# Old Electronic Games **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 12, 2020, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830 "2020-10-12T22:02:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/21 "2020-10-13T03:53:53Z")
A Nixie tube is basically a neon lamp with cathodes shaped like numerals (or letters, or a few other things). Apply a voltage to the cathode and the neon around it glows. It’s not a vacuum tube–it is actually filled with neon at low pressure. A VFD is under a vacuum, and the light comes not from a glowing gas but from a phosphor that emits light when electrons hit it. It’s similar to a cathode ray tube, except there’s no electron gun, just cathode elements that emit electrons. Since the color depends on the phosphor type, this enabled multi-color displays. Also, the cathodes can be more easily made into complicated shapes, so it works well for 7-segment displays, game graphics, etc. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/22 "2020-10-13T03:55:02Z")
Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/23 "2020-10-13T03:58:01Z")
Sure thing! There are lots of funny display types around and these two do both work by some kind of electron emission business, so confusion is understandable. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/24 "2020-10-13T03:58:09Z")
I had the Mattel Electronic Football game from around 1978, the play of which bore only a vague resemblance to football – it was essentially just trying to not let your LED get run into by the computer’s LEDs. [![](https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/Mattel-Football.jpg) ](https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/Mattel-Football.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/25 "2020-10-13T04:06:50Z")
That looks a lot like what was called “Electronic Quarterback” in Canada. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/26 "2020-10-13T04:19:02Z")
Electronic? How about electric games? When I was a young teen, my dad and I each got an electric draw poker game for Christmas. His was about 4 inches long, 5 inches high, and an inch and a half thick. It had five windows, each with a button under them, and a handle to activate it. It was supposed to resemble a slot machine. When the handle was pulled reels with card values under the little windows would spin and then stop when the button was pushed. If you wanted to, you could pull out a button and push it in again. This was the “draw” feature. My game was smaller at 2x2x4 inches. It worked the same way, but had a button on the end instead of a slot machine handle. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/27 "2020-10-13T04:25:22Z")
I had a few **Pocketeers** games including a poker slot machine. They were fun way back in the day (1970s Nintendo), and some were very clever. I’d completely forgotten about those. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/28 "2020-10-13T07:47:56Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > What about mechanical games? Almost every male Canadian kid my age grew up with a tabletop game of hockey. Long rods were used to move the players within slots and make them spin around to pass and shoot the puck. Goalies just moved from side to side. My family had a [table hockey game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_hockey_games) also. It was quite fun. I actually liked it more than [foosball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_football), another game we had at home. A favorite of mine, though, was the table-top air hockey game we had. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/29 "2020-10-13T12:24:13Z")
I played that approximately one million times against my brother. Years later, a kid that a friend of mine was babysitting challenged me to a game of Electronic football, not knowing I was a ringer… Remember mechanical games like this one [Blip (console) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blip_(console)) (it may look electronic but the light that you were trying to hit back and forth was physical - attached to gearing, with a LED on top). ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/30 "2020-10-13T13:55:21Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > What about mechanical games? Almost every male Canadian kid my age grew up with a tabletop game of hockey. Long rods were used to move the players within slots and make them spin around to pass and shoot the puck. Goalies just moved from side to side. None of my friends had the elaborate versions with electronic lights and scoreboard or plastic domes - which you did not exactly need. I have literally no idea if these games are still even a little popular, but in our digital era am guessing “nope”. You sometimes still see a high end version in pubs. I had one of those as a kid in Germany and loved it, as did all my friends. It even had goal lights and the goalies could move through a curve to the back of the goal. The goal lights simply worked by the weight of the puck, which fell into a pit onto a metal plate that closed the circuit. That was cool the first few times, but when the batteries ran out, I never bothered to change them. It also had mechanical scoreboards. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/31 "2020-10-13T17:33:47Z")
I still have the [Coleco Pac-Man Mini Arcade Game](http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/1981/pac-man-mini-arcade/), it worked last I tried it. I also had a [GCE Arcade-Time Watch](https://www.handheldmuseum.com/GCE/ArcadeTime.htm) that was really cool, it had a little joystick and would play different games. It was fun to sneak a few game rounds in class, I think I got caught more than once and the watch confiscated until the end of the day. ---
**Author:** ![Precambrianmollusc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/precambrianmollusc/32/63_2.png) [@Precambrianmollusc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Precambrianmollusc)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/32 "2020-10-13T17:38:11Z")
We had the Star wars electronic battle command game, must have been 1980. My dad brought it back from the US and it was awesome. I can’t remember the game play other than you woukd move your ship around ona 4x4 grid and occasionally bump into someone and then have to pick a direction to shoot in. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/33 "2020-10-13T18:31:42Z")
the success of that series led Mattel to develop the Intellivision system which was a rather sophisticated system > **[Intellivision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990 when the Intellivision was discontinue... ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/34 "2020-10-13T21:18:26Z")
Reminds me back when the “Console Wars” were between Atari, Intelivision, and ColecoVision. I had Coleco, best friend had Intelivision and his neighbor had an Atari. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/35 "2020-10-13T21:38:49Z")
I seem to remember the Intellivision being at a higher price point than Atari 2600s and ColecoVision consoles. Intellivision also had better graphics. Looking at the Wikipedia article linked, I was surprised to learn that Intellivision sold as many as 3 million units (unless that was worldwide, as opposed to U.S. only). Was also surprised to read that game development for Intellivision continued until 1990 – by then, Nintendo had made early-80s game systems a distant memory. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830/36 "2020-10-13T23:48:20Z")
> **[Electronic Plastic: COLECO Bowlatronic (1980)](http://www.electronicplastic.com/game/?company=&id=209&skip=0&filter=led&search=size:XL)** > > Electronic Plastic: with pics & details to more than 900 handheld and tabletop games from the 70s and 80s. We had this bowling game when I was a kid. If you hit a certain button just at the right time you’d get a strike every time. If I remember right your bowler character would do jumping jacks when you got so many strikes in a row. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-electronic-games/922830.md?page=1)