First and Second Generations of video game consoles
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the video game market experienced an explosion of products hoping to capitalize on the success of the Odyssey and Atari. From the nigh-infinite Pong clones to the suspiciously similar consoles, consumers had far more options than they do today. This is a list of those first and second generation machines. Not all of them can be emulated or preserved, though some that can't be emulated have simulations instead. See also Strange and Forgotten Console emulators, a similar page for the 90s and 2000s.
First Generation (Pong Consoles)
It's Pong. You can play it anywhere. Emulating first generation systems like these can be tricky, as the games were heavily tied to their hardware, and most were just variations of Pong.
- Only 4 cartridges were released for this triangular abomination, but because of the console's design they can't be dumped and "emulated." They're more like activation discs for data already in the console. No known emulators.
- Besides the normal Odyssey and Odyssey² consoles released in 1972 and 1978 respectively, Magnavox also produced the X00 and X000 series (1975-1977) of home Pong consoles. Released models were: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 2000, 3000 and 4000. Then owner Philips also released three Odyssey variants in Europe between 1976-1978. They played "Ball and Paddle" games such as Hockey, Tennis, Smash, Squash and others. No known emulator exists for any of these machines.
Second Generation (Cartridge Consoles)
Best-selling game consoles: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey², ColecoVision.
|Name||MAME support||No-intro collection||Internet Archive||Description|
|APF Imagination Machine/M-1000||Good||✗||✓||A PC with a game console mounted on top of it 32X-style (take that, master race!) Only 25 games were released (15 cartridges), one being built-in, and a lot of homebrews. ROMs are here.|
|Atari 2600||Good||✓||✓||ROM Hunter v13 Collection|
|Bally Astrocade[N 1]||Good||✗||✓||TOSEC|
|Bandai Super Vision 8000[N 1]||Good||✗||✓||Only 7 games.|
|Emerson Arcadia 2001[N 2]||Decent||✓||✓||TOSEC|
|Entex Adventure Vision||Decent||✓||✓||Like the Vectrex, this console had its own screen and operated like a miniature arcade cabinet. Only four games were released for it. TOSEC|
|Epoch Cassette Vision||None||✗||✗||Only 11 games exist for this console, and none have been dumped because of the cartridge design. Apparently, the BIOS for the console is inside each cart. Latest MAME forum thread.|
|Fairchild Channel F||Good||✓||✓||No-intro|
|Fairchild Channel F II||Good||NA||An update to the Channel F, with no exclusive games.|
|Intellivision II||Good||NA||An update to the Intellivision, with no exclusive games.|
|RCA Studio II||Decent||✓||TOSEC|
|Interton VC 4000[N 3]||Decent||✗||Has 40 games. ROMs are here|
- Emulated by MAME only.
- Clones and variants: Advision Home Arcade, Arcadia, Cosmos, Dynavision, Ekusera, Hanimex MPT-03, HMG-2650, Home Arcade Centre, Intelligent Game MPT-03, Intercord XL 2000 System, Intervision 2001, ITMC MPT-03, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, Ormatu 2001, Palladium Video-Computer-Game, Polybrain Video Computer Game, Poppy MPT-03 Tele Computer Spiel, Prestige Video Computer Game MPT-03, Robdajet MPT-03, Rowtron 2000, Schmid TVG-2000, Sheen Home Video Centre 2001, Soundic MPT-03, Tele Brain, Tele-Fever, Tempest MPT-03,Tobby MPT-03, Trakton Computer Video Game, Tryom Video Game Center, Tunix Home Arcade, UVI Compu-Game, Video Master
- Clones: Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, Jeu Video TV, Super Play Computer 4000, etc.
|Name||MAME support||No intro collection||Description|
|Milton Bradley MicroVision||Preliminary||✗||12 games were made. A Windows emulator that is front-end friendly can be found here, with all known games included.|