What's your opinion on the 2nd gen underdogs?Do you have a favorite?
>>12072865For me it's the Intellivision because it's all I knew as a boy besides the Atari 2600. Cloudy Mountain anons, ho!Dat dragon purr.
To expound a bit since the board is dead, my general opinion on second generation game systems is that they were all unknown dogshit except for the Intellivision and the Colecovision.Most of the USA probably didn't even know Bally console even existed unless the ones who paid super close attention to National Lampoon's Vacation.[fixed]
When I was a kid, everything pre NES was what I considered (and still do) to be "retro gaming". At an indoor flea market I would visit, on one trip, I got a boxed Odyssey 2 for 2 dollars with a bunch of games, a 2600 boxed with a bunch of games for 10 dollars and an Intellivision with a bunch of games for 12 dollars. 2600 was fine, but the Intellivision and Odyssey 2 were the ones that caught my attention more. Of the three I got, the Intellivision was definitely the best performing and the keypad controller and overlays was a really novel way to expand the stuff you could do. Loved the Imagic stuff on it and I would say they were better than what they released on the VCS. The Odyssey 2 though, something about it also really made me like it. I feel like its even more primitive in its games than what was on Atari, but they tried some interesting shit like the board game hybrids that went over the keyboard. It's something worth playing if you have someone else to play with and you can really see that some of the design philosophy was really built around it being a successor to the original Odyssey. As for the others in that pic, I picked up a Fairchild, but there was nothing really interesting on it that I played. I just picked up a Astrocade this year, but I havent spent too much time with it yet. I bought an Arcadia in a random ebay auction I won years ago, but I never got any games for it and I need to repair the RF cable. Colecovision I did get also as a kid after the other systems, but I always seemed to have hardware/video issues when running the games. I only recently got Adam and have been using that to play some stuff and I can see the appeal, probably on par with the Intellivision.But really if I had to pick anything from back then non microcomputer, even with its limited library, its the fucking Vectrex.
>>12072865Really, Colecovision is where 3rd gen started, since NES and SG-1000/Master system were influenced/based on it. 256 x 192 was a big deal at the time. So ColecoVision is my favorite just for the influence it had on later consoles that I love.
>>12072865I'd say out of these the intellivision is my favorite to play. When it comes to raw specs and the (potential) capabilities I gotta go with Astrocade. For being a late 70s console it's insane.
>>12073151I’ve been interested in the Astrocade. It looks cool, but the four color limit seems like a big limitation, and there didn’t really end up being any interesting original titles for it besides Artillery Duel. It makes up for it in many other ways, but the Intellivision still seems like the more impressive 70s console overall, even accounting for its later release.
I wouldn't consider the Intellivision/Colecovision to be underdogs, they were actual competitors. The Cassette vision was reigning "supreme" on its island as well so I'll ignore it despite it being virtually unknown to the average gen 2 enjoyer (you aren't missing out).The Channel F controllers are neat, the games generally too basic or improved on by contemporary machines. Video Whizball is really the only thing I can recommend.The Studio II is the 1st programmable console to be outdated. B&W, 10 button on-console keypad. Its games are all better played elsewhere. A color version does exist in the Studio III and the Japanese version has some "exclusives", but they're still not worth playing.The MP1000s only claim to fame is iirc being the first "pure" console to be convertible to a PC. Space Destroyers is a decent invaders clone. Baseball, Blackjack and Backgammon all look decent as well, though I can't remember if Baseball actually plays well (or badly for that matter).The Champion 2711 is the disabled brother of the Intellivision using the "mid-range" spec. This gives it no real graphical capabilities outside of text and card symbols. You are limited to card, basic puzzle and math for games.The Odyssey 2/Videopac G7000 isn't a particularly good looking system. It's got some solid games though. The G7400+ does add some backgrounds to a lot of the older games, even if technically not 2nd gen. For original games I liked Killer Bees and the Mousing Cat. Pretty decent homebrew community too.
>>12073386The 1292s/Interton 4000 was a low spec budget machine licensed out to a bunch of pongsole makers. Despite its measly 43 bytes of RAM (some versions as low as 37), It exceeded my 0 expectations with some fun clones and even downright ambitious titles. iirc it also has a hobby programmer expansion.The Arcadia/2001 family is basically the same as above, but a bit higher spec. 1 other distinction it has is that it licensed some of the lesser arcade games which have their only ports to this system. It also has some early Japanese licensed console games due to Bandai picking it up.The Astrocade has some pretty normal "official" titles, but it shines much more through its BASIC availability which turned it into an early homebrew machine. Its strength is also its main weakness as why not just get a popular console and PC instead of a hybrid?The Super Vision 8000 is an early Japanese programmable system that predates Epoch's machine. It got some ports of the typical 1979 arcade games with the only exceptions being Othello and Pac Pac bird. It can probably do much better with those specs.The Vectrex is up there when it comes to library quality and being vector based gets some unique ports. Also has some decent art software.If I had to pick a favourite out of all of these, it's probably the Signetics budget machines. Those are obviously tertiary to the bigger hitters of the generation.
>>12073386>I wouldn't consider the Intellivision/Colecovision to be underdogs, they were actual competitorsThey were actual competitors against each other, but the 2600 literally sold 10x more than either
