History of First Generation Consoles

HISTORY OF FIRST GENERATION CONSOLES

I’m back for the new year with a whole load of new plans for posts. To kick start stuff off, we will be talking about first generation consoles. These consoles first came into play in 1972. 

The idea for a home console first came into play when a television engineer, called Ralph Baer was developing the ‘Brown Box’. This was basically his idea of creating an interactive television when he was creating a TV set. Baer created a two-player game, that was simple called Chase. This is a game where two dots chased each other around a screen. After the company director of R&D saw this, he gave the project a green light. In 1967, Bill Harrison was brought into the project and a light gun was constructed (from a toy rifle) that was aimed at a target moved by another player.

Bill Rusch joined the project, and the three soon created a Ping Pong game. Baer wanted to promote the console and sell it, so he went to various U.S. Television Manufacturers about selling the project. All but one turned the project down, and Magnavox eventually signed the deal in 1969. Magnavox altered a lot of different things to the Brown Box and eventually released the console in 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey. 

The Odyssey is a digital console, and like all consoles up to the sixth generation, it uses analog circuitry for the output to match the TVs of the era. It also uses analog controllers. This is the main reason why many people thought the Odyssey console is a analog console. This is false, as it uses digital consoles.

This is also the first involvement of Nintendo in Video Games, as they had just begun their market research for home consoles, as they were still in the toy market. They did have an alliance with Magnavox to develop and produce guns that would work with consoles, (gun controllers) for the Odyssey mainly.

The Odyssey was not as successful as they hoped, however, companies with similar products such as Atari, had to pay a licensing fee for some time. This is where they had a strong point in them.

In 1975, Epoch released Japan’s first console called the TV Tennis Electrotennis, which is their version of Pong. With the widespread popularity of Pong, it sparked many clones. Japan’s most successful console was the Nintendo Color-TV, which sold 3 million units and was the most successful first generation console.

That sums up today’s history of. Join us next time for the history of second generation consoles.

So until next time,

Peace Out - Geekette