As you may have guessed by this point, I love video games. I love playing video games, I love talking about video games, I love reading, writing and watching things about video games. Fuck, a third of the articles prior to this one had been about them. This one is about them as well but let’s, be honest, created a far less impressive statistic.
But there is a reason for that kind of frequency, and it goes beyond simple fondness. Video games, seemingly more-so than any other medium, have gone out of their way to try and establish some form of unity between them. There are many possible reasons for this, but they mainly come back to the fact you will generally be playing these things with a little piece of plastic in your hands, and not a jack-lead, plunged into the top of your spine and reading your every thought like you’ve planned a trip to the fucking Matrix.
Films, TV and books go out of their way to fill the consumer in on what they (or the characters) are witnessing. Video games, particularly early video games, bear an odd kinship to music. Whilst early sprites and / or lyrics can help build some kind of context for what you’re taking in, it is nothing without the mechanics of the game or song around it. As such, more idiosyncratic patterns can emerge through desperate necessity to have an easy in for new players / listeners, and behind them more intricate ideas can build up. Admittedly I have not yet written an article about music, but with musical culture being so fractured as to what people have or haven’t heard (not to mention my own horribly obscure musical taste) I know there’s only so many references someone can read and not be familiar with before they give up.
I currently have 2 gaming consoles in my room, not counting my computer or phone (Steam doesn’t matter, for some reason computers will always be the outcasts in this playground). They consist of the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s Wii. They got me thinking. People have picked on Nintendo a lot over the last decade or so for having intolerably stupid console names, but do they deserve it? Or have we just become numbed by repetition. By the time the Wii U came around, the majority of mocking seemed to come from the fact that it sounded like a siren, or that if the homophonics weren’t there “U” is a ridiculous letter to include in a title. In only 6 years, people had become so used to the idea that Nintendo had made the insane decision to name anything “Wii” that it was barely mentioned. So, has there ever been a decent name for a console, or are we all so easily worn and manipulated that we’ve been eating shit for years? Let’s find out. Over an 8 part series. Sorry.
Contrary to popular belief, the first generation of home gaming consoles did not include the fucking NES. Nor did it include the Atari 2600. There was one generation before even those dinosaurs. And our pelycosaur era consists of 4 consoles. I should mention, my ground rules are basically whatever Wikipedia says with regard generation grouping, goes. Which is my cowardly way of telling you that this generation’s technically going to end in 1978 and the next one will start in 1976. Fucking Wikipedia…
The first home gaming console of all time was the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. By all accounts it was revolutionary… and shit. Due to a desire to keep costs down (a desire which was then ignored by parent companies and retailers alike upon release) the Odyssey was an incredibly basic system. It didn’t have bad graphics, it had no fucking graphics at all. Instead it used printed overlays, placed on top of the screen, and all of its games were centred around the idea of either two distinct oblongs moving around the screen of controlled by each player, or the same thing but with a third dot moving of its own volition, being batted by the players. This third dot would later be grounds for the company trying to sue Atari for stealing their idea to make Pong. Like I said, it was revolutionary… and shit. But does it have a good name? A bit. At first glance it seems workable. Odyssey denotes a journey, this was the first console. Magnavox sounds interesting, it means “great voice” in Latin… But ultimately? An odyssey isn’t the beginnings of a journey, it’s the whole damn thing. The guise of history once again fools us into imagining meaning, but ultimately the point in the name, on some level at least, was trying to say that “it’s all come down to this”. If you want proof of how much bullshit that statement is, just search the name on youtube. And past that? Magnavox is just a company name. Not to mention, it’s the name of the company whom had raped and pillaged the poor designer Ralph Baer’s dream of an affordable product, after he had cut so much away to try and make that dream happen. A constant reminder of corporate greed and screwing people over. So, does the Magnavox Odyssey have a decent name? A bit. It still sounds a tiny bit cool.
Next up, released in 1975 is the Philips Tele-Spiel. Evidently very little is known about this console. What is known is that it was a Pong console with interchangeable cartridges. The cartridges came under such titles as Ghost Chaser and Racing. However, whether any of these games differed greatly from just looking like Pong is anyone’s fucking guess. I found 3 separate videos of gameplay online. They all looked like Pong. Make of it what you will. As for the name? It’s actually not too bad. The name translates to Tele-Game in English. Unfortunately, for the sake of fairness we then have to include all the international names, and Finland’s offering of the Tele-Peli really kicks any hope of credibility into the dirt.
Also in 1975 came Germany’s Video 2000 console. Jesus fuck… I thought the Tele-Spiel was a bitch to try and research. This is worse. But then, what do you care? You’ve never heard of any of these. And neither has anyone you know. You’re not gonna buy them, you’re not gonna play them… what is this, a review all of a sudden? Yes, yes it is. But (thankfully) not of the console itself. The Video 2000 introduces a stupid, long standing concept to console naming. One that has mostly died out, but that we will see time and time again over this series. The idea of adding numbers to the end of a name to make it sound future-y. It didn’t work in old sci-fi, it doesn’t work here… frankly the only time it might have ever worked is when it was used to add a flourish to Harry Potter’s fucking broom. So, is Interton’s Video 2000 a good name? Fuck no.
And our final entry into the first generation may just be my least favourite. Not just because it was late (by 2 bloody years), not for any of the reasons I have already listed, but because it just sounds so gun-totingly American. We’re talking of course about the Coleco Telstar Arcade. It’s worth pointing out that a version of the Coleco console did come out in 1976 (still a little behind, but who cares), but that doesn’t escape the fact that a version also came out in 1978. These machines prolonged the closure of an age for 3 years after anyone else was trying to keep it open. And the reason I decided to specifically talk about the Telstar Arcade is it’s the only one people have any recollection of, probably due to it being ugly as sin. A huge triangular contraption with fake wood furnishings, Each side covered with its own set of questionably functional accessories, and a triangle in the top in which to slot the awkward, triangular cartridges. And to my knowledge, unlike any of the consoles beforehand, the Telstar has more gameplay capability than slightly tweaked pong! So why does it suck? Why did I decide to pick on this one? Because “Coleco Telstar Arcade” sounds like what would happen if you forced John Wayne to give a full name to his horse.
And so we leave the first generation of consoles, without having made a dent on the thesis on a lack of credible console names. But it’s just the first step of the journey. And we have a long, long, long way ahead of us.
Next Gen Please!
theburfdefect 