History of Second Generation Consoles

HISTORY OF SECOND GENERATION CONSOLES
After a mini hiatus, the Geekette is back with another blog post. Sorry for the delay guys, I've had a lot going on recently and not a lot of time to blog! But I am back for good now, so stay tuned for our regular updates! This weekend, we're kicking things off with the History of Second Generation Consoles.

The Second Generation of consoles sees some of the biggest consoles in Video Game history. This generation ranges from 1976 to 1982. There were a few notable systems released in this year, along with some handheld systems. The first of these systems is the Fairchild Channel F. This was released in November 1976 and was a first for video game consoles. This was the first console to introduce cartridge's as the game's storage and it also came with a pause button, which allowed the player to pause their game without losing their save.

Moving on from a little known games console to a more well known console is the Atari 2600 & Atari 5200. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977 and it came with 9 games designed and released in time for the Christmas Season. The Atari 2600 sold over 30 million units over its lifetime and was eventually discontinued in 1992, with the best selling game being Pac-Man. The Atari had an advantage over the other consoles, with Atari being the only company to have the rights to most arcade games. Atari decided to then release the 5200 in 1982, following the success of the 2600, but due to poor sales and lack of games, it was discontinued in 1984.

In 1977/1978, the Bally Astrocade was released by the videogame department of Midway in Bally. This console was mainly sold in computer stores and in 1981, it was sold to Astrovision, who renamed the console. It continued to be sold until 1983, when the video game crash happened.

In this generation, there are other consoles released within this generation such as the Magnavox Odyssey (released 1978), Intellivision (1980), and the Vectrex (1982).

Also in this generation came the introduction of handheld consoles. One of the handheld consoles released was by a small firm called Nintendo and it was called the Nintendo Game and Watch. The Game and Watch was first released in 1980 and comprised of 60 handheld systems, each with their own game on at release. One of these games was Donkey Kong and it featured DK himself, Mario, and Peach.

That's all for now, but stay tuned for next time where we will have more posts with our usual reviews and history posts.

So until next time,

Peace Out - Geekette