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A History of Game Consoles, As Seen on TV

Posted by Zonk on from the after-these-message-we'll-be-right-back dept.

PC World is running a great retrospective on videogame consoles, looking all the way back to Atari's pong. The best part is, they're doing it via television ads for the systems. The article features highly entertaining blipverts for Pong, the Fairchild, the VCS, the 2600, the Intellivision, the Odyssey, Vectrex, Colecovision, the Atari 5200, and many, many more. From the article: "Gamers were tiring of PONG consoles, and Fairchild Instrument and Camera's Channel F console offered a fresh new alternative. It featured programmable 'videocarts' containing ROM chips and code, as opposed to the dedicated circuits that the Magnavox Odyssey's plug-in cards used. The cartridge concept emerged as an industry standard, and is still used in handheld gaming devices today."

1 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. We want to see the vids, not RTFA :) by g253 · · Score: 5, Informative

    So here are the links :

    pong : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X53eJ8AWQ9Y
    fairchild : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-763921347 2647728205&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en
    vcs :
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU3gHAGbi0Q
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_XrIx2eUGc
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROb1vWNiig
    Magnavox Odyssey 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oG1TlryN88
    Mattel Intellivision : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXet1I2TuXE
    Vectrex : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1KQ4i5oRrM
    ColecoVision : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GpptJusOjM
    and Expansion Module for Atari 2600 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6T7755ux2M
    Atari 5200 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAlmxV8e7tE
    Odyssey 3 Command Center (never released) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv1a9U-6rJQ
    Sega Game-1000 Mk II : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iImQcL5Vs-g
    NES $250 deluxe set : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cssV9F6JhbE
    NES power glove : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93iDhnBcMGo
    NES power pad : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzH732OFTqg
    "NES rap" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuHOCyJWFDE
    Sega Master System : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLEeoOaze_A
    Atari 7800 Pro System : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A46SSY9q3n8
    Atari 2600 Jr : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_nOWJd4H_A
    NEC TurboGrafx-16 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmR1xJAho_c
    Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUtIWT7CLTw
    Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOM01F4Ihcc
    Sega Genesis : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWZARgoipGw
    Neo Geo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ0aEjlTYms
    SNES : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKPZNHUlSHA
    SNES : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRjVXIWZfeM
    Philips CD-I : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ROwwU29xCw
    TTi TurboDuo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEvzN5YcR80
    Amiga CD32 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMd5lMV4uFI
    3DO : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTRqsS-ftgQ
    Jaguar : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaro-yjBqI
    Saturn : http://ww