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Episode 275: Pre-Atari Consoles (Patreon)

Published:
2020-01-20 15:00:01
Imported:
2021-08

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Content

This week's episode title is a little deceptive. It is not a comprehensive overview of all pre-Atari-2600 consoles; instead, it's specifically focused on the Fairchild Channel F and the RCA Studio II. But they're not as well documented as Magnavox's Odyssey, so consider this a public service! Sometimes it's good to dig into the outliers, ya know?

Episode description: Jeremy Parish and vintage gaming expert Kevin Bunch turn back the hands of time to an era when the idea of the Atari 2600 was just a twinkle in someone's eyes, putting the focus on two pioneering consoles: RCA's Studio II and the Fairchild Channel F.

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Comments

Anonymous

RCA Studio II! I've been waiting for like fifteen years to hear you guys talk about it. Yes, I live a sad life.

Anonymous

I was thinking about the fairchild yesterday and how I wanted to learn more about it, you guys are mindreaders.

Kevin Bunch

That is such a good rendition of Video Whizball, also

James Eldred

This was a really awesome episode. Loved that Kevin went through the effort of doing that amazing research!

Anonymous

Really enjoyed the music on this one!

Ryan Nims

Yes, what is the music used in this episode? (I did recognize the Jethro Tull of course...)

Anonymous
>>31561537

Going off the top of my head here, but I think it was From the Beginning by ELP, Heart of the Sunrise by Yes, Trampled Underfoot by Led Zeppelin, Sheep by Pink Floyd, Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull and maybe one or two others.

Anonymous

My parents got the Channel F around the time it came out. I was 3 or 4 at the time. Looking back, it seems so primitive and with uninteresting games, but at the time it felt incredible. I spent hours playing Blackjack, Bowling and Spitfire with my dad. Games like Dodge-It and Maze / Cat & Mouse were stress inducing fun. Even the poorly reviewed Lunar Lander and the decent Space Invaders clones provided good entertainment in the waning days of the system. By '80 we had gotten an Atari VCS and the Channel F ended up mostly sitting in its box the next couple of years before ultimately being put in a closet. I think we had stuck with it for so long because my parents had spent so on the games. It's still at my parent's house and almost 20 years ago I bought another original System I and a System II so I'd have backups. Thanks for bringing back some good childhood nostalgia today!

Tobias V. Langhoff

Great episode! I'm very interested in Joe Weisbecker myself. He was truly a visionary. His FRED computer turned into COSMAC VIP, which ran the CHIP-8 interpreted language (FRED and RCA Studio II ran similar interpreted languages), which still is probably one of the most "emulated" systems today (although it's not really emulation, but implementation of a virtual machine of sorts). I also like the Channel F, or the Luxor as it was known here. After Fairchild sold the Channel F to Zircon, and they re-released it as the Channel F II in the US, they also licensed it to many foreign companies who marketed it independently. So in Scandinavia we had the Luxor Video Entertainment System, in the UK it was known as the Adman Grandstand, in Italy and Belgium Barco/Dumont released it as Dumont Videoplay and Barco Challenger, and in Germany it apparently had many names (this according to Wikipedia): SABA Videoplay, ITT Telematch Processor and Nordmende Color TelePlay.