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The first generation of video game consoles lasted from 1972, with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, until 1977, when "pong"-style console manufacturers left the market en masse due to the introduction and success of microprocessor-based consoles.[1]
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Television engineer Ralph Baer conceived the idea of an interactive television while building a television set from scratch for Loral in 1951 in the Bronx, New York. He explored these ideas further in 1966 when he was the Chief Engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. Baer created a simple two-player video game that could be displayed on a standard television set called Chase, where two dots chased each other around the screen. After a demonstration to the company's director of R&D Herbert Campman, some funding was allotted and the project was made "official". In 1967 Bill Harrison was brought on board, and a light gun[2] was constructed from a toy rifle that was aimed at a target moved by another player.
Bill Rusch joined the project to speed up development and soon a third machine-controlled dot was used to create a ping-pong game. With more funding additional games were created, and Baer had the idea of selling the product to cable TV companies, who could transmit static images as game backgrounds. A prototype was demonstrated in February 1968 to TelePrompTer Vice President Hubert Schlafly, who signed an agreement with Sanders. The Cable TV industry was in a slump during the late '60s and early '70s and a lack of funding meant other avenues had to be pursued. Development continued on the hardware and games resulting in the final "Brown Box" prototype,[2] which had two controllers, a light gun and sixteen switches on the console that selected the game to be played. Baer approached various U.S. Television manufacturers and an agreement was eventually signed with Magnavox in late 1969. Magnavox's main alterations to the Brown Box were to use plug-in circuits to change the games, and to remove the color graphics capabilities in favor of color overlays in order to reduce manufacturing costs. It was released in May 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey.[2]
The Odyssey was built using a combination of analog (for the output, game control) and digital circuitry. Many collectors confuse the use of discrete components to mean the system is analog. However, the games and logic itself are implemented in DTL, a common pre-TTL digital design component using discrete transistors and diodes. Likewise, Ralph Baer himself considers the system digital.[3]
It was not a large success due to restrictive marketing, although other companies with similar products (including Atari) had to pay a licensing fee for some time. For a time it was Sanders' most profitable line, even though many in the company had been unsupportive of game development.
Many of the earliest games utilising digital electronics ran on university mainframe computers in the United States, developed by individual users who programmed them in their spare time. In 1961, a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology programmed a game called Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1. In 1970 Nolan Bushnell saw Spacewar! for the first time at the University of Utah. Deciding there was commercial potential in an arcade version, he hand-wired a custom computer capable of playing it on a black and white television. The resulting game, Computer Space, did not fare well commercially and Bushnell started looking for new ideas. In 1971 he saw a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, and hired Al Alcorn to produce an arcade version of the Odyssey's ping-pong game (using Transistor-transistor logic), called Pong.
Home video games achieved widespread popularity with the release of a home version of Pong in the Christmas of 1975. Its success sparked hundreds of clones, including the Coleco Telstar, which went on to be a success in its own right, with over a dozen models.
The first generation of video games did not feature a microprocessor, and were based on custom codeless state machine computers consisting of discrete logic circuits comprising each element of the game itself. Later consoles of this generation moved the bulk of the circuitry to custom "pong on a chip" IC's such as Atari's custom Pong chips and General Instruments' AY-3-8500 series.[4]
The table lists only the most known consoles and relative used chip.
| Chip code/name | Year | Manufacturer | Colors | Games | Consoles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AY-3-8500 | 1976 | General Instrument | No (1) | Tennis, soccer, squash, practice, 2 rifle games | Telstar (Telstar, Classic, Deluxe, Ranger, Alpha, Colormatic, Regent, Sportsman) Odyssey (300,2000,3000) Radio Shack TV Scoreboard Unisonic Sportsman/Tournament Philips Tele-Spiel ES2203 and ES2204 Zanussi/Seleco Play-O-Tronic Videomaster (Strika, Strika 2,ColourScore 2, SuperScore) APF TV Fun (Model 401) BSS 01 |
| AY-3-8510 | 1978? | General Instrument | Yes | Tennis, hockey, squash, jai alai | Telstar Colortron |
| AY-3-8512 | 1978? | General Instrument | Yes | Tennis, hockey, squash, jai alai, skeet, target | Telstar Marksman |
| AY-3-8600 | 1977 | General Instrument | No(2) | 8 games with balls and paddles | Telstar Galaxy Odyssey 4000 Philips Tele-Spiel ES2218 |
| AY-3-8610 | 1977 | General Instrument | No(2)[5] | 8 games with balls and paddles + 2 rifle games | Videomaster Sportsworld Philco/Ford Telejogo II |
| AY-3-8550 | 1976? | General Instrument | No(1) | The same of 8500 but with the addition of horizontal movement of player | Philips Tele-Spiel ES2208 |
| AY-3-8700 | 1978? | General Instrument | 4 games with tanks | Telstar Combat! |
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| MPS-7600-001,002,003,004 (3)(4) | 1977 | MOS Technology | The four versions of chip usually support 4 games. | Telstar Gemini(only version 004). Telstar Arcade(all 4 versions). Commodore TV Game 2000K/3000H (only version 001). |
|
| MM-57100/MM-57105(PAL) | 1976 | National Semiconductor | Yes | Tennis, Hockey, Squash | National Adversary Philips Odyssey 2001 Videomaster (ColourScore, VisionScore, ColourShot) Philco/Ford Telejogo |
| MM-57106/MM-57186(PAL) | 1977 | National Semiconductor | Yes | Tennis, Hockey, Squash, Breakout, Flipper e Football. | Philips N30 Philips Odyssey 2100 |
| F4301 | 1976 | Universal Research Labs | N/A | Two games with balls and paddles and two games of car racing | Indy 500 system (Video Action 4) Sears/Atari Speedway e Speedway IV Interton Video 2800 MBO Tele-Ball VIII |
| SN76410N | 1977 | Texas Instruments | N/A | Six games of balls and paddles | Tele-Match 3300R Ricochet Super Pro (modello MT-4A) Venture Electronics Video Sports VS-5 |
| 3659-1C/C2566 | 1975 | Atari | No | Pong | Atari PONG |
| 3659-3 | 1975 | Atari | No | Pong | Atari PONG Doubles Sears PONG IV |
| C010073-3 | 1976 | Atari | No | 4 Pong games | Atari/Sears Super PONG |
| C010073-01/C2607 | 1976 | Atari | N/A | 10 Pong games | Atari Super PONG Ten |
| C010765 | 1977 | Atari | N/A | 16 Pong games | Atari Ultra PONG Atari Ultra PONG Doubles |
| C011500-11/C011512-05 (4) | 1977 | Atari | N/A | 7 games (example: Pinball, Basketball and Breakout) | Atari Video Pinball |
(1) Colors could be obtained adding the AY-3-8515 chip
(2) Colors could be obtained adding the AY-3-8615 chip
(3) PAL version code is 7601
(4) Advanced chip compared to classic Pong-in-a-chip: incude a microcontroller and a little RAM.
| Name | Magnavox Odyssey | Magnavox Odyssey 200 | Atari/Sears Tele-Games Pong | Coleco Telstar | Nintendo Color TV Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Console | |||||
| Launch price | US$100 | US$100–230 | US$98.95 | US$50 | ¥8,300 - ¥48,000 (Roughly $101 – $594.8 USD Today) |
| Release date | |||||
| Media | Cartridge | n/a | Inbuilt Chip[6] | Cartridge (Telstar Arcade) | n/a |
| Accessories (retail) | Light gun | n/a | n/a | Controller styles | n/a |
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