Mystery video game.

[mmcirvin]

I spent much of yesterday evening poking around that Old Computers site trying to figure out the identity of the primitive and short-lived video game system that my family got sometime around 1979 or so, which promptly died, driving us to eventually buy the wondrous Atari Video Computer System (later known as the 2600).

I don't remember it taking cartridges-- maybe it just came with one-- but from what I remember of the physical layout, I think it was possibly one of the games based on the General Instruments Philips/Signetics chipset, like the Interton VC-4000. But most of these seem to have been sold only in the European market, so I have my doubts.

The controllers had analog joysticks, which were chrome-plated and advertised prominently on the box as "Omni-Directional Controls", and there was a long row of buttons on the console that selected the various games-- mostly pong-like things, but there was also a shooting game, which I think might have had a light-gun controller. I remember that it could produce a foreground and a background color, but nothing more sophisticated than that. I don't remember any game graphics more sophisticated than rectangles, but I think it did have on-screen scoring.

It's definitely not any of the specific games that are in that archive, though it's tantalizingly similar to several of them...

Update: Ah, I remember now. The reason I said "General Instruments" was that the other possibility was that it was one of these Pong-alikes based on the General Instruments chipset. That might be a stronger possibility, since I remember it as more of a pong than a cartridge console.

Another update: OK, it definitely wasn't the Interton-type console; the games that supported were much more sophisticated. One of the General Instruments pongs, then.

Comments

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, thanks for the fond memories of my Magnavox Odyssey 200. Five years later, we 'upgraded' to an Intellevision system, upon which I KICKED BUTT at Backgammon, AD&D, Armor Battle, Astrosmash, Auto Racing, B-17 Bomber (the one that TALKS! "Target...in...sight!"), Centipede, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack, Lock 'n' Chase (my FAVORITE), Mousetrap, NASL Soccer, Pac Man, QBert, Snafu, and Space Armada. Wow.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Everything you ever wanted to know about Intellivision (http://www.intellivisionlives.com/).

The claim that it was the only console to survive the 1983 crash is a bit odd, considering that the Atari VCS/2600 persisted in some form up to 1991.