History of video games/Platforms/Coleco Telstar series

Development
Coleco was founded as the Connecticut Leather Company in west Hartford Connecticut in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg, a Russian immigrant.

The Coleco Telstar was devised as a home version of Pong in 1975. Shortly after product design began, Leonard Greenberg of Coleco discovered that home pong style games already existed.

Much of the Coleco Telstar had to be redesigned in a week to meet an FCC deadline, after they failed their first FCC compliance test. Coleco quickly signed a licensing agreement with Magnavox to consult with Ralph Baer, who successfully got the radio interference of the Telstar under control.

At least some units were made in the United States of America.

Launch


The first Coleco Telstar console was released in 1976 at a cost of $50 with the capability of playing Hockey, Tennis, and Handball. In 1976 over a million Coleco Telstars sold due to it's low price, which was about half of what competitors charged. Still sales were considerably hampered by a strike and material shortage at the critical lead up to the 1977 Christmas season.

In 1977 the Coleco Telstar deluxe was released exclusively for the Canadian market.

The Coleco Telstar consoles were followed by the ColecoVision.

Technology
The original Coleco Telstar used a General Instrument AY-3-8500. This inexpensive chip contained the game logic and graphical output functions.

The Telstar Arcade uses a very different triangle cartridge based system with each cartridge containing a MOS MPS 7600 processor, as well as game ROM. This cartridge based approach is completely different from every other Coleco Telstar console, which were dedicated consoles. However the console still shared the Telstar brand.

External Resources

 * Old Computers Museum - Coleco Telstar page with history and specs.
 * Pong Story - Coleco Telstar page with history and photos.
 * Video Game Console Library - Coleco Telstar page with history, specs, and photos.