Baer's Odyssey
May 16, 2007 6:01 PM   Subscribe

Console Portraits: A 40-Year Pictorial History of Gaming. Inventor Ralph Baer designed the first videogame console for the home. In May 1967 he played the first-ever two-player game. "I lost!" Baer notes. At times offensive and controversial, console videogames have survived hard times to remain at the forefront of videogame history, and at times a reflection of ourselves.
posted by NationalKato (19 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
He's in this (pretty good) little documentary, too.
posted by interrobang at 6:27 PM on May 16, 2007


Custer's Revenge in action.
posted by CaptMcalister at 6:30 PM on May 16, 2007


Sometimes I wish I'd've found one of these gathering dust somewhere and gutted it to house my PC system.
posted by pax digita at 6:45 PM on May 16, 2007


I played Custer's Revenge on an emulator once. Rather boring for a racist rape sim.
posted by brundlefly at 6:59 PM on May 16, 2007


I've still got a first generation 1976 Coleco Telstar sitting in the livingroom, with the original box! It comes with three games: tennis, hockey (tennis but with goal posts) and (I shit you not) hand ball. It becoming harder and harder to find a TV I can hook it up to.
posted by furtive at 7:16 PM on May 16, 2007


The only console I ever owned was this. The damn thing was already 12 years old when I got it.
posted by brundlefly at 7:20 PM on May 16, 2007


pax digita wrote: Sometimes I wish I'd've found one of these gathering dust somewhere and gutted it to house my PC system.

BLASPHEMER! [points finger accusingly]
posted by retronic at 7:27 PM on May 16, 2007


Seriously though, cool post...I can't get enough of this kinda tech-nostalgia.
posted by retronic at 7:28 PM on May 16, 2007


I remember in 1974 we had a weird triangular video game console. Each face of the triangle had a different game: Pong, a shooting game, and a driving game (with steering wheel). I've never seen it referenced anywhere in these lists or on Wikipedia. I'm starting to wonder if I'm hallucinating that we had it.
posted by hodyoaten at 8:09 PM on May 16, 2007


The greatest accomplishment of my life was beating the Atari E.T. game.

At least, I think I beat it...
posted by dirigibleman at 8:12 PM on May 16, 2007


hodyoaten, are you thinking of the Telstar Arcade?
posted by psmith at 8:27 PM on May 16, 2007


I played Custer's Revenge on an emulator once. Rather boring for a racist rape sim.

Custer's Revenge fails to tell the whole story. To be honest, I'm not sure what was going on.
posted by BostonJake at 8:42 PM on May 16, 2007


I wonder why I look back at the NeoGeo and I don't wonder why it failed with it's 600$ price tag, but I look at the PS3 with the same price and I assume it'll be around for another 7 to 10 years.

Maybe it's because I'll end up buying a ps3 just to play Final Fantasy XIII.
posted by stavrogin at 11:21 PM on May 16, 2007


Wow, that's not very thorough.

We started off with an Atari 2600 (if we're not counting computers -- a TI994A) and spent a bit of time at friend's houses with Intellivision and Colecovision (with the steering wheel and pedal, natch), and even Leisure Vision before hitting Nintendo.

But before the 2600, I would regularly go over to a family friend's house to play on their Atari, which was a no-cartridge beast of something like 6 games. Can't seem to find any pics on the web, and certainly not in this article.
posted by dreamsign at 1:48 AM on May 17, 2007



Wow, that's not very thorough.


It is in Wired after all.
posted by mrmojoflying at 5:59 AM on May 17, 2007


psmith said: hodyoaten, are you thinking of the Telstar Arcade?

That's it!!! You rock!
posted by hodyoaten at 6:39 AM on May 17, 2007


Cool post. Here's another good console history site.
posted by Otis at 8:28 AM on May 17, 2007


Not a very thorough article at all. According to slide 45, they released Playstation 4 last year.
posted by Frasermoo at 5:10 PM on May 17, 2007


Frasermoo, that's obviously a typo. They follow the mistake with an explanation of the PS3's pricing problems.
posted by NationalKato at 8:05 AM on May 18, 2007


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