Series of home video game consoles
The Coleco Telstar brand is a series of dedicated first-generation home video game consoles produced, released and marketed by Coleco from 1976 to 1978. Starting with Coleco Telstar Pong clone based video game console on General Instrument's AY-3-8500 chip in 1976,[1] there were 14 consoles released in the Coleco Telstar series. About one million units of the first model called Coleco Telstar were sold.[2]
The large product lineup and the impending fading out of the Pong machines led Coleco to face near-bankruptcy in 1980.[3]
Model comparison
References
- ^ "The Next Generation 1996 Lexicon A to Z: Coleco". Next Generation. No. 15. Imagine Media. March 1996. p. 31.
- ^ Herman, Leonard (1997). Phoenix: the fall & rise of videogames (2nd ed.). Union, NJ: Rolenta Press. p. 20. ISBN 0-9643848-2-5. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
Like Pong, Telstar could only play video tennis but it retailed at an inexpensive $50 that made it attractive to most families that were on a budget. Coleco managed to sell over a million units that year.
- ^ "Coleco Industries. -ColecoVision History". colecovision.dk. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 October 2009. Retrieved 30 September 2009.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ a b c d e f Kaplan, Deeny, ed. (Winter 1978). "The Video Games". Video (Buyer's Guide). Vol. 1, no. 1. Reese Communications. pp. 17–30. ISSN 0147-8907.
- ^ a b c d e f Kaplan, Deeny, ed. (Winter 1979). "Video Games". Video (Buyer's Guide). Vol. 2, no. 1. Reese Communications. pp. 33–42. ISSN 0147-8907.
External links
- The ColecoVision, with 1982 TV commercial
- Pong-Story: All Coleco Telstar systems, with photos
- Telstar and other systems
- The Dot Eaters entry on the history of Telstar and Coleco
- The COLECO Story by Ralph H. Baer Archived 21 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- Feature titled "THE MOST BIZARRE CONSOLE FLOPS IN GAMING HISTORY" by ADAM JAMES at SVG.com