Past Of Video Game Consoles

 

Past Of Video Game Consoles

The history of video game consoles is very wide spread and very very rich. The first commercially sold home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey which hit store shelves in April of 1972.This paved the way for major technological developments in this previously unknown market which got better and better as the years passed by with more and more consoles being produced to keep up with demand. By 1982 there were over 36 different companied producing different consoles, each with its own uniqueness in both games and software that tried to appeal to the mass market.

Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) in 1976. While there had been previous game consoles that used cartridges, either the cartridges had no information and served the same function as flipping switches (the Odyssey) or the console itself was empty and the cartridge contained all of the game components. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions.

Atari soon released their own cartridge-based console. In 1977, Atari released its CPU-based console called the Video Computer System, later called the Atari 2600. Nine games were designed and released for the holiday season. It would quickly become by far the most popular of the early consoles. The unit was originally priced at US$199, and shipped with two joysticks and a Combat cartridge although eight additional games were available at launch and sold separately.