The AY3-8500 Chip Saga
I got a demo, played the games and got pretty excited about the possibilities. To me, the performance of that chip was so impressive that I called Arnold Greenberg, president of Coleco. He had expressed to me a desire to get into the video game business sometime earlier, probably during a meeting at Marvin Glass & Associates in Chicago. I told Arnold to get himself or someone else down to GI as soon as possible … he did and Coleco became the first company to place a major order for AY3-8500 chips.That would eventually wind up in Coleco’s first and wildly successful Telstar product.
On the 19th of March I sent Bob Fritsche a letter that proposed that we work together on video games making use of Magnavox‘ video disc player. I suggested that he come and view demonstrations in which we had emulated the video disc by using video tape source material. In that demo we showed a soccer game with background and goalies on tape (similar to the Warner Cable demos). Other players were generated by the game unit and interacted normally with those coming from the surrogate disc source. The result was a complex playing field with lots of action. We discussed a possible ’77 – ’78 time frame for a real product based on these concepts. We should be so lucky!
Referring back to the chip set made by TI for Magnavox, I sent a memo to Dan Chisholm and Lou Etlinger on March 21 that said, in effect: „Watch out for TI to sell their TV game chip set to all comers … it will happen“ (and it did!). TI had already made up data sheets for all five IC’s. Also, I warned Sanders‘ management that National Semi was going to go it alone with their chip … all cause for laying legal notices on both of them to take a license or cease and desist. I urged Lou and Dan to put pressure on Magnavox, preferably above the Tom Briody level, to get serious about pursuing licensees and infringers alike.
RCA was also moving into the arena with their microprocessor based Spectra game … same licensing problem … and ditto for Fairchild’s Channel F, the first microprocessor game to appear on the market that was programmable by changing plug-in cartridges containing ROM with game specific code.
In April I heard that GI was visiting Magnavox, Fort Wayne to demo their AY3-8500 chip. I also heard that a color Odyssey unit was in the works for ’76. Things were finally looking up on the Magnavox manufacturing front and with it our direct license income … but all was still dead in the water on the sub licensing front.
Fritsche et al still hadn’t come to Nashua for the vidisc based game demo. Late in May we tried to get John Slusarsky to come and discuss Magnavox‘ interest in our video quiz and audio tape player controlled video game concepts and demo systems, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Bob Fritsche had actually been at Philips in Holland at their head shed in Eindhoven for a meeting regarding the use of video discs in video games. He reported that there had been some interest. He also told us to expect his visit along with John Slusarsky to go over that subject. While we were at it, we also talked about the need for legal action against National Semi … finally I was getting some interest in that subject from someone within Magnavox, though not necessarily very effective support. I also tried to bum a Magnavox 13″ color chassis from Bob Fritsche for use with a 21 game unit we were designing for Centronix/Gamex for Las Vegas scene. Don’t remember if I succeeded.
But that’s another story entirely! Here it is in a nutshell: