper. The M-1000 was actually their second console. Before that they had achieved a great success with their APV TV Fun, a machine which had several buil-in variations on Pong:



But now it was all about keeping up with the Atari 2600 itself and its interchangeable game cartridges. And in that sense, it doesn't seem like the console was gaining too much ground on its rival. I say this because it only has 13 games. 12, considering Rocket Patrol already comes with the console. They are:

Backgammon, Baseball, Blackjack, Bowling / Micro Match, Boxing, Brickdown / Shooting Gallery, Casino I: Roulette / Keno / Slots, Catena, Hangman / Tic Tac Toe / Doodle, Pinball / Dungeon Hunt / Blockout, Space Destroyers, UFO / Sea Monster / Break It Down / Rebuild / Shoot.

Technical specs

CPU: 8-bit Motorola 6800 @ 0.895 MHz. Not to be confused with the 16-bit Motorola 68000.
RAM: 1 KB.
Video: MC6847, capable of resolutions of 256x192 pixels and 4 colors and 128x192 and 8 colors.
Sound: Internal speaker.

The most interesting thing about the system is that since 1979 it could be upgraded to APF Imagination Machine:



With this extremely costly expansion (it was sold for $599 in 1979, equivalent to $2,240 in 2021), the game console became a true desktop computer. Yes, baby, yes! Opening your wallet translated into a RAM upgrade (up to 9 KB, expandable to 17 K and, through a BASIC cartridge and a cassette player, a slightly larger game library of around 70 games.

Emulation

Our first option should be MAME / MESS and the BIOS file apfm1000.zip. If we want to emulate the Imagination Machine we'll also need the APF Basic cartridge.

A second option is the dedicated emulator Virtual APF. It's been years since it last version but it should work fine on modern machines.

Cart games shouldn't be a problem, they're loaded through the option File --> Cartridge...



Then we reset the virtual machine and there we go:


Boxing


Baseball

The tape games for the Imagination Machine require loading the BASIC cartridge before, but it is already included with the emulator:



If we did it right we'll see this screen:



We press 1 or 2 to access the command line. There we type CLOAD (a file selector will open) and then RUN.




Asteroids


Star Trex

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Be patient, people. We already reached 1979 xD

Mattel Intellivision (1979)



Development of the Intellivision started in 1977, so we can think of it as a direct competitor of the Atari 2600. Mattel wasn't a hardware manufacturer buy a toy distributor. You may have heard of some of their products, like that Barbie doll. I hear it's quite popular. So they depended on external components. At first the Intellivision was to be powered by National Semiconductor components, but since they were too expensive they settled for General Instrument parts. This decission would make the Intellivision the first 16-bit console ever released. A team led by David Chandler designed the case, and David Rolfe designed the Exec firmware and, with the help of Caltech students, the first games for the system.

The advertising didn't exactly hide Mattel's intentions. Hosted by actor George Plimpton, they compared Intellivision games with Atari 2600 ones, often showing them under a negative light.



The Intellivision had better graphics than its competitor, and that played an important role in their advertising.

Mattel would later get into some trouble of their own. They had promised a keyboard expansion for the Intellivision from the very beginning, but by 1981 they hadn't delivered yet. The stuff became to butt of some unwanted jokes, user complaints and even an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Actually the keyboard was ready. It just happened to be too ambitious and expensive to be released yet. This original keyboard upgrade (the Master Component) came with extra 16 Kb. RAM and a secondary CPU, so it only sold in very limited quantities, probably to placate Mattel users and the FTC.


Intellivision + keyboard

Instead, what Mattel did release to the general public was the Entertainment Computer System (ECS), a much simpler expansion that included only 2 Kb. RAM, BASIC and a printer / cassette port:


Intellivision + Entertainment Computer System (ECS)

To make matters worse, Mattel had recently changed management, and this never sits well with older products. Support for the ECS was limited to a few games only: The Jetsons' Ways With Words, Melody Blaster, Mind Strike, Mr. BASIC Meets Bits 'N Bytes, Scooby Doo's Maze Chased an World Series Major League Baseball. A ver little reward for the users who hafd been waiting for the expansion for two years.

Another interesting addon for the Intellivision is the Intellivoice, a cart that added voices to the system. Unfortunately, only a handful of games support it (Space Spartans, Bomb Squad, B-17 Bomber, Tron: Solar Sailer and Intellivision World Series Baseball). This is because Intellivision carts often had an 8 Kb. capacity, and adding voices left very little room for the games themselves.

The Intellivision was one of the systems more affected by the 1983 videogame crisis. The lower prices of RAM memory had facilitated the apparition of newer systems, such as the Atari 5200 or the ColecoVision, that offered a much better experience than the Intellivision. Even worse, domestic computers like the Commodore 64 were now in the same price range as the console.

So when the new game releases were met with indifference at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Mattel panicked and sold the rights to the Intellivision for 20 million dollars. Not too much for a console that had achieved 20% of the market and sold 6 million units. However, ex-employees from Mattel bought the console rights again in 1984 and sold the console (and even new games!) until 1991, using the brand INTV Corp.


Technical specs

CPU: 16-bit General Instrument CP1610 @ 895 kHz
RAM: 1352 bytes (+2 KB with ECS expansion)
Graphics: General Instruments AY-3-8900 chip (STIC Standard Television Interface Chip), capable of 160x196 pixel resolution, 16 colors, and 8 sprites
Sound: General Instruments AY-3-8914 chip (with 3 sound channels + 1 noise generator)


Emulation

Fans of dedicated emulators need to check out Nostalgia. It's a bit old, but the interface is a beauty:



You'll need the BIOS (files EXEC.BIN and GROM.BIN), but the manuals and pics are already available in its homepage.

Personally I'll stick with MAME / MESS. This means we'll need the BIOS files intv.zip, intv_ecs.zip, intv_voice.zip, intv2.zip, intvecs.zip, intvkbd.zip, intvsrs.zip and stic.zip. Phew.

Whichever emulator we choose, we'll gain access to a game library of 160 games, plus 6 that only work with the ECS expansion. We get the usual generic sports games, such as Boxing, Soccer or Wrestling, but also arcade conversions such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Choplifter and Commando. Plenty to choose from.


Defender


Soccer

 

Before tackling the ColecoVision, let's do a quick trip to Japan to deal with two consoles from Epoch. This is because it might be hard to find the opportunity to talk about them later, but also to ilustrate a trend: following the 1983 videogame crisis the USA stopped being the source of new videoconsoles, and it came the era of Japanese manufacturers like Nintendo.

Epoch Cassette Vision (1981)



The Cassette Vision is a Japanese competitor to the Atari 2600, and was released in Japan in 1981. It's important for two different reasons. First, it would be silly to speak about the Super Cassette Vision later without mentioning it was meant to substitute this one. And second, before the launch of the NES / Famicom this was the #1 selling console in Japan, with 400,000 units sold and 70% of the market.

Other than that, it played pretty much like an Atari 2600, although with a much smaller game library of like 12 games:

The hardware itself is interesting. The console was pretty much an empty case! It contained the power source, the controls and the video and sound outputs. There was no CPU! xD Well, there was. It was just supposed to come the game carts, and it was usually a variant of the NEC uPD77xx family. And no, the console didn't use cassettes as in magnetic tapes. "Cassette" was the term then used for ROM cartridges.

Due to this particular architecture, we haven't had a proper Cassette Vision emulator for many years. Now we're lucky enough to have PD777:



But since its website is in Japanese only the emulator might no be easy to use. You're better off downloading packages with every emulated game from this other website.

--- добавлено 15 окт 2025, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 15 окт 2025 ---

Epoch Super Cassette Vision (1984)



The Super Cassete Vision, released in 1984, is an entirely different affair, and much closer to what today we would consider a proper game console. Since it came after the NES / Famicom, one imagines it was an attempt by Epoch to either recover a portion of the lost market or to make some money at the expense of the success of Nintendo's console.

Its hardware was based on an 8-bit NEC µPD7801G CPU (a clone of the widely known Zilog Z80) running at 4 Mhz. and it had only 128 bytes of RAM. Graphics were powered by a separate processor, the EPOCH TV-1, capable of displaying graphics at 309x246 and 16 colors. Sound was also powered by its own dedicated chip, the PD1771C, wich provided only one channel sounds.

In addition to Japan, the SCV also made its way to France, although its presence there is likely just a footnote. It had a 30-game library including some pleasant surprises, such as Lupin III, Doraemon, and Dragon Ball licensed games. The rest of its libray consists of games such as Boulder Dash, Mappy and Pole Position II.

The SCV wasn't as successful as expected, so by 1987 the console was discontinued and the "war" between manufacturers became a matter between Sega and Nintendo.

As for emulation, we have several options.

First, we have MAME/MESS. In this case, we'll need the files scv.zip and scv_pal.zip.


Dragon Ball

There's also SCV.EXE from the Takeda Common Binaries. These are a collection of emulators for obscure Japanese systems, and naturally this includes the SCV. In this case you'll need to rename the upd7801g.s01 file from the MAME BIOS to BIOS.ROM and place it next to SCV.EXE.


Mappy

However, my favorite emulator for the system is currently DSP Emulator. This is an Spanish multi-emulator than can handle the SCV with ease, but also emulates a number of arcade machines, microcomputers and consoles. It's definitely worth checking out.

--- добавлено 15 окт 2025 ---

Damn. I did again. I'll need a moderator to do some quick corrections to the previous post on the Super Casette Vision. Sorry about that.

1) Plase, add an INTRO jump after the Epoch Cassette Vision (1981) text in the second paragraph.

2) Add this picture:



...and the text Lupin III at the very end.

Thanks in advance.

 

Today I was planning to talk about the ColecoVision, but it seems it will have to wait a little. 1982-83 was a very busy period when it comes to videoconsoles, and if I want to follow chronological order strictly it seems I need to mention the Emerson Arcadia 2001 first. Then it will be the turn of the ColecoVision, the Vtech CreatiVision, the Vectrex and finally the Casio PV machines.

The Emerson Arcadia 2001 (May 1982)


It took me some effort to find out about the origins of this console. It doesn't help that it came under many names (more on that later). In the end it was now defunct website old-computers.com the one that could shed some light on the matter.

According to this source, both Philips and Signetics originally designed the chips in this console, the Signetics 2650 and 2636 chipsets, and thought a game console based on them would be a good showcase. Instead of offering their chips to a single company, they reached agreements with several manufacturers around the world, who in turn marketed game console under different names: Interton VC-4000, Voltmace DataBase, Acetronic MPU-1000, ITMC MPT-05, etc.

When Philips and Signetics upgraded the hardware to Signetics 2637, history repeated itself, giving birth to another batch of videogame consoles: Ormatu Spelcomputer 2001, Advision Home-Arcade, Prestige MPT-03, Tele-Fever... and Emerson Arcadia 2001.

Both console series are compatible with each other and run the same games, but since the cartridge formats don't match, this compatibility is only theoretical.

Now, let's move on to the games... there are only about 30 of them, and they aren't particularly noteworthy. There reasons for this are two. The first is that most games were developed for the first series, and don't take advantage of the capabilities of the revised hardware. And the second reason is none other than Atari. Philips developed several ports of popular arcade games for the system, such as Pac-Man or Phoenix, but since Atari held exclusive rights to those titles, Philips had to either cancel them or modify them. Depending on the copyright laws in every country, users could end up with the "modified" games or versions closer to the originals.

The Emerson Arcadia 2001 lasted about 18 months in the American market, after which they licensed the technology to Bandai, which in turn used it in the Japanese version of the system, the Bandai Arcadia.


Technical specifications

CPU: Signetics 2650A @ 3.5 MHz.
Secondary CPU: Signetics 2637UVI, dedicated to graphics and sound.
RAM: 1 Kb.
ROM: None.
Graphics: Resolution of 128x208 and 128x104 and 8 colors.
Sound: Internal single-channel speaker.
Storage: 8 Kb. cartridges.

With these specifications, the system intended to compete against the ColecoVision and the Atari 5200.


Emulation

Well, there's MAME/MESS, which... just kidding! I'm sure this multi-emulator emulates the system well enough, but considering that it had over 30 clones I don't want to look for the BIOS for each one of them.

Instead, we'll use the dedicated WinArcadia emulator. Interestingly enough, it is a port of AmiArcadia for Amiga computers.

The games can be found, as always, on Archive.org.

Usage is quite simple. We place the games in the GAMES folder, and the program will detect them on startup. Then we select them from the list on the right, and that's it.


3D Soccer


Galaxia, completely unrelated to Galaxian, why are you asking?

The buttons to start the game are F1, F2 and F3.

--- добавлено 16 окт 2025, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 16 окт 2025 ---

The ColecoVision (August 1982)



This videoconsole came from American toymaker Coleco, and it was extremely succesful, selling around 2,00,000 units until it was retired in 1985. It was the first proper videoconsole by Coleco, but not their first experience with videogames. From 1976 and 1978 they had sold the Coleco Telstar, a dedicated system that allowed users to play Pong clones on their TVs.

You can see one of those in action here:

When those were no longer profitable, Coleco then moved to hanheld sports games:

But by 1982 these machines were obsolete too, so Coleco decided to move to videoconsoles with interchangeable cartridges. The console's designer was engineer Eric Bromley, who was already considering a console based on chips from Texas Instruments (video) and General Instruments (audio) and licensed arcade games by 1979. The main obstacle at that time was the cost of RAM, so he had to wait until 1982 for costs to make sense.

The next step was to secure licenses for the arcade games of the time, following the path of Atari. Coleco secured the rights to Nintendo's Donkey Kong, but it wasn't easy. Bromley obtained a verbal agreement from Nintendo's then-president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, but Yamauchi ended up selling the rights to Atari. Diplomacy -and, most likely, lawyers- were necessary for Yamauchi to sign an exclusive contract with Coleco.

The ColecoVision launched in the USA on Christmas 1982, and thanks to the Donkey Kong craze, it quickly sold half a million units. It was also distributed in Europe under the name CBS ColecoVision from 1983.

By 1984 sales of the console had decreased significantly, and this, coupled with the failure of the Coleco Adam computer, led Coleco to exit the videogame business. They did it in 1985, when the ColecoVision had sold more than two million units.


Technical specs

CPU: Zilog Z80A @ 3.58 MHz, the same as many 8-bit computers.

Video: Texas Instruments TMS9928A chip, capable of graphics at 256x192, 32 sprites and 16 colors.

Sonido: Texas Instruments SN76489AN chip, with three sound channels + one noise channel.

RAM: 1 Kb. + 16 Kb video memory.

The ColecoVision hardware is remarkably similar to the MSX and Sega SG-1000/SC-3000 hardwares. This makes porting games from these platforms rather easy.

The console also had several harsware expansions worth mentioning, such as:

Expansion Module #1 --> It allows access to almost all Atari 2600 games. Atari immediately sued Coleco, but ended up settling in court and granted the expansion the status of an official clone of their console.

Expansion Module #2 --> Steering wheel and pedals shipped with the Turbo game. They plugged into the console's input port and can also be used with the games Destroyer, Bump 'n' Jump, Pitstop, and The Dukes of Hazzard.



Expansion Module #3 --> Transforms the ColecoVision into a Coleco Adam computer, adding a keyboard, digital data pack (DDP), cassette drive, 64 Kb. of RAM and a printer.



Super Game Module --> Expansion consisting of an Exatron Stringy Floppy drive with 128 Kb. of storage and an additional 30 Kb. of RAM. Many homebrew games require it.

This expansion was canceled and eventually replaced by the Expansion Module #3. However, clones are still sold among ColecoVision fans, and many new games developed for the system use it. The version released by Opcode Games in 2012 also includes extra sound channels.

The games

We should make a distinction between those released during the console's commercial life and those released later.

Among the former, Donkey Kong naturally stands out, but also other arcade conversions of the time, such as Burger Time and River Raid. But also rarities like Fortune Builder, a predecessor of sorts to the legendary Sim City, and WarGames, the unofficial sequel to Atari's Missile Command.




And among the homebrew games we can find original games, but also ports from the Coleco Adam, the MSX and other platforms. These games are usually well-developed, but also often require the Super Game Module in order to run.

To name a few: Buster Bros. / Pang, Dragon's Lair, Gauntlet, Kung-Fu Master, Mario Bros… the list is long.





Emulation

There are many capable ColecoVision emulators out there, such as Meka by Omar Cornut:



But they may have trouble running the newer homebrew games, so I'd recommend you to use either GearColeco by Nacho Sanchez Gines or FB Neo. The later is my current ColecoVision emulator, but it uses a closed gamelist. Which means it will only run the games already tested by the team and that they also need to be renamed accordingly.

 

Видеоспорт-3

 

Interesting. It seems similar to the Coleco Telstar or the APV TV Fun. However I'm not planning to cover videoconsoles from the former Communist block. It's just that I'm not familiar with them. Like, at all. I'd certainly like to know more about the topic, but so far I've seen little information. Same with the Soviet 8-bit computers, what little I know about them is fascinating.

Another phenomenon I forgot to mention are the Atari 2600 clones. There are hundreds of them, some official and others unofficial, and they were sold for ages.



I still remember how of one my highschool frinds, back in the early 1990s, had one with a zilllion games built-in. I doubt it even had a proper cartridge slot. Of course, many of the games were incomplete, or just clones of each other, but I bet he got it for very little money.

 

The VTech CreatiVision (1982)



Today's console is the CreatiVision by VTech. VTech is a Hong Kong manufacturer still active, and at least in this era they seemed to especialise in clones of western machines. In the computer area they are known for their Tandy TRS-80, Apple II and IBM PC clones. Their CreatiVision was an original creation, but it borrows heavily from earlier machines such as the IntelliVision and especially the ColecoVision. Having cassette, keyboard and printer ports it could also be upgraded to a full computer. It was finally discontinued around late 1985 or early 1986.

The CreatiVision was also exported to numerous countries, usually by other names, such as Educat 2002 (South Africa and Israel) or Dick Smith Wizzard (in Australia and New Zealand). It also arrived to West Germany, Switzerland and Italy. VTech produced all these "clones" in their own factories.

Between 1984 and 1986 VTech also sold a computer variant, the Laser 2001, that could run its games. It was exported to countries such as France, Germany or Finland:




Technical specifications

CPU: Rockwell 6502 CPU at 2 MHz.
RAM: 1 KB of RAM, 16 KB of video RAM.
Video: Texas Instruments TMS 9918/9929 video chip, capable of images up to 256x192 pixels and 15 colors
Sound: TI SN76489 sound chip, with three sound channels and one noise channel

The CreatiVision had pretty much the same architectura as the ColecoVision, and its components were pretty common at the time.

The 6502 CPU was the cheapest on the market at the time, and it was also used by the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit computers, the Apple II, Nintendo's NES, the Commodore 64, the Atari Lynx and the BBC Micro, among others.

The Texas Instruments TMS 9918/9929 video chip was also used in the Sega SG-1000 and SC-3000, the Sord M5, the MSX, the Tatung Einstein, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4 and the Casio PV-2000.

And finally the TI SN76489 sound chip was also used in the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, the BBC Micro, the ColecoVision, and even the IBM PCjr.

Actually, the hardware was so close to the ColecoVision that one of its flagship accessories was an adapter to use its cartridges. Not a bad idea, since the CreatiVision only had 18 official games, although the Dick Smith Wizzard added another 41.


Emulation

As usual, our first option is MAME/MESS, but here there are some other alternatives.

Emulation under MAME is simple enough: choose system, choose game or file and there you go:


Air/Sea Attack


Crazy Pucker


Tennis

 

Enough of stupid clones for now. Time for something different and original:

Vectrex (October 1982)



The Vectrex is a truly original console... of all the video game consoles that came out in its era (and of those that came after) it's the only one that opted for vector graphics, as opposed to the "raster" (square pixel grids) of all the others. Back in its day, in the first half of the 1980s, there were a good handful of arcade games that used this type of graphics. We're talking, for example, about classics like Tempest or Atari's Battlezone, but there were many more.


Battlezone, available at your nearest arcade

In late 1980, John Ross and other Smith Engineering employees found a 1-inch monitor in one of their warehouses and decided to experiment with it, programming a simple game. Initially, the idea was to turn it into a dedicated handheld console, but as the company showed it to potential buyers, the idea evolved into a 9-inch screen console with interchangeable games.

The project was acquired by General Consumer Electronics, which showed the finished product at the 1981 Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. Later in 1983, General Consumer Electronics was acquired by Milton Bradley, a publisher specializing in board games. You may know it better by its initials, MB. Yes, that MB.



With MB's resources, the Vectrex also reached Europe and Japan, where it was distributed by Bandai. Unfortunately, it was at this stage that the video game crash of 1983 caught up with them. This crisis deserves its own article, but let's just say that at this point the home video game console market collapsed in a big way.

This happened for several reasons, including: too many manufacturers and videogame consoles models, each competing with the rest, the industry's lack of quality controls, which led to the failure of several major releases (this is where Atari 2600's E.T. is often mentioned, although it wasn't the only one bad game from the era), the loss of user confidence, and the arrival of the first affordable 8-bit home computers.

The fact is that MB suddenly found itself with a console that was no longer profitable. So they canceled all projects for games and future consoles and sold off their remaining stock at bargain prices. The quick reaction didn't save it from losing around $31 million on the Vectrex, which is no small feat. MB's merger with Hasbro in 1984 also ended with any official support for the console.

With the return of the console rights to Smith Engineering there were some attempts to revive the system, but they also failed. At least SE did allow duplication of existing hardware and software starting in the 1990s, as long as it was done on a non-profit basis.


Technical specs

CPU: Motorola MC68A09 8-bit @ 1.5 MHz.
RAM: 1 Kb.
Graphics: Dedicated 9-inch monitor, vertically oriented.
Sound: General Instrument AY-3-8912.
Storage: Cartridges up to 32 Kb. in capacity.

The CPU was 8-bit only but had some 16-bit features. It was much more advanced (and also more expensive) than usual Zilog Z80. It was also used in the monochrome Tandy TRS-80 computers, the Dragon 32/64 and the French Thomson TO/MO.

The sound chip is also well-known; it's the same one used in the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum from the Spectrum 128 onward, and the MSX, among others.

As with the Magnavox Odyssey, many games for the system came with overlays that were placed on the screen as extra graphics.


Blitz! game with its overlay

Among the accessories there was an optic lightpen and the 3-D Imager, a helmet that turned the console's graphics into 3d by rotating colored discs in front of the player's eyes:

As for the games, there are only 36, most all of them conversions of arcade games of the time. But beware, they're not limited to vector games; there are also some conversions of games originally in "raster," such as Pole Position or Scramble.


Pole Position, arcade and Vectrex versions

I've also noticed some homebrew games, but they only seem to be available in physical format.


Emulation

There are some dedicated emulators out there such as vecx, but once again I have decided to use MAME / MESS.



Everything seems to work fine, although I got some flickering that may be faithful to the original hardware behavior.


MESS running Berzerk

And even better, if you download the artwork you also get the bezel and the game overlays:

 

Have you ever had a Casio calculator or wristwatch? Well, they also made computers and consoles for a while.

The Casio PV-1000 (1983)



Now, say what you will about this console, but it design is cool as fuck. Even if that case is mortly empty. And by this time we are already talking about third generation consoles, because the PV-1000 was to compete with the inminent NES / Famicom and the Sega SG-1000. Although I'm not sure of how aware Casio was of these consoles. In any case, the PV-1000 was only available for a few weeks before the NES / Famicom completely defeated it. It managed to sell around 9,000 units before being discontinued.

Its technical specs were pretty decent. A Z80 CPU @ 3,579 MHz, 4 Kb. RAM, 16 Kb. of video RAM and three-channel sound. It could display graphics at 256x192 pixels with 8 colors, and the cartridges had a maximum capacity of 32 Kb.

As for games, there are only 13 games, all of them launch titles:

#1 Pooyan
#2 Super Cobra
#3 Tutankham
#4 Amidar
#5 Dig Dug
#6 Warp & Warp
#7 Turpin
#9 Pachinko UFO
#10 Fighting Bug (aka Lady Bug)
#11 Space Panic
#12 Naughty Boy
#14 Dirty Chameleon
#15 Excite Mahjong

Numbers #8 and #13 were never released. They are thought to be Galaga and Front Line, because the eventually appeared for the Casio PV-2000.


Super Cobra and Dig Dug, respectively

Who knows, maybe under different circumstances the PV-1000 could have been a contender. Because of how fast it was withdrawn from the market and its small game library, we'll never know. It had obvious shortcomings, such as the lack of hardware scrolling, but I'd like to know what it would have been able to do with larger cartridges and extra chips, as it was the case with the NES / Famicom.


The Casio PV-2000 (also 1983)



"'Tis but a scratch!", the guys at Casio must have thought. It doesn't matter if Nintendo has wiped the floor with us, let's try again. So just a few months after the PV-1000 Casio released their PV-2000.

With the PV-2000 Casio entered the land of the almost-MSX. That is, computers that very closely resemble what would become the first generation of the MSX standard, like the SVI-318 and the SVI-328 from Spectravideo.

It shipped with a Zilog Z80A CPU @ 3.58 MHz (or Casio clone) and 8 Kb. RAM. Video and sound were handled by TMS9918, SN76489 (PSG) or General Instrument AY-3-8910 (PSG) chips. They differ from the MSX in the sound chip, memory allocations and BIOS only. And unfortunately, they're not MSX-compatible.

So Casio ended up (again) with a machine in stores that nobody wanted and that had become inmediately obsolete. This time, however, Casio could recover easily. If the market wanted MSX computers, then they would make MSX computers. And so they did, starting next year with the Casio PV-7:



As for the PV-2000, it quickly faded into obscurity. There aren't many surviving machines (the sticker with the keyboard map gets damaged easily), and its 11 cartridge games aren't a big draw for collectors.

Andr Casio? Well, they didn't learn from the experience and kept on making stupid machines that nobody else wanted, such as the Casio Loopy, the first console targeted to female users. It went pretty much as well as you imagine, but that's another story.

Emulation? Yes, of course, we have emulators. The emulation world suffers from horror vacui, and therefore NEEDS to fill any void. No small or obscure machine will remain unemulated for long!

So when it comes to PV-1000 and PV-2000 emulators, you can use either MAME / MESS or the Takeda Common Binaries:


Galaga for the PV-2000

But luckily for us, DSP Emulator also added support for both machines not too long ago:



And to me that's the best choice.

 

The SG-1000 is probably going to be the last console mentioned in this thread. That's because it was launched the very same day as the NES / Famicom, and I find hard to tell if it is a second or third generation console. If you must know, Wikipedia says it's already third generation.

Sega SG-1000 (1983)



The SG-1000 was developed after Sega's arcade business in the USA experimented a crisis in 1982. Sega's then president Hayao Nakayama decided to switch their interest towards the blooming console market in Japan. The SG-1000 first incarnation wasn't a console, but a home computer called the SC-3000.



But then they heard of Nintendo and their upcoming NES / Famicom, so they prepared a console version. Sega then released the SG-1000 (also known as the Mark I) and the SC-3000 computer simultaneously in July 1983. The SC-3000 later saw releases in Australia and New Zealand, and the SG-1000 in some European countries and Taiwan. However, there weren't official UK nor US releases of the system, crippling its future.

At first the SG-1000 console sold well, prompting Sega to release a second model known as the Mark II:



I's main difference was the game media, which switched from cartridges to "Sega My Cards".


SG-1000 cartridges vs. cards

But eventually they recovered and started outselling the SG-1000 in 1984. Their hardware was superior, and they also had a much bigger game library after reaching deals with many third-party developers. Sega countered with their Mark III model in 1986:



The Mark III is worth mentioning because it was released worldwide as the Master System. Yep. This is where the later Master System II came from. With the Mark III finally had a hardware that surpassed the NES / Famicom, all while maintaining compatibility with SG-1000 games. But by this time most third-party developers had signed exclusive deals with Nintendo, and wouldn't release games for Sega. Even in Europe, where the Master System had been more popular than the NES / Famicom, Nintendo finally caught up by 1990.


Technical specs

The SG-1000 uses a Zilog Z80 8-bit CPU @ 3.58 Mhz. It's the same CPU equipped by many 8-bit home computers of the era, such as the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC and the MSX. Its audio and video chips, though, are still a TMS9918 and a SN76489 from Texas Instruments, just like in the early ColecoVision. Which in turn had adopted them from the TI-99/4 computer. They also had 1 Kb. RAM and 16 Kb. Video RAM.

The SC-3000 computer is basically the same thing, although with a rubber keyboard (a plastic one for the later SC-3000H) and a BASIC cart, some of them with up to extra 32 Kb. RAM.


Game library

The Sega SG-1000 game library consists of 51 cartridges (this includes the ones from the Othello Multivision, a licensed clone) and 29 My Card releases. There are also 29 educational / programming carts and some newer homebrew releases.

Remarkable titles include Flicky, Congo Bongo and Girls' Garden. Sega released SC-3000 / SG-1000 games up until 1987, with The Black Onyx being the last released title.


Emulation

Pretty much any Game Gear / Master System emulator will also support the SC-3000 / SG-1000. Certainly, this is the case of Meka and Gearsystem:



Also, and given the hardware similarities to the ColecoVision and the MSX, you can also run SC-3000 / SG-1000 games under openMSX and blueMSX:



And finally there's also FB Neo, if you don't mind the closed set:

--- добавлено 20 окт 2025, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 20 окт 2025 ---

Oops. Yet another of my posts that will need editing by the mods. This time it's a small thing. Where it reads "But eventually they recovered" right after the SG-1000 carts / cards image it should read "But eventually Nintendo recovered".

Sorry about that.