The History of Video Gaming Part 2: The Golden Age Dawns by Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley [Appeared in the May 1988 issue of "ANALOG Computing"] (ln Chapter 1 of our story, we left a deliriously happy Nolan Bushnell counting the proceeds from the first day of operation for his video gome coin-op Pong . . .) Pong's opening day success was a preview of things to come. Bushnell formed a new company, dubbed Atari, to manufacture and distribute coin- operated Pong machines. (For latecomers, the name derives from a term used in the ancient Japanese strategy game of Go, which is the equivalent of "check" in Chess.) After Pong, Bushnell continued to address the amusement center audience. He marketed a series of driving games, sports contests and tank battles. Though many were successful, Atari didn't advance the state of the art significantly until the release of Breakout. This venerable wall-bashing game pioneered a play-mechanic which is still highly popular today. A major technological breakthrough, the invention of the LSI (Large Scale Integration) chip, had the minor side-effect of moving home video gaming to its next stage. The General Instruments AY38500 chip, for example, could carry enough program instructions to play four ball-and-paddle or two target video games. If the founding of Atari is monument to the entrepreneurial spirit, then the entry of Coleco into the video game field is a tribute to the positive power of corporate drift. The company's name is a contraction of "Connecticut Leather Company." Coleco went from leather goods to toys through a fortuitous string of expansion moves which began with a deal to produce toy gun holsters with a Tom Mix license tie-in. Coleco dove into the above-ground swimming pool market after World War II--and ran right into the boom in the construction of suburban housing developments. Good fortune continued to smile on Coleco when it became General Instrument's biggest customer for the AY38500 in 1975. Coleco's Telstar Arcade, the first "dedicated chip" home video game system, rocked the toy business. By Christmas of the following year, more than 75 other manufacturers had issued similar video game units. No one could have imagined how quickly all of these players would become obsolete. Among companies pulled into the home video game market by Telstar's performance was Atari. Bushnell formed a brand new division to sell home systems. He inked a deal with Sears--a landmark agreement guaranteeing nationwide distribution for Atari video games--then secured needed working capital by selling Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million in 1976. He remained in charge as Chairman of the Board. The glut of all-too-similar hard-wired video game units quickly exceeded the saturation point. Consumers could barely tell one system from another, a condition that wasn't helped by many rapid changes in the manufacturers' product lines. To many, it seemed like a new and better game appeared about every two weeks. And yet, the games were basically all the same: endless variations on the ball-and-paddle format. Boredom swept the land. The backs of closets began to fill up. Fairchild Electronics thought it had an idea to chase away the boredom. It introduced the first programmable video game system, the Channel F, in 1976. Fairchild transferred the game programs from the console to interchangeable game cartridges. RCA joined Fairchild in the programmable video game market with its Studio II. The use of black and white graphics was merely the worst of its many flaws. No one greatly mourned its passing. That wonderful year, 1978 Coin-op giant Bally tested the home market with the Bally Professional Arcade. This small gaming computer, which made its debut during the second half of 1977, boasted by far the best sound and graphics of any home system and played an astonishing roster of games. Bally's lack of familiarity with the home market probably had more to do with the Professional Arcade's lack of success than any intrinsic weakness in the unit. It was too expensive, and its distribution was concentrated on computer stores rather than department, leisure electronics, and discount outlets. Magnavox didn't abandon video gaming when Odyssey failed to catch the public fancy. The company made a series of dedicated video game consoles during the mid-1970s, culminating in the programmable Odyssey2 in 1978. Atari's entry in the programmable sweepstakes was the Video Computer System (VCS), the ancestor of today's 2600. lt presented home versions of some of Atari's top arcade programs like Combat and almost instantly leapt to the front of the pack in sales and popularity. Had one Atari faction had its way, the VCS would have had a memory limit of 2K. Since no game could ever use up more memory than this, they reasoned, why load up the VCS with an unnecessary frill? Caution carried the day, however. It was at least possible that cartridges would some day require more RAM. Soon, software designers would thank Atari for the decision to go with a 4K memory. On the other side of the world--Japan, to be specific--a small company called Taito thought it had a game that might divert a few coins earmarked for the Pachinko machines. Space Invaders presented video gamers with something entirely new: a shooting game with animated targets. It didn't take Space Invaders six months to shatter the dominance of Pachinko. It would soon prove an even bigger hit in Occidental family amusement centers. The Mattel Intellivision reached stores in 1980 and was an immediate hit, despite its relatively high price. Although the unit had some drawbacks, like shoddy controllers and slow movement for on-screen objects, it quickly displaced the Odyssey2 as the major competitor to the Atari VCS. Can George Plimpton help Mattel dethrone Atari? Why is Jim Levy having all those lunches with programmers? And what is that wocka-wocka sound? The answers to these and othgr burning questions will be found in "The History of Video Games Part III: The Golden Age" in next month's Video Game Digest. [Scanned and edited by Dennis Brown -- dgbrown (at) pixesthesia (dot) com]