When Fairchild introduced the Video Entertainment System in August, 1976, it hoped to develop a new cartridge for the system each month. But delays in getting approval for the system from the Federal Communications Commission back Fairchild's timetable. Only a small supply of systems and three different cartridges were available for the Christmas, 1976, season.
In January, 1977, Fairchild revealed that it had developed three more cartridges, increasing its library to a total of six. The games provided by each cartridge are described in table two.
RCA revealed that it was developing a programmable TV game in September, 1976, and projected March, 1977, for initial deliveries.
The RCA unit employs its 1802 microprocessor and uses a keyboard to control action. There are two banks of keys with ten keys for each player. The system comes with five built-in game programs; additional programs are provided by plug-in semiconductor read-only memories.
The RCA system is the first TV game model to offer bowling. The alley is presented on the screen with the foul line running from left to right at the bottom of the screen. The ball is released when it is in the desired position by touching a key on the keyboard. Other keys provide "curve-up," "curve-down," or "no-curve" as desired by the player. The pins don't ricochet off each other; they are wiped of the screen if they are in the path of the ball.
Similarly, a TV-version of Etch-a-Sketch is controlled by pushing appropriate keyboard buttons for various directions of "etch" travel on the screen.
The fourth category is electronic game kits. TV game kits are an area of the market on the decline as a result of General Instrument's 6-games-on-a-chip AY-3-8500. The GI integrated circuit sealed the fate of the TV game kit business by dramatically lowering the cost of assembled games. Visulex, a pioneer in the TV game kit business, fared well for a time because it didn't have to get FCC approval in order to market a product. To continue in business, Visulex is redesigning its game kits so that they can be used in schools for training in circuit analysis and assembly techniques.
The next category is built-in TV games and is concerned with television receivers, such as one introduced by Magnavox during 1976, that include game generation as an integral part of the receiver.
In Atari's game "Outlaw," the player tests fast-draw ability against the machine's cowboy.
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