First and second generations of video game consoles

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Revision as of 21:07, 19 March 2019 by Rtim (talk | contribs) (Second Generation (Cartridge Consoles): grammar and few other minor edits)
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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 or preserved, though some that can't be emulated have simulations instead. See also Strange and Forgotten Console emulators, a similar page for the 90s and 2000s.

First Generation (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.

  1. Only 4 cartridges were released for this triangular abomination, but because of the console's design they can't be dumped and "emulated." They're more like activation discs for data already in the console. No known emulators.
  2. Aesthetically different but same console hardware. Their chip is also the base for other consoles such as the Coleco Telstar Arcade. Allows to play Pong-like & other games such as Target shooting (optionally playable with the optical gun), Tennis, Football & Squash.
  3. Besides the normal Odyssey and Odyssey² consoles released in 1972 and 1978 respectively, Magnavox also produced the X00 and X000 series (1975-1977) of home Pong consoles. Released models were: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 2000, 3000 and 4000. Then owner Philips also released three Odyssey variants in Europe between 1976-1978. They played "Ball and Paddle" games such as Hockey, Tennis, Smash, Squash and others. No known emulator exists for any of these machines.

Second Generation (Cartridge Consoles)

Best-selling game consoles: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey², ColecoVision.

Name MAME support No-intro collection Internet Archive Description
APF Imagination Machine/MP1000 Good A PC with a game console mounted on top of it 32X-style (take that, master race!) Only 25 games were released (15 cartridges), one being built-in, and a lot of homebrews. ROMs are here.
Atari 2600 Good ROM Hunter v13 Collection
Atari 5200 Good No-intro
Bally Astrocade[N 1] Decent TOSEC
Bandai Super Vision 8000[N 1] Good Only 7 games.
ColecoVision Good No-intro
Commodore MAX Machine Good Also known as Ultimax (USA) and VC-10 (DEU), though it was only briefly sold in Japan. It's a cut-down console version of the C64 hardware family (Later used in C64) with limited computing capability & a membrane keyboard. TOSEC: (2012), (2016).
Emerson Arcadia 2001[N 2] Decent TOSEC
Entex Adventure Vision Decent Like the Vectrex, this console had its own screen and operated like a miniature arcade cabinet. Only four games were released for it. TOSEC
Epoch Cassette Vision None Only 13 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. Latest MAME forum thread.
Fairchild Channel F Good No-intro
Fairchild Channel F II Good NA An update to the Channel F, with no exclusive games.
Interton VC 4000[N 3] Decent Has 40 games. ROMs are here
Magnavox Odyssey²/Videopac Good No-intro
Mattel Intellivision Good TOSEC
Mattel Intellivision II Good NA An update to the Intellivision, with no exclusive games.
Milton Bradley OMNI None Released in 1980, The OMNI was a weird hybrid of a video game console, Mono 8-track player and a Tabletop game, graphics were limited to four 2-character seven segment displays, 8-track tapes were used to store the games instead of cartridges and because of its massive limitations, most of the games for it were trivia games, its unknown how many units were sold or when it was discontinued, only 13 games are known to be released for it.
RCA Studio II Decent TOSEC. rca-studio2 programmer emulator.
Vectrex Good No-intro
VTech CreatiVision[N 4] Good This hybrid computer and console were distributed to many different countries around the world and some variants were rebadged units with different names. Emulators list. TOSEC.
  1. 1.0 1.1 Emulated by MAME only.
  2. Clones and variants: Advision Home Arcade, Arcadia, Cosmos, Dynavision, Ekusera, Hanimex MPT-03, HMG-2650, Home Arcade Centre, Intelligent Game MPT-03, Intercord XL 2000 System, Intervision 2001, ITMC MPT-03, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, Ormatu 2001, Palladium Video-Computer-Game, Polybrain Video Computer Game, Poppy MPT-03 Tele Computer Spiel, Prestige Video Computer Game MPT-03, Robdajet MPT-03, Rowtron 2000, Schmid TVG-2000, Sheen Home Video Centre 2001, Soundic MPT-03, Tele Brain, Tele-Fever, Tempest MPT-03,Tobby MPT-03, Trakton Computer Video Game, Tryom Video Game Center, Tunix Home Arcade, UVI Compu-Game, Video Master.
  3. Clones: Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, Jeu Video TV, Super Play Computer 4000, etc.
  4. Clones and variants: Educat 2002 (Israel), Dick Smith Wizzard (Australia/New Zealand), FunVision Computer Video Games System (Oceania), Hanimex Rameses (Oceania), VZ 2000 (Oceania), etc.
    Computers: Laser 2001, Salora Manager (Finland).

Further info:

Handhelds

Name MAME support No intro collection Description
Milton Bradley MicroVision Preliminary 12 games were made. A Windows emulator that is front-end friendly can be found here, with all known games included.