Magnavox Odyssey pro-mo film

[Bill Loguidice]

The Fairchild Channel F gets too much credit for the cartridge idea. Word processor systems were distributing software on rom cards before the channel F. Everyone was racing towards microprocessor based game systems, the benefit being programming different games in software. There really was no alternative to ROM cards.

 

Too much credit? They were literally first out with a programmable videogame console. If anything, its place in history is downplayed in favor of the higher profile Atari 2600, much like the NES dominates post-Crash discussions.

[CatPix]

Yesh, the Channel F is more or les ignored. At best when you read about video game history, it goes like this "In 1976 the Channel F offered the firs video game systems with interchangeable cartridges. But it's Atari that popularized that idea".

And there were other alternative, like computers would show, with cassettes being the most used type of media up to the 16 bits era.

Sure computers would have programs on ROM, but you can also say that looming machines used punch card since the 1740.

What gave Fairchild the edge was hat they had their own CPU (the F8) allowing them to get them at will, so they could release their system early.

In 1976, Bally was working on the Z-Grass computer that should have been one piece of the 3 piece set (a computer, a console and an arade board) that gave us the Bally Astrocade. If Bally had focused more, they might have been the first to release a cart and CPU system.

But there is a difference between theory and release.

With Spacewars! in 1962 and Galaxy Game in 1971, DEC could have had the idea of making consoles or personnal computers. But the cost of Galaxy Game in 1971 was 20 000$. The idea to use computer based system for video games was in the air, but it wouldn't be before the first affordable 8 bits microprocessors appearing in the mid 70's that the CPU and ROM solution become cheaper (and more flexible) than using TTL chips.

It was only a matter of time before someone took it and made it into a console.

As Bill mentionned, the Odyssey in 1972 already feature most of the aspect we would see later for consoles : detachable controllers, accessories, cart slot.

 

No one I ever read or heard think that Fairchild were geniuses to create the Channel F. Or Atari to create the VCS even. Those consoles were already in the air for long. I was just a matter of time before the idea could mature into a product that would NOT cost a year of salary.

BTW one year before, Phlips and Interton release two consoles that fill the game between the Odyssey and the Fairchild :

Those systems use a generic programmable background like the Odyssey to generate a playfield, But those systems hve TTL chips on the carts to add more details. Like a football game that have scores.

A sort of missing link between the two types of systems, and what Ralp Baer wanted to do with the Odyssey, but that Magnavox refused to cust down cartridges costs.

Edited November 11, 2017 by CatPix

[JaguarVision]

The Fairchild Channel F gets too much credit for the cartridge idea. Word processor systems were distributing software on rom cards before the channel F. Everyone was racing towards microprocessor based game systems, the benefit being programming different games in software. There really was no alternative to ROM cards.

 

I remember the first time I saw an Atari 2600; I thought it looked like crap compared to what I saw in the arcades. Home consoles were a compromise to playing arcade games and would be through mid-1980.

 

edit:

And I think the Magnavox Atari suit was not over copying Pong but was over the Sanders video game patent. Any television game that had one object having some sort of collision with another object violated the patent. Everyone had to pay Magnavox; they made more money from the patent than selling Odysseys.

But the technical guidelines and the form of the cartridge that was from the channel f was what ended up being the standard design for cartridges. I mean most other room cards looked similar or had similar ideas to the Odyssey "cartridges."

[mr_me]

Winning a race is certainly a notable achievement and the channel F guys deserve credit but video games were software based from the beginning with Space War in the early 1960s. Many were trying to commercialise it and Bushnell succeeded (somewhat) but in an unexpected and innovative way with Computer Space. Switching from software to TTL hardware allowed Bushnell to win that race. And Baer deserves the credit for pioneering the home market, an idea that most thought was crazy in 1970. He even had the foresight of plugging in different games; well at least he tried. Baer persevered and deserves credit, even if it wasn't a great machine. Should the channel F get any more credit than Taito's western gun for their software/microprocessor based video game.

 

The Channel F was originally developed with an Intel processor, at a time when those processors were considered useless. The original guys deserve credit; Fairchild's involvement only delayed things as it had to be converted to a Fairchild cpu. Fairchild does get credit for the controller. It's too bad that style controller didn't catch on (except with the Astrocade). The Atari VCS was a much more efficient design than Channel F, focusing on high resolution sprites. The Channel F trying to buffer the entire display, wasted expensive RAM. It had a whopping 2.1 kB of ram compared to Atari's 128 bytes, giving Atari a clear economic advantage. Again, people make too big a deal about the cartridge idea. [Fairchild even numbered them like the Odyssey.] Their biggest concern was putting the responsibility of handling the rom card with the user. They had to completely hide the electronics edge connector, and make it look like an 8-track cartridge. Their concerns were overblown.

Edited November 12, 2017 by mr_me

[CatPix]

Note that the idea of concealing the PCB was because those ROMs weren't efficiently protected against static electricity. Given that in the US everything was on the floor, and most rooms fitted with soft, long 70's carpeting, this was a real concern.

VCS, Odyssey2, Pong carts (in Europe) and Microvision all use different ways to conceal the PCB from the use.

Fairchild is certainly the one that use the most elaborate way, but I wouldn't blame them on doing that.

If I'm not mistaking, at the time, consumer protection was merely 90 days?