History of Digital Games

Chapter 5

Cartridges and Home Consoles (1976–1984)

The Second Generation of Home Consoles

Dedicated units that played variations of ping-pong dominated the first generation of home consoles. A major drawback of these machines, however, revolved around their inability to offer new content; once the novelty of playing the game wore off, players quickly tired of them. As discussed in Chapter 3, these machines flooded consumer outlets in the mid- to late 1970s and contributed to the market crash of 1977. Just prior to this slowdown, however, Fairchild Semiconductor followed by Atari each explored an alternative approach to home consoles (Figure 5.1). This approach took inspiration from computers as a single program could be switched into and out ...