second generation of video game consoles part of a series on thehistory of video games general early history of video games early mainframe games golden age of arcade video games video game crash of 1983 consoles 1st generation 19721980 2nd generation 19761992 3rd generation 19832003 4th generation 19872004 5th generation 19932005 6th generation 19982013 7th generation 20052017 8th generation 2012 genres history of eastern roleplaying video games history of western roleplaying video games history of online games history of massively multiplayer online games lists list of video games in development timeline of arcade video game history vte the second generation of computer and video games began in 1976 with the release of the fairchild channel f it coincided with and was partly fuelled by the golden age of arcade video games a peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium the early period saw the launch of several consoles as various companies decided to enter the market later releases were in direct response to the earlier consoles the atari 2600 was the dominant console for much of the second generation with other consoles such as intellivision the odyssey and colecovision also enjoying market share the second generation had a mixed legacy affected by the video game crash of 1983 the atari 2600 was discontinued on january 1 1992 ending the second generation the duration between the start of the 2nd generation in 1976 and the start of the 3rd generation in 1983 was seven years due to the long lifespan of the atari 2600 which was available from 1977 to 1992 the second generation is the longest generation so far some features that distinguished second generation consoles from first generation consoles include microprocessorbased game logic ai simulation of computerbased opponents allowing for singleplayer gaming rom cartridges for storing games allowing any number of different games to be played on one console game playfields able to span multiple flipscreen areas blocky and simplisticlooking sprites with a screen resolution of around 160 192 pixels basic color graphics generally between 2color 1bit and 16color 4bit up to three channel audio lacked features of third generation consoles such as scrolling tilebased playfields history early 8bit home consoles 19761988 an atari 2600 game joystick controller the earliest console the magnavox odyssey uses removable cartridges that are merely jumpers housed in cartridges that activate the games already wired into the console this method was soon replaced during the move to pong consoles where the logic for one or more games was hardcoded into microchips using discrete logic and no additional games could be added by the mid1970s cartridges returned with the move to cpubased consoles with games now consisting of microprocessorbased code these games were burned onto rom chips mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots on the console when the cartridges were plugged in the generalpurpose microprocessors in the consoles read the cartridge memory and ran whatever program was stored there rather than being confined to a small selection of games included in the box consumers could now amass libraries of game cartridges the fairchild ves was the worlds first cpubased video game console introducing the cartridgebased game code storage format the rca studio ii is a video game console made by rca that debuted in january 1977 the graphics of studio ii games were black and white and resembled those of earlier pong consoles and their clones the studio ii also did not have joysticks or similar game controllers but instead used two ten button keypads that were built into the console itself the console was capable of making simple beep sounds with slight variations in tone and length in 1977 atari released its cpubased console called the video computer system vcs later called the atari 2600 nine games were designed and released for the holiday season it would quickly becomeby farthe most popular of the early consoles the bally astrocade was originally referred to as the bally home library computer and was released in 1977 but was available only through mail order delays in the production meant that none of the units actually shipped until 1978 by this time the machine had been renamed the bally professional arcade in this form it sold mostly at computer stores and had little retail exposure unlike the atari vcs in 1979 bally grew less interested in the arcade market and decided to sell off their consumer products division including development and production of the game console in 1980 they rereleased the unit with the basic cartridge included for free this system was known as the bally computer system but was changed to astrocade in 1982 it sold under this name until the video game crash of 1983 and then disappeared around 1984 in 1978 magnavox released its microprocessorbased console the odyssey in the united states and canada philips electronics released this same game console as the philips g7000 for the european market although the odyssey 2 never became as popular as the atari consoles it managed to sell several million units through 1983 philips had also designed the more powerful interton vc 4000 console family eg 1292 advanced programmable video system before this in 1979 activision was created by disgruntled former atari programmers it was the first thirdparty developer of video games in succeeding years many new developers would follow their lead the next major entry was intellivision introduced by mattel to test markets in 1979 and nationally in 1980 although chronologically coming long before the 16bit era the intellivision console contains a 16bit processor with 16bit registers and 16bit system ram however programs were stored on 10bit rom it also features an advanced sound chip which can deliver output through three distinct sound channels intellivision was the first system to pose a serious threat to ataris dominance a series of tv advertisements featuring george plimpton demonstrated the superiority of intellivisions graphics and sound to those of the atari 2600 using sidebyside game comparisons nevertheless atari held exclusive rights to most of the popular arcade game conversions of the day and used this key segment to support their older hardware in the market this game advantage and the difference in price between the machines meant that each year atari sold more units than intellivision lengthening its lead despite inferior graphics this need for price parity has influenced every console war since 1982 saw the introduction of four new consoles the emerson arcadia 2001 the vectrex colecovision and the atari 5200 the vectrex was unique among home systems of the time in featuring vector graphics and its own selfcontained display the arcadia and colecovision were even more powerful machines the popularity of early consoles was strongly influenced by the ports of arcade games the atari 2600 was the first with space invaders and colecovision bundled in nintendos donkey kong early cartridges were 2 kb roms for the atari 2600 and 4 kb for intellivision this upper limit grew steadily from 1978 to 1983 up to 16 kb for atari 5200 24 k for intellivision 32 kb for colecovision bank switching a technique that allowed two different parts of the program to use the same memory addresses was required for the larger cartridges to work atari 2600 carts got as large as 32k final run through bank switching in contrast some arcadia family members eg palladium videocomputergame supported up to 31 kb without any need for bank switching in the game consoles high ram prices especially during the early period of the second generation limited the ram memory capacity of the systems to a tiny amount often less than 1 kb although the cartridge rom size limit grew steadily the ram limit was part of the console itself and all games had to work within its constraints in the case of the especially constrained atari 2600 which had only 128 bytes of ram available in the console a few late game cartridges contained a special combined ramrom chip thus adding another 256 bytes of ram inside the cartridge itself by 1982 a glut of consoles overhyped game releases and lowquality games from new thirdparty developers less wellprepared than activision began to appear overflowing the shelf capacity of toy stores partly due to this surplus the video game industry crashed beginning in december 1982 and stretching through all of 1984 almost no new games were released in 1984 home systems comparison name fairchild channel f atari vcs2600sears video arcade bally astrocade magnavox odyssey intellivision manufacturer fairchild semiconductor atari bally technologies magnavox mattel console launch prices us16995 equivalent to 73100 in 2018 us200 equivalent to 80800 in 2018 us299 equivalent to 121thousand in 2018 us200 equivalent to 75000 in 2018 49800 us299 equivalent to 88800 in 2018 release date usa november 1976 usa september 1977eu 1978jp may 1983 usa october 1977 usa 1978eu december 1978jp 1982brz 1983 usa test marketed in 1979 official release in 1980eu 1982jp 1982 media cartridge cartridge and cassette cassette available via special 3rd party attachment cartridge and cassettefloppy available with zgrass unit cartridge cartridge topselling games videocart17 pinball challenge pacman 7 million as of september 1 2006 na na as of june 1983las vegas poker blackjack 1939 millionmajor league baseball 1085 million backward compatibility na na na none atari 2600 games through the system changer module accessories retail na driving controller keypad game brain starpath supercharger gameline zgrass unit the voice chess module keyboard component cancelled playcable intellivoice entertainment computer system music synthesizer keyboard cpu fairchild f8 179 mhz pal 200mhz mos technology 6507 119 mhz zilog z80 1789mhz intel 8048 8bit microcontroller 179 mhz general instrument cp1610 894886 khz memory 64 bytes main ram2 kb video ram 212864 bits 128 bytes ram within mos technology riot chip additional ram may be included in game cartridges 4k ram up to 64k with external modules in the expansion port cpuinternal ram 64 bytesaudiovideo ram 128 bytes 1456 bytes ram 64k directly addressable video resolution 10258 to 12864 pixels visible 12864 framebuffer colors 8 colors maximum of 4 per scanline 160192 resolution 2 sprites 2 missiles and 1 ball per scanline sprites can be used multiple times through hmove command 2 background colors and 2 sprite colors 1 color per sprite per scanline palette of 128 colors ntsc or 104 colors pal resolution true 160102 basic 16088 expanded ram 320204 colors true 8 basic 2 160200 resolution ntsc 16color fixed palette sprites use 8 colors 4 88 singlecolor userdefined sprites 12 88 singlecolor characters 64 shapes built into rom bios 4 quad characters 98 background grid dots lines or blocks 159x96 pixels background resolution 20x12 tiles 8x8 pixels smooth multidirectional hardware scrolling 16 color palette all of which can be on the screen at once 8 sprites 8x16 halfpixels audio mono audio with 500hz 1khz and 15khz tones can be modulated quickly to produce different tones mono audio with two channel sound 5bit frequency divider and 4bit audio control register 4bit volume control register per channel mono audio with 3 voices noisevibrato effect mono audio with 24bit shift register clockable at 2 frequencies noise generator mono audio with general instrument ay38914 three channel sound one noise generator name emerson arcadia 2001 colecovision atari 5200 vectrex manufacturer emerson radio corporation coleco atari general consumer electric and milton bradley console launch prices na us199 equivalent to 50500 in 2018 us270 equivalent to 68500 in 2018 us199 equivalent to 50500 in 2018 release date usa 1982 usa august 1982eu 1982 usa november 1982 usa november 1982eu may 1983jp june 1983 media cartridge cartridge and cassette available with expansion 3 cartridge cartridge topselling games na donkey kong packin na na backward compatibility na compatible with atari 2600 via expansion 1 atari 2600 games through the 2600 cartridge adapter na accessories retail na expansion 1 expansion 2 expansion 3 roller controller super action controller set trakball controller atari 2600 adaptor 3d imager light pen cpu signetics 2650 cpu 358 mhz zilog z80a 358mhz custom mos 6502c 179mhz not a 65c02 motorola 68a09 15 mhz memory 512 bytes ram 1 kb main ram16 kb video ram 16 kb main dram 1 kb main ram video 128x208 128104 8 colours 256192 resolution 16 colors on screen 1 color per sprite 32 sprites 4 per scanline 88 or 816 pixels integer zoom tilemap playfield 88 tiles resolution 80192 16 color 160192 4 color 320192 2 color 2 to 16 out of 256 onscreen colors up to 256 16 hues 16 luma on screen 16 per scanline with display list interrupts 14 graphics modes 6 tilemap 8 bitmap 8 singlecolor sprites full height of display 124x width scaling smooth scrolling vertical and horizontal built in vector crt audio mono audio with single channel beeper single channel noise mono audio with 3 tone generators 1 noise generator mono audio with 4channel sound mono built in speaker other consoles rca studio iireleased in 1977 1292 advanced programmable video systemreleased in 1978 apfmp1000released in 1978 vc 4000released in 1978 epoch cassette visionreleased in 1981 vtech creativisionreleased in 1981 handheld systems the first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges was the microvision designed by smith engineering and distributed and sold by miltonbradley in 1979 crippled by a small fragile lcd display and a very narrow selection of games it was discontinued two years later the epoch game pocket computer was released in japan in 1984 the game pocket computer featured an lcd screen with 75 x 64 resolution and could produce graphics at about the same level as early atari 2600 games the system sold poorly and as a result only 5 games were made for it list of handheld systems milton bradley microvisionreleased in 1979 entex selectagamereleased in 1981 entex adventure visionreleased in 1982 palmtex portable videogame system super micro released in 1984 epoch game pocket computerreleased in 1984 game watch series released in 1980 legacy sales see also list of bestselling game consoles the bestselling console of the second generation is by far the atari 2600 at 30 million units milestone titles atari vcs2600 adventure asteroids arcade port combat demon attack missile command arcade port pitfall pitfall ii lost caverns river raid space invaders arcade port star wars the empire strikes back intellivision advanced dungeons and dragons cloudy mountain baseball burgertime arcade port microsurgeon utopia colecovision donkey kong arcade port zaxxon arcade port video games portal third generation of video game consoles first generation of video game consoles home computerlist of home computers history of computing hardware 1960spresent the dot eaters pixel boxes vtevideo game consoles second generationtypes home video game console list handheld game console list microconsole list dedicated console list generations first 197280 second 197692 third 19832003 fourth 19872004 fifth 19932005 sixth 19982013 seventh 200517 eighth 2012present secondgenerationhome apfmp1000 arcadia 2001 atari 2600 atari 5200 bally astrocade colecovision epoch cassette vision fairchild channel f interton vc 40001292 advanced programmable video system intellivision odyssey rca studio ii vectrex super vision 8000 vtech creativision handheld milton bradley microvision entex selectagame entex adventure vision palmtex portable videogame system super micro epoch game pocket computer dedicated nintendo game watch first generation third generation emulator game history list manufacturer vtehistory of video gamesby system golden age of arcade video games timeline of arcade video game history video game crash of 1983 early mainframe games by yearearly history 19471972 1970s 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980s 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990s 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000s 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010s 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020s 2020 near future by console generation first 19721980 second 19761992 third 19832003 fourth 19872003 fifth 19932005 sixth 19982013 seventh 20052017 eighth 2012 by region australia bangladesh belgium brazil canada china czech republic colombia finland france germany ghana india indonesia ireland lithuania japan kenya malaysia netherlands new zealand nigeria philippines russia south africa south korea thailand turkey ukraine united kingdom united states 