 Not all consoles were rectangular boxes. Over in the United States back in 1932, Maurice Greenberg founded the Connecticut Leather Company, originally suppling leather for shoes. By the ‘50s they had grown and diversified into making leathercraft kits, thanks to Maurice’s son Leonard Greenberg. At the New York Toy Fair their Leather Moccasin Kit did very well, being selected as a Child Guidance Prestige Toy. Which convinced them to go full force into the toy market. Come 1961, the company’s continued and growing success in the toy manufacturing arena, inspired them to sell the leather part of the business and rebrand as Coleco Industries Inc. The following years saw more growth and acquisitions of other toy companies, making them even bigger. 1966 had Leonard’s brother Arnold Greenberg also joined the company. In 1976, with Arnold now CEO, Coleco and other companies witnessed the success of Atari’s home Pong console, so decided to jump on the bandwagon. They released their Coleco Telstar video game range in 1976. Between ‘76 and ‘78 Coleco shipped 14 video game consoles in the Telstar range, all clones and variations of Pong, some simple light gun shooting games and tank combat games. The games were the standard built in to the console affair, with switches to select variants, except for one. The 1977 Coleco Telstar Arcade. It had changeable game cartridges, that were triangular in shape. Wait!!! What??? Triangular? Yep that’s what I said. Triangle cartridges to match the triangle shaped console. The triangular shape of the Telstar Arcade console gave it three sides, providing three different types of control methods for the games. Styled in that 70’s brown with some fake wood panel effect stickers. One side had the traditional variable dials to allow control of two player pong type games. The second side had a holster for a realistic looking hand gun to play light gun games. And finally on the third, there was a steering wheel with gear shift for driving type games. Interestingly the console itself only provides power, video connections and a control interface. With the actual cartridges containing all the microchips need to run the game logic itself. Each silver triangle cartridge had a MOS technology MPS-7600 micro controller with a 512 word ROM, which plugged into the top of the console. Graphically games had a maximum of 4 colours, with sound being simple blips and bloops. There was a total of 4 cartridges released, with the first being included with the console: 1) Road Race, Tennis, Quick Draw. 2) Hockey, Tennis, Handball, Target. 3) Bonus Pinball, Shooting Gallery, Shoot the Bear, Deluxe Pinball. 4) Naval Battle, Speed Ball, Blast-Away. Cartridge 2 included an additional 2 paddle controllers to allow four player action. Retailing at $99.99 on launch, it failed to offer much over the many Pong clones that were all cheaper. And with the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 offering a wider range of games, Coleco could not compete and pulled the console after just a year of being on sale. But Coleco would have another go at a cartridge based video game console in 1982, with the Colecovision. - Asobi Quang DX November 2019 Back |