Whenever we look back at the past we realize that there were many consoles which were totally unnoticed by many factors, such as bad sales, terrible marketing, among others. The good thing about being able to observe them in the present is that it allows us to see what influenced the gaming area until it evolved into what we know today.
Coleco was one of the developers that between the 70's and 80's launched a group of video consoles which in some way influenced the evolution of video games, one of the most famous was ColecoVision as it had a considerable amount of 6 million units sold.
However, before ColecoVision this company launched several video consoles which were known as the "Telstar". Coleco started its production since 1976 launching several models which each had some improvements in the gameplay, which is currently considered as rare and forgotten is the Coleco Telstar Arcade.
The Telstar Arcade was launched in 1977 as the most advanced video console in the Telstar series due to its diversity in terms of gameplay. This console was shaped like a triangle and on each side you could see controls which defined the way we could play the different titles offered by the developers.
On the "A" side we can find the classic controls of the video game Pong which were present in the previous Telstar, thanks to these you could play certain video games which had a gameplay similar to Pong, having the possibility of playing up to two players simultaneously.
On the "B" side or also known as Quick Draw I had a gun which allowed us to play different Shooter style games, very similar to Duck Hunt (the classic game where we had to shoot some ducks and the dog would make fun of us if we didn't hit it). Certainly this side of the game changed drastically the way of playing that the Telstar saga kept.
Finally, we have the "C" side also known as Road Race was the most striking of all, contained a steering wheel and a gear lever, clearly indicating that this was a control for car games, this was something very advanced for the date of its release as no console offered you natively a control of these features.
For the Coleco Telstar Arcade, 4 cartridges were launched, each containing 3 games which were played on each side of the console. These were triangular in shape, preserving the aesthetic appearance of the system, as well as being programmed under the MOS Technology chip MPS-7600-00x which had a capacity of 512 ROM.
Everything pointed to the fact that it was a really amazing game console with unique gameplay at the time, but why did it fail in the market? At the same time as the Telstar Arcade, one of the most successful consoles on the market was launched, called the Atari 2600, completely overshadowing it due to the huge catalogue of games developed for it.
In addition, the developers were not interested in programming video games for the Telstar Arcade because of Coleco's policies, which led consumers to opt for another console. This is considered somewhat unfortunate since, thanks to its controls, it had the possibility of developing excellent video games, making it a very attractive option for video players.
In spite of being a commercial failure, it is still an interesting and very advanced video game console for its time, its different game modes make it a quite pleasant entertainment center. If it had only had more video games and a little more marketing perhaps its history would have been different, but this aspect is already impossible to change, leaving it as a forgotten and unknown console today.
Did you know the Coleco Telstar Arcade? Tell me your opinion about it in the comments section.
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