I really think we lost something in game console design over the years. Maybe it's just the retro appeal after the fact, or secondhand nostalgia for parents' and cousins' machines I played with as a kid, but I love the look of the consoles in the 70s and 80s. Sure, some of them were ugly as sin, but some of them were gorgeous.
The Magnavox Odyssey, released 1972. The Odyssey series were true games centres, and came with games boards and accessories as combo boardgame/video games. This thing just looks futuristic, even fifty years later.
The Odyssey 300, one of its successors. Who says the 70s were all brown? This one came out in 1976, so we're still in preprogrammed consoles here.
The TV Tennis or Electrotennis, by Epoch Co. Released in Japan in 1975, the country's first home console. All these games were basically tennis games, like the classic:
Atari Home Pong Tele-Game. Simple, clean, means business.
The Color-TV Game Block Kuzushi. This was part of the first series of Nintendo consoles. This particular one was released in 1979 and played a Breakout-clone. Shigeru Miyamoto codesigned this one, two years before creating Donkey Kong.
The Fairchild Video Entertainment System or Channel F from 1975. I love the wood veneer finish. We should bring that back. Pure 70s. This was the first console to use game cartridges, and the first console with a pause control!
The Bally Astrocade. Also known by various other names, but "Astrocade" is unbeatable. Released in 1977, discontinued, then relaunched around '82. Very sophisticated for its time, with 28 "Videocades" available holding one or two games each.
The Atari 2600, AKA Atari VCS and Tele-Games Video Arcade. Released in 1977, and it looks like it. It looks like it's made of chocolate.
The Epoch Cassette Vision, a strange cart-based console from Japan in 1981. It played a bunch of arcade knockoffs but looked sleek and futuristic doing it.
The original Nintendo Game & Watch, playing Ball, released in 1980. Created by the legend Gunpei Yokoi, who also invented the D-Pad!
More to come I feel, these are just too beautiful.
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