How Video Games Invaded The Home TV Set – Chapter 29

Back To Magnavox … 1975

During the months of May and June of 1975, Bob Fritsche and I were on the phone frequently to sort out what we could realistically expect to do together. Fritsche went off to Philips headquarters at Eindhoven in June for a second meeting regarding video disc players. He again brought up the relationship between video games and video discs which I had been harping on at length but apparently did not make a great impression on the Dutchmen.

When Bob came back from Holland, we set up a meeting for July 7th. John Kinney, an engineer at Philips Bryar Cliff Manor, NY was supposed to join Bob and John Slusarsky on that trip. George was responsible for special applications of the Philips video disc system. The visit never came off. The excuse was that Magnavox/Philips could not „chase all the options that were out there“. That was the type of thinking that eventually scuttled video disc as a mass market product … no imagination!

I finally flew out for another meeting with Magnavox in Fort Wayne on August 13th. This time it was John D’Aiuto, John Slusarsky and Bob Price who met me and professed continued interest in Sanders support.. The subjects I wanted to discuss covered these topics: A video disc/video game program, a video game built into a TV set top remote control unit such as those made by Jerrold popular at the time, a cocktail table for coin-op use, and a home use cocktail table game. We wound up talking mostly about the need for one on one games rather that the two player games then predominant. The bottom line was that we, Sanders, would help the Fort Wayne crew come up with better one on one games. Talk about changing the subject …!

While I was in Fort Wayne, I saw their Model 100 2 game leader model for 1975 and the Model 33, a 3 game unit which had sound and scoring. I thought the products looked very good. At least that was encouraging! The memo of 13 August 1975 summarizes all of this.

History Redux

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