History Of All Video Game Consoles

Writing the history of all video game consoles is quite a challenge. The information on this page covers console history for the period of 1977 to 1980.

During this period Atari were one of the main players in the home console market and they released a series of original consoles. In 1977 they brought out Video Pinball which included the games Pinball, Breakout and Basketball. Breakout was a Pong style game for one player, you had to bounce a ball off a group of tiles to break them and clear the level. This console used a controller with a dial and buttons on the side.

Atari Stunt Cycle was the next game to be released. This was another conversion from an arcade game machine, it was based on motorcycle stunt jumping that was quite popular at the time.

Later on that year they brought out the Atari Video Computer System that would later come to be known as the Atari 2600. This was the first system to use games on cartridges that were slotted in to the top of the machine. There were nine different titles available to play on it's release and it came with one button joysticks to use as controllers.

1977 was a strong year for home games consoles, Coleco released two. One called Combat and the other was known as the Alpha. The Combat console revolved around four versions of a tank war game. The console itself was designed with tank style control handles to try and make it stand out from the competing computer systems. The Alpha was another Pong type game console with 3 different games to play at 3 varying levels of difficulty. It was quite a success due to it's low cost at around half the price of Atari's Pong.

To find out more information on the history of all video game consoles visit the A Brief History Of The Video Game Console page.