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Gamers playing on a Fairchild Channel F. The Channel F had beaten the Atari VCS to the market, but once the VCS was released, sales of the Channel F fell, attributed to the types of games that were offered. Most of the Channel F titles were slow-paced educational and intellectual games, compared to the action-driven games that launched with the ...
Apr 30, 2024 · That year, Atari released its Space Invaders cartridge and Atari’s sales took another jump. That same year, Fairchild gave up, selling the Channel F off to Zircon International. Zircon continued selling the Channel F as a budget console until 1983, but in spite of being first to market, the Channel F ended up being an also ran.
- Summary
- Background
- Revolutionary Design
- Atari Takes Notice
- A Second Chance to Succeed
- Legacy
- Technical Specifications
The console that changed home video games as we know them, the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES), latter known as the Fairchild Channel F, revolutionized the video game industry. Its many innovative design properties marked numerous firsts in the video game industry.
By 1976, the single chip Pong and Shooting Gallerygames dominating the video game market were becoming over-saturated with clones and cheap knock-off consoles. At this point, Fairchild entered the market with a new machine that attempted to differentiate itself by doing numerous new and exciting things. The Fairchild VES was engineered by Gerald Je...
The VES's overall look and design (made by the industrial designer Nicholas Talesfore) was a fusion of new and established ideas. The console only resembled its competition from a superficial perspective. Any person who examined the console from the inside would see that that was not the case. The controller is a ribbed grip with a triangular contr...
With all of this Atari had finally decided to release their own cartridge based home console called the “Atari Video Computer System” or "Atari VCS" (Atari later retitled the console to the more well known name Atari 2600). Despite changing the console name from "Fairchild VES" to "Fairchild Channel F" - to differentiate the console from Atari’s - ...
Having lasted only a year and 4 months, from 1976-1977, one would have thought the Channel F's story would end there. However, by 1979, a company by the name of Zircon made a curious move; they bought all the rights to the Channel F and games released for the console. Later they re-released Fairchild's "Channel F System II" aka "Channel F II" which...
By 1978, Fairchild had released 20 different Videocarts for the Channel F, with Zircon chipping in six new titles during the following years. The games vary from single to multi-game cartridges and the various options for the games are most often selected by the 4 main buttons on the front of the console. While its library pales in comparison to th...
CPU: Fairchild F8 processor system, operating at 1.79 MHz (PAL v1: 2.00 MHz, v2: 1.77 MHz)RAM: Only 64 Bytes, 2 KiB single direction VRAM (2×128×64 bits)Resolution: 128×64 pixels, close to 102×58 visible depending on TVColors: 4 foreground, 4 background, pixels turn white if black is used, background color is set per line.A Change in the Market. Probably one of the most important side-effects caused by the release of the VES was its impact on Atari. Atari had their own prototype programmable system in the works as ...
Mar 23, 2024 · March 23, 2024. Atari was a true pioneer that helped launch the modern age of video games. As one of the most influential companies in gaming history, Atari‘s trailblazing legacy shaped the industry in countless ways – from its scrappy early innovations to the stunning rise and fall of its gaming empire.
The console was originally called the Fairchild Video Entertainment System but when Atari released their Video Computer System (VCS and later renamed Atari 2600) one year later, Fairchild changed the name to Channel F. Giving up the name and going with something else after a competitor enters the market with a similar name is rather odd.
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How did the Fairchild Channel F affect Atari?
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Why was Channel F unable to compete with Atari 187?
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Why did Atari make Channel F so much better than Atari?
May 25, 2009 · The Channel F’s original name was the Video Entertainment System, but was changed to Channel F when Atari released the VCS(Atari 2600) in 1977. Though Atari was testing their prototype “Stella†at the time, the release of the Channel F would spur them to push for an earlier release then they had planned.
