Nintendo’s Colour TV Sport 6 & 15

When you instructed Yamauchi Fusajiro that the little taking part in card enterprise he had simply began would someday promote online game consoles, he would don’t know what you have been speaking about. It was 1889, in spite of everything. However however, that’s precisely what occurred, and immediately everybody is aware of the title Nintendo. However what you may not know? A selected pair of Pong clones from the spunky little Kyoto people– their first consoles– are the worst Pong clones of the bunch. Why? And did they repair it?

The speedy historical past

After I say the Colour TV Sport collection lacks as a online game console, we have to have a look at the competitors is doing. Clearly the Colour TV Sport doesn’t even evaluate to the Turbo Duo, however outdoors of possibly a really fortunate thrift retailer go to, nobody is admittedly going to be deciding between these two techniques. Behold, a whirlwind tour of the historical past of Pong consoles.

Atari’s arcade Pong got here out in 1972, secretly impressed by the Magnavox Odyssey which got here out the identical yr. The Odyssey is a bizarre system although (very a lot in contrast to something that adopted it); it may well certainly play one thing like Pong, however scoring is totally handbook. Magnavox partnered with Nintendo to create the Odyssey’s gentle gun, however partnered with Epoch (of TV Vader fame) to launch a Pong-like system in that nation in 1975, the Electrotennis. That is credited as the primary home Japanese recreation, and likewise lacked on-screen scoring. I’ll admit I’m much less conversant in the Japanese market, however stories say that Electrotennis wasn’t the primary Pong console there, simply the primary home one.

On the finish of 1975, Atari launched House Pong in North America, initially by way of Sears. That is often credited as the primary residence Pong console to permit automated scoring in-game by displaying numbers on the display. This “digital” scoring was a killer app for its time. 1976 adopted with Basic Instrument’s AY-3-8500 chip. This well-known “Pong on a chip” (House Pong was additionally a Pong on a chip, however Atari didn’t promote it to outdoors firms) was utilized in a complete host of techniques. It had 4 built-in Pong variants and two gentle gun video games, and naturally digital scoring as effectively. The AY-3-8500 produced an enormous flood of near-identical consoles bought all around the world.

House Pong was colour, however the AY-3-8500 was largely utilized in monochrome video games, despite the fact that it might be “colorized”. Basically, the AY-3-8500 output totally different components of its sign (the paddles, the playfield, and so forth) on totally different pins; a colorizer chip (like GI’s personal AY-3-8515) may take these and combine totally different colours, whereas a monochrome system would simply tie the outputs collectively. And most AY-3-8500 techniques have been monochrome. Most additionally left off the sunshine gun, just like the Woolco TV Fun Game above, making them a four-game console.

So that is the state of Pong clones firstly of 1977. Nearly all have been monochrome (AY-3-8500 pioneer Coleco’s first colour system, the Telstar Colormatic, wouldn’t arrive till Christmas that yr). Magnavox did have the Odyssey 500, a colour system that appears unfair to Magnavox to name a Pong clone– extra on that in a later submit. In any case, the Odyssey collection wasn’t bought on the Japanese market, so far as I do know, and Epoch wouldn’t observe up the Electrotennis with the colour System 10 till later that yr. The common Pong was an AY-3-8500 recreation:

• 4 video games: Follow, Tennis, Hockey (generally known as Soccer), and Squash (generally name Handball or Jai Alai)
• Possibly two rarely-included taking pictures video games with a lightgun
• Nearly definitely no colours

And now, our protagonist. Nintendo Co. Ltd., is an organization that wants no introduction. Japan’s largest taking part in card firm, it had begun an aggressive diversification, getting into plenty of markets, largely with restricted success. However by the Seventies it had seen some success within the toy market and within the electromechanical arcade recreation market, and appeared ripe to enter the digital video games area.

That brings us to 1977. Nintendo has entered the online game market. What have they finished.

The Colour TV Sport 15

Nintendo launched two consoles in June of 1977: the Colour TV Sport 6 and the Colour TV Sport 15, differing within the variety of video games, whether or not the controllers are on strings, and naturally value: in accordance with this commercial, ¥9,800 for the 6 and ¥15,000 for the 15. That’s a reasonably good value! Electrotennis was ¥19,000 two years earlier, and lacked scoring, colour, or a number of video games.

This appears to have largely been a advertising segmentation transfer by Nintendo; the 2 techniques have very related inside {hardware} and the identical chip, with the extra video games simply being not accessible by the supplied controls. So I’ve the Colour TV Sport 15, and despite the fact that it got here out per week later, it’s equal sufficient.

The Colour TV Sport 15 will get its title from fifteen video games. Now, the sport selector swap solely has eight choices; the title counts the singles and doubles variants as separate video games. This truly appears truthful in context; the AY-3-8500 solely supplied doubles in Hockey, and no choice per recreation. (The final of the eight choices, Taking pictures Sport, is an exception, and we’ll get to it) And sure, it’s in full, superb colour, with on-screen scoring.

The internals come from a partnership with Mitsubishi. The principle chip is a Mitsubishi M58815P, and the smaller Mitsubishi M51342P is simply an RF modulator chip. Folks have finished video mods, however I’m simply utilizing RF over my not-particularly-great RF2AV field.

So far as I do know, the Mitsubishi M58815P was unique to Nintendo; nevertheless, it does have a PAL cousin, the M58813, which appeared in non-Nintendo techniques. Nintendo by no means bought any of the Colour TV Sport consoles outdoors Japan, however the identical precise chip powers each the Colour TV Sport 6 and Colour TV Sport 15. Which console has which video games?

For my cash, one of the best recreation might be Hockey Doubles. A or B; A provides some obstacles in the course of the display. Hockey Doubles, very like Hockey on the AY-3-8500, offers either side two paddles, however interleaves them, so it’s virtually like foosball.

Observe that an odd shortcoming right here of the Colour TV Sport: regardless of being colour, no effort is made to tell apart the 2 paddles for every participant. In fact, there’s no horizontal motion, so it’s by no means truly ambiguous whose facet is which. Nonetheless, in case you have colour, why not use it?

Tennis A, Volleyball A, and Volleyball B are all mainly simply “Pong with stuff within the center”, which behaves barely totally different based mostly off of recreation mode. Tennis B is your basic Pong-a-like. Doubles for all of those give every participant two paddles on their respective facet. There’s no equal to the AY-3-8500 Squash or Follow modes.

Ping Pong might be probably the most distinctive pong-a-like on this console, however extra distinctive from a conceptual standing than an precise enjoyable recreation mode. Basically you’ve got a facet view, however your paddles transfer as common; you may, nevertheless, get the ball to arc over the web. It’s a bit complicated perspective-wise, actually, however I’ve not seen every other Pong recreation prefer it.

After which there’s Taking pictures Sport. No actually, it is a taking pictures recreation.

It’s fairly stunning to me that this isn’t a lightgun recreation; Nintendo, in spite of everything, have been in all probability top-of-the-line on the earth at residence lightgun video games, and had made the lightgun for the unique Magnavox Odyssey. However I’m undecided if Nintendo truly had very a lot involvement within the chip; it looks like they have been largely performing the identical manner as Basic Instrument’s prospects did, taking an current chip and placing their very own field on it.

The taking pictures recreation works as follows: the best paddle blinks on and off. The left participant positions their paddle, after which presses the crimson button on the console. They need to hit the second participant’s paddle whereas it’s stable to attain a degree. The left quantity is the variety of factors scored, the best the variety of makes an attempt made– be aware, nevertheless, that when you swap modes mid-game, your rating holds over, despite the fact that it means one thing totally different right here.

The Colour TV Sport 15 will get its odd quantity by counting the singles and doubles variants of the Pong-like video games individually, after which provides the taking pictures recreation. However there is a taking pictures recreation doubles mode! It feels virtually prefer it shouldn’t be accessible, although.

You have got two paddles on both sides. Solely the farthest to the best paddle blinks, although, and the bullet is fired from participant 1’s leftmost paddle. It passes by way of participant 1’s second paddle (which subsequently does nothing on this recreation mode) and hitting both the flashing paddle or the always-opaque paddle offers participant 1 a degree, so it’s mainly straightforward mode. I can see why they didn’t rely this as its personal recreation.

However why is it dangerous?

So every part I described is mainly a reasonably regular, competent, Pong clone of its time. Digital on-screen scoring, colour graphics, paddles on a cable, and a lot of video games make it stand out; certain, its video games are arguably not as various because the AY-3-8500 video games, however there’s extra of them; and sure, the taking pictures recreation is simply bizarre. Nonetheless, a reasonably stable console at value. So what’s the catch?

The catch is these paddles. So, within the Seventies, controls for Pong video games was fairly easy: you used a potentiometer. Pong did it. The Odyssey did it earlier than them. All of the AY-3-8500 video games did it. Even the Apple ][ came with potentiometer-based paddles in 1977. I talk about this a bit in the Megumi Rescue post; the potentiometer has some clear characterstics that make it great in this role:

1. A potentiometer has a maximum and minimum value. They can’t spin indefinitely by the very nature of how they’re constructed, and each position of the pot maps to a point on screen.
2. You can move a potentiometer at varied speeds, and your character will move at varied speeds. This is an analog controller, not a digital left and right one. This is exactly what makes it so good for Pong-style games.

I’d go a step further and say the potentiometer is what makes a simple Pong game fun. It’s a basic electrical component that, when it becomes a game control, gives you near-perfect control over your paddle’s position. So let’s crack open the Color TV Game 15’s controller.

Sure, the controllers look like they have potentiometers. But any big fan of potentiometer control should be shocked when they hit reset on the Color TV Game 15:

The paddles snap back to the center. Remember, a potentiometer reads a physical value in the physical world– it can’t “snap back”, unless you hook it up to a motor to spin it into place, which Nintendo and Mitsubishi obviously didn’t do. (Though that would’ve been cool) So this isn’t a potentiometer.

Now, this would be fine if, like Megumi Rescue, they had used a quadrature encoder, also known as a “spinner”. Those definitely existed in 1977; the contemporary Atari 2600 game Indy 500 made use of them to provide analog potentiometer-like control accuracy with infinite spin. But Nintendo-Mitsubishi didn’t do that either.

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The Mitsumi switch inside this controller is just that: a three-position switch. You can spin it indefinitely, but it’s sending a digital signal on its wires; connecting one side or the other, or neither if it’s not actively being moved. It also feels terrible and mushy, but that might be because it’s old, so I’ll give it a pass there.

What I won’t give it a pass on is, the paddle speed is not controllable by the user, and the position can not change as fast as a potentiometer. You lose that fine control the potentiometer gives you. And that’s what makes the Color TV Game 6 & 15 the worst Pong clones. They broke the formula. It’s like playing Arkanoid with the NES controller, but at least Arkanoid has other features to distract you; this just has Pong with stuff in the middle.

See that video? That’s how fast the paddle can move. It’s not slow, but it’s slower than you can with a potentiometer.

Well…

The Nintendo Famicom at launch had square squishy buttons on the controller, and an unknown problem with the chipset. Nintendo recalled these early models; unless you seek them out, you’ll only see ones with hard round buttons. As far as I know, Nintendo didn’t recall the Color TV Game, but they did fix the problem. Let’s look at the bottom of my Color TV Game 15.

Pretty much every Nintendo game console ever released has had a three letter identifier code. The Switch, HAC, likely for “Handheld And Console”. The GameCube, DOL for its codename Dolphin. The Famicom was HVC, for Home Video Computer, while the NES had just, well, NES. And it all started here: CTG, Color TV Game.

But that’s not important. What’s important is the part after the CTG, the 15S. The launch models of the Color TV Game were the CTG-6S and CTG-15S; but the fact that I said launch models implies there was a follow-up. And there was; the CTG-15V, which changed the color to an orange red. Did they fix anything else? Well, I don’t have a CTG-15V. But I do have a CTG-6V.

The CTG-6V switches the color from the almost beige light orange of the CTG-6S to the more vibrant color from the 16S. It also adds an external power supply option, which the CTG-15S had (a Famicom power supply works, but not an NES one) but the the CTG-6S lacked. And even before you turn it on, you can tell by feel, it’s a potentiometer-based system now. The paddles have stops.

Let’s crack it open and take a look. The Color TV Game 6 and 15 are held together with standard cross-head screws, though I’m not sure if they’re Japanese-standard or Philips (a subtle difference); no Gamebits here. Be careful though; on the CTG-6, there’s some screws underneath the battery cover, which isn’t the case on the CTG-15.

That’s definitely a potentiometer. And that Mitsubishi M58816P chip is an updated model that can take advantage of it. That 7714 looks like a timecode that would imply the 14th week of 1977; that would’ve been before the June launch of the Color TV Game and imply that this fix would’ve been in the works from day 1; but the older chip has a 751R number, so I’m not sure it’s actually that.

And with a potentiometer, the paddle can move fast. It looks practically like a glitch here as I quickly move from top to bottom. (That video quality is really awful; maybe I should look into a proper video mod after all)

In theory, it should be possible to wire in additional switches to this chip and allow access to the games that are missing on the Color TV Game 6; I might do that eventually just to get the shooting game; I’m curious if it also allows the weird doubles mode, or if Mitsubishi blocked that.

It’s an fascinating factor to have a look at from 2023, although. The V-series are positively the higher Pong clones; however, uh, are you searching for a Pong clone in 2023? Or are you searching for a novel little bit of Nintendo historical past? As the one firm to have made Pong clones and to nonetheless be making consoles, they’re clearly doing one thing proper, even when their first console did one thing incorrect.

And eventually, a PSA

Let’s take one final have a look at my Colour TV Sport 15. Do you see this mark throughout the highest?

Consoles with built-in RF cables, just like the Colour TV Sport 6, typically have scars like this, and it appears notably widespread on the Nintendo consoles. It is because the RF cable comprises plasticizers to make it extra versatile; the issue is, individuals typically wrap cables across the console for handy storage. That is wonderful for the quick time period, but when they’ve been within the closet for nearly fifty years, effectively, you get burns like this and even worse. Watch out the way you retailer these!