First and second generations of video game consoles
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the video game market experienced an explosion of products hoping to capitalize on the success of the Odyssey and Atari. From the nigh-infinite Pong clones, to the suspiciously similar consoles, consumers had far more options than they do today. This is a list of those first and second generation machines. Not all of them can be emulated.
Contents
Pong Consoles
It's Pong. You can play it anywhere. Emulating first generation systems like these can be tricky, as the games were heavily tied to their hardware, and most were just variations of Pong.
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Coleco Telstar Arcade
Only 4 cartridges were released for this triangular abomination, but the console's design means that they can't be dumped and "emulated." They're more like activation discs for data already in the console. No known emulators.
Cartridge Consoles
Name | MESS support | No-intro collection | Description |
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APF Imagination Machine/MP1000 | Good | ✗ | A PC with a game console mounted on top of it 32X-style (take that, master race!) Only 15 games were released, one being built-in. ROMs are here. |
Arcadia 2001 | Decent | ✓ | |
Bally Astrocade | Good | ✗ | ROMs are here |
Bandai Super Vision 8000 | Good | ✗ | Only 7 games. ROMs can be played on archive.org |
Entex Adventure Vision | Decent | ✓ | Like the Vectrex, this console had it's own screen and operated like a miniature arcade cabinet. Only four games were released for it. |
Epoch Cassette Vision | None | ✗ | Only 11 games exist for this console, and none have been dumped because of the cartridge design. Apparently the BIOS for the console is inside each cart. It's on MESS's to-do list. |
Super Cassette Vision | Decent | ✓ | 1984 successor to the original Cassette Vision. Much easier to emulate as the hardware is similar to some other obscure systems. The graphical quality is some where between the ColecoVision and NES. Was actually fairly successful in Japan until the Famicom came along and kicked it's ass. Then this happened. |
Fairchild Channel F | Good | ✓ | |
Fairchild Channel F II | Good | NA | An update to the Channel F, with no exclusive games. |
Intellivision II | Good | NA | An update to the Intellivision, with no exclusive games. |
Magnavox Odyssey² | Good | ✓ | |
RCA Studio II | Decent | ✓ | |
VC 4000 | Decent | ✗ | Has 40 games. ROMs are here |
VTech CreatiVision | Good | ✓ |
Handhelds
Name | MESS support | No intro collection | Description |
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Game and Watch | None | ✗ | Many of the 60 Game and Watch games can be played in the various Game and Watch collections. Just emulate those. If you do not mind playing online, many Game and Watch games, including some not found in the collections, can be played here. Another option would be running simulators through the gw-libretro core in Libretro. |
Milton Bradley MicroVision | Preliminary | ✗ | 12 games were made. They're dumped, but uploads are not available. |