The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (17 page)

But Coleco ran into trouble when the prototypical
Telestar
console its engineers submitted for FCC approval did not pass interference tests. During the demonstration, FCC representatives discovered that the
Telestar
generated radio band interference. Greenberg was given a week to eliminate the problem and have his product approved or he would have to resubmit his product at a later date and go through the entire approval process over again. The process could have put them months off schedule as they waited for the FCC to reopen the case.

During this period, Coleco had been considering hiring Sanders Associates, the company that developed the original Odyssey, to develop future products. In desperation, both Greenberg and his chief engineer called Sanders for help. Ralph Baer, the man whose team designed Odyssey, agreed to find a way to block out
Telestar’
s interference if Greenberg signed the contracts he had pending with Sanders.

Baer tried several conventional methods of building a shield to block out the
Telestar’
s interference. Nothing worked. He went home frustrated at the end of the day. When he returned the next day, he stumbled across a possible solution.

Baer made a new shield using the ferrite rings. When he tested it on the
Telestar
, the interference was within acceptable levels. He gave the shielded unit to Greenberg, who returned to Washington, D.C., and received approval to market his machine.

The
Telestar
came out in time for Father’s Day, 1976. Coleco sold over $100 million worth of the consoles and rose to the top of the consumer game business. Its leadership, however, was short-lived. In August, Fairchild Camera and Instrument released a new game console that permanently changed the industry.

Fairchild Camera and Instrument, one of the companies that pioneered the development of the transistor, released a new video-game console called the Channel F in August 1976. Several features made the Channel F different from other consoles. It had unique controllers with triangular handles at the end of long shafts. One person described the controllers as looking like the plunger on a device for detonating bombs.
³
More important, the Channel F played games stored on interchangeable cartridges.

The original Odyssey played twelve games hardwired into the console’s circuitry. To change games, players inserted circuit boards into a slot in the front of the console. Inserting Odyssey circuit boards was, in effect, like changing dip switches inside the console. (Odyssey also came with plastic overlays to add color and backgrounds to its games. The Channel F had color games and did not require overlays.)

Like every other game system, the Channel F had tennis and hockey programmed into its circuits, but Fairchild released additional games stored in casings that looked like 8-track tapes. They called the game units “Videocarts.” Each Videocart contained a microchip with a game programmed into it.

Though the Channel F never developed a large following, it changed the consumer market forever. Consumers no longer wanted single-game consoles at any price. RCA responded quickly by announcing that it had a new game console under development, Magnavox went back to the lab, and Atari’s engineers stated that they had named a new computer chip after a bicycle.

By the middle of 1976, Atari was no longer the star of the Sears catalog. Coleco had stolen the home market, and the Fairchild Channel F had rendered
Home Pong
worthless. In fact, television games had become a bit of a joke.

Many consumers lost interest in playing video tennis shortly after purchasing their systems. Game consoles were being thrown in closets or unloaded at garage sales.

Atari executives had recognized the need for a new technology even before Channel F hit the market. Restless as ever, Nolan Bushnell no longer believed that Atari’s previous consoles, which were designed with a single game hardwired into their chips, would continue to attract consumers. To compete with the Channel F, Atari would need a console that could read and process information like a full-blown computer. The new system would have to read and display information on a television screen. Nolan Bushnell turned to his Grass Valley team for help.

Steve Mayer, one of the founders of the Grass Valley facility, looked for alternatives to the expensive Fairchild F8 microprocessor used in the Channel F. He found the MOS Technologies 6502, a general purpose microprocessor capable of creating images on a television screen in real time—nearly instantaneously. Building off the 6502, the Grass Valley team designed a custom chip they named “Stella,” after an engineer’s bicycle.

Though the Grass Valley engineers had the expertise to design the Stella chip, they could not manufacture it. Al Alcorn took the design back to Atari and consulted with his research and development team. In the end, they decided to bring in an expert to finish the project.

Harold Lee, who co-designed
Home Pong
, told Alcorn that the only person who could build a chip as complex as Stella was a man named Jay Miner—the chief microprocessor designer at Synertech, a company that created custom chips for Atari.

Following Lee’s advice, Alcorn went to Synertech and asked the company to loan him Miner as a consultant.

After he had secured Miner to lead the Stella development team, Alcorn selected other members. The final team included Larry Wagner, a mathematician who was already programming games, and Joe Decuir, a skilled engineer.

Once the work started, Miner proved himself quickly. By most accounts, Miner was an austere and brilliant man. He often brought his small cockapoo, Mitchie, to work and usually remained at his desk late into the evening. When the team had problems, Miner invented ingenious solutions, and the team was able to finish Stella on schedule.

When a second member of the team approached Alcorn about bringing his dog to work, he received this response. “That mangy golden retriever?” Alcorn snapped. “You bring that animal here and I’ll have the guards shoot it on sight. You start doing work like Miner and get yourself a decent dog and we’ll talk about it.”

Mayer’s decision to use the 6507 microprocessor proved correct. Not only would Atari’s new game system be less expensive to build than the RCA and Fairchild game consoles, it would process information more quickly. Officially named the “Video Computer System” (VCS), Atari’s new console was more than a game machine; it was a computer with a eight-bit processor.

Bushnell worried that once he unveiled his new system, the “jackals” would start imitating it. The only way to stop them, he decided, was to saturate the market before his competitors came out with similar products. He would catch the market by surprise and take it by storm.

Before Bushnell could move ahead with his plans, however, he needed another infusion of cash. By this time revenues from
Home Pong
sales had practically disappeared, and the coin-operated business was drying up. Too many people had purchased
Home Pong
or a similar system and no longer wanted to spend quarters to play “television games.”

By 1976, video games had made a permanent impact on the arcade industry. In an interview with
RePlay Magazine
, Joe Robbins, a vice president of Empire Entertainment, declared electromechanical games extinct:

If Robbins was correct, Atari would certainly be one of the companies to benefit most, but Midway had also distinguished itself with games like
Sea Wolf
, the most popular game of 1976. While Atari mostly created tennis, driving, shooting, and tank games, Midway produced innovative games about gunfights and naval battles.

Sea Wolf
represented a new high point in game presentation. Before
Sea Wolf
, most video-game cabinets looked similar. There were a couple of odd cabinets, such as
Computer Space
and
Space Race
, which were made out of fiberglass and had rounded corners, and
Maneater
, which had a cabinet shaped like a shark.

But for
Sea Wolf
, Midway attached a periscope in front of the screen for players to use for shooting torpedoes at ships and submarines. Hitting slow-moving ships earned few points. Hitting speedy PT boats earned more points.

The concept was not original. In 1966, Sega, the largest arcade company in Japan, created an electromechanical game called
Periscope
that used lights and plastic waves to simulate sinking ships from a submarine.
Periscope
was the first game to cost 25 cents per play. Prior to this, games cost a dime. Several arcade owners imported it to the United States, where it was imitated by many competitors—including Midway.

Sea Wolf
, which was another creation of Dave Nutting, did solid business, selling more than 10,000 machines. (A later color version,
Sea Wolf II
, sold an additional 4,000 units.) With few exceptions, however, the coin-operated video game was declining, and most games sold under 5,000 units.

The public was losing interest. The novelty of playing games on a television had disappeared. Video games had been around for four years. People even had them in their homes. Unless someone could come up with a method for restoring the novelty, it looked like the industry would continue to stagnate.

The slow demise of video games did not necessarily hurt arcade owners. Pinball made a strong comeback in 1976. The first generation of solid-state pinball machines appeared in arcades. Though solid-state pinball machines played like older games, they had the advantage of scoring memory, allowing the game to recognize the playfield for the progress of each player from ball to ball.

Even Atari, the company that started video games, began manufacturing pinball games. Under Bushnell’s direction, the company opened a special pinball division that created extra-wide pinball machines.

Around this time, Steve Jobs left Atari to dedicate himself to manufacturing and selling the computers he created with Steve Wozniak. Jobs asked Bushnell to invest in his company, but Bushnell declined. Jobs finally approached Don Valentine for capital. Valentine insisted on some special arrangements. Jobs agreed, and Apple Computer was born.