I remember an Atari 2600 clone that was on the shelves in Kmart Australia in the mid to late 80's. Black and White only display for a price of about $30.
The Interton VC4000 was manufactured in Ireland under an agreement which meant that all machines and cartridges had to be exported - they were not supposed to be on sale in Ireland. From memory this was due to some agreement with the Irish tax authorities, although as with all such things, details are/were kept under wraps. In the end the console did eventually go on sale here in Ireland - I know this because I sold them where I worked.
That's very interesting. It might have also been something to do with the way the technology was licensed to different companies with regional exclusivity, although I'm pretty sure a lot of the people building APVS consoles never did it officially!
The arcade style sticks of the Tele Fever 8:55 are pretty striking. I also find it interesting how closely the look and feel of the games are to VIC-20 (which didn't have sprites, but had the same pixel size and many games used 8x8 softsprites).
"Console variations" - Proceeds to show the Phillips VideoPac looking more like a computer than a console. I know it's a variation of a console and the original system looks more like a microcomputer anyway due to it's keyboard, but it's still rather funny. 4:10 - Gosh, the Bang & Olufsen BeoCenter AV5 CD-i is one heck of a mouthful. I've always been fascinated by those TVs with built in console sets though this is certainly a new one I hadn't heard of before. The shoot em up on show is also new to me; looks rather neat and vibrant. 8:52 - That console does look pretty cool. Metallic Blue is a great look for video game systems (got both my DS and 3DS in it's colour) and the large joystick and fire button has nostalgic old-school joystick look to it that has plenty of charm.
Nice vid :) My brother and I had our first console experience with a German Pong clone in the early/mid 80's a hand-me-down probably from the late 70's; all I remember is that is was black, had two controllers with rotary input and one button, one or two orange or red square buttons, a couple of sliders, a clicky rotary switch on the base for selecting "Tennis" or "ping pong" etc with pictograms (like European informational signs), and it was called /something/ like Tele-Sport or Tele-Game or something similar. I've found that it's incredibly difficult trying to search for a specific console among the German pong clones, there were incredibly many of them.
I truly would love to own one of those videopac machines! I didn't think that at the offset, but with captured gameplay of Pick Axe Pete, Alien Invaders Plus and others (notably missing Monkeshines and Turtles), I was reminded of the affection I maintain for my very first (and only) gaming console, the Odyssey II. Would be a bitch to try to connect "The Voice" module with that crt in the way though, so KC will be mute. That being said, what can be said of Bang and Olufsen design esthetics? They understood how to tease the future in all their products. I chose the TI 99/4A as my first (and most cherished) computer, because it reminded me of my B&O receiver of the time, with the brushed aluminum and black competing against all that beige that was prevalent. I eventually switched to Harman Kardon for audio quality, but the B&O surely was a stunner to look at. (as was the TI)
The VC4000s specs are from the wrong website. The CPU walks at 0.88 MHz (you can't call that running), it has 37 bytes of RAM (which is also the title of a C64 style demo I wrote for the thing), but yeah, if you're fine with only having only one sprite on the entire screen, it can be 8 colors indeed but no game used that (although a few games combine two sprites to make a three color plus transparency one, two of them written by me) Btw. lol half the games you show weren't even released for the VC4000, only for some of the fully compatible clone systems. I prefer the VC4000 over the Arcadia 2001. Granted, there aren't that many bad games on the Arcadia than on the Interton, but the best games on the Arcadia are... meh... where as the Interton has a couple of really nice and fun games if you know where to look. Hint: Super Invaders is my favorite. Two players at the same time, more depth to the gameplay than visible on the surface (you gotta hit the UFO, not the invaders and it's easier said than done *cough* hyperspace *cough*). Also the maze game is amazing if you have two players, and the insane amount of PONG games in that cart - it even has Versus Breakout! And, shameless plug, my port of Canabalt isn't too shabby either (although I'd rate my own Flappy Bird port among the worst games for the system) Btw. the regular 7200 looks suspiciously like the first generation Minitel terminals too.
I have a 1968 bang&olufson beomaster 900 that is still being used today as our main hi fi amp! It cost 200 notes in 68....my grandma went mental at my mother for buying it. Lol. Shame bang&olufson is just philips now....
I bet that CDi all-in-one deal was stupidly expensive when it released. Here in the US the CDi was like 600 bucks by itself. Wait a minute...wasn't the CDi capable of playing Sega Genesis/Sega CD and TG-16/Super CD ROM ROM games with the appropriate modules? If true, I wonder if this all-in-one crazy console/entertainment CDi setup has both modules already built in?
Well I do like the Black Irish Atari 2600 Jr. it's a shame they did not use that style elsewhere, but oh well at least I had my Atrai 2600 (The Vader Variant). I also love the B&O TV. Even though it had the meh CD-I you could still hook up a better console to the thing. I'd just hate having to move that thing around the though.
@@TheLairdsLair I have seen that and those are still literally Chinese and I consider Korea as partly Japanese because of similarity of language and culture. So my question remains as to if there are other obscure consoles from the likes of Vietnam, Laos, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Thailand etc. Thanks