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Gallery- Mid 70's PONG Clones Part 2
Yesterday, we showcased a few samples of PONG clones, little known relics from the earliest days of home video games. Back in the mid 70's, you couldn't go to a department store or corner electronics mart without tripping over dozens of PONG posers. Electronics companies, toy companies, and even businesses that had nothing to do with games wanted a piece of the lucrative home video game market.
The market became over saturated with similar games, leading to the eventual demise of all the wanna be "video game companies". Innovations from serious game companies like Atari, Fairchild and Bally left their competitors in the dust and led to a more orderly era with far less competition. (Of course, we all know how well that worked out.)
Join us below the fold to check out a few more specimens from the chaotic early days of video gaming.
APF TV Fun- 1977
APF Electronics released their first of many TV Fun consoles in 1977. The console itself had an attractive woodgrain design, which became almost standard for consoles at the time. APF would later become one of the few game companies of the era to attempt to make a cartridge based second generation console, releasing their Imagination Machine in 1979.
APF TV Fun Sportsarama-1977
The coolest of APF's TV Fun line of consoles. The Sportsarama featured 8 different game modes, including two different shooting games for the built in light gun. Two wired controllers gave the game four player support.
Heath Company Heathkit GD-1380
Ever wanted to not only play a PONG game, but make one too? Since the 1940's, the Heath company had sold assemble-it-yourself electronics to amateur engineers and hobbyists. These popular "Heathkits" provided all the necessary electronic components and a very detailed assembly manual. Heathkits were available for a wide range of consumer electronics, including radios, televisions, and even complicated machines like oscilloscopes. Home video games were a natural extension of Heath's kit business and a do-it-yourself PONG style system was released in 1976.
General Home Products Wonder Wizard- 1976
This model was actually manufactured by Magnavox for GHP. The circuit board inside is exactly the same as the Odyssey 300. The console has a nice woodgrain finish and plays three different games.
Videomaster Home TV Game-1974
Europe's very first homegrown console, designed and built in England. Videomaster was a British company that released many PONG style consoles throughout the 70's. Their first console predated Atari's PONG by over a year. Like the original Odyssey consoles, the Home TV Game did not use a CPU, instead utilizing a group of discrete transistors.
Philips Tele-Spiel- 1975
Although Philips was the parent company of Magnavox, they did not immediately begin importing Odysseys for the European market. Instead they released their own line of consoles called the Tele-Spiel. The first Tele-Spiel corresponded to the Odyssey 100. However the console itself was much smaller, and used cartridge style jumper packs to switch between games, much like the original 1972 Odyssey.
Philips Tele-Spiel Las Vegas- 1977
A more advanced version of the original Tele-Spiel, released in Europe and nicknamed Las Vagas. This version features eight different game modes.
And finally, some exciting PONG action from the Radio Shack TV Scoreboard...
Back in the day, this was considered pretty darn advanced.
These were just a few samples taken from the fossil record of the first generation of home video game consoles. By the end of the 1970's, machines like these had become extinct and lay forgotten in basements and garages. People flocked to the fancy new cartridge based video game consoles and forgot about the old PONG machines that started the whole hobby.
Every so often, archeologists will dig one of these up and marvel at the fancy woodgrain panels and futuristic font styles that defined a generation. If you are lucky enough to find one of these rare pieces of gaming history, please contact your nearest museum curator.
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