Hey all, Back in the 80's in Ontario, Canada my dad had a video game system, he remembers it was one of Radioshacks consoles, but not the name. We had two games, a baseball game and a Sesame Street street game with cookie monster, which seems to rule out the original TV Scoreboard as neither are listed as having games for it. Amy suggestions as to what it might have been?
Could it have been an Atari or Colecovision rebadged? There was a lot of that type on thing going on in the 70's and 80's for electronics in general. RS did have a rebadged version of the Intellivision. Otherwise, some TRS-80's had a cartridge port for games.
It was definitely not an Atari. He wanted one when they first came out and was talked out of it. The RadioShack device was what he eventually got instead. It had no monitor or keyboard, just a small joystick for controls and plugged into the TV, so I don't think it was the TRS-80's. I was wondering if it was a refreshed Scoreboard? Of they had different versions with more games than the original? I say cookie monster game but it could have been a Sesame Street generic game where cookie monster appeared, I just remember calling it the cookie monster game. I think it was like a factory where you had to count or something. Memory is pretty fuzzy. The Tandyvision 1 looks like it's a possibility! I'll have to google around about it
I just googled "Radio Shack 1980's game consoles". Got a lot of non-1980's results, but the Intellivision clone seemed to be the only true console.
On another forum someone is saying it can't be the Tandyvision because intellivision never had a Sesame Street game. At one point a few years ago I swear someone had found the game and I saw it. Wish I'd saved it somewhere. Would have helped narrow it down
There's a list of Intellivision games here & a relative few Tandyvision games here. No Sesame Street mentioned, but I wonder if RS ever did their own games. Many Sesame Street games listed here, but no mention of Intellivision or Tandyvision. There seems to have been one for the earliest NES. How certain are you is was a Radio Shack branded console? I know I have some faulty memories of things from that long ago and/or just can't find any proof something I owned even existed.
This site seems to have most, if not all, of the old RS catalogs. I used to love looking through those things and making wishlists. Never got most of the stuff I wanted.
This would probably be the best route to investigate. Find the game and it should lead to the console. I didn't think they made those plug-in-play joysticks that early in video game development.
Back on the subject of faulty memories, there's this little red AM radio I had in the mid to late 70's, and I would've sworn it came from Radio Shack because...where else would I have gotten a radio from back then. Turns out it was a Soundesign and for all I know it could have come from a Zayres or a Wieboldts, an outside chance of Sears. I don't think we had a nearby K-Mart yet in 1975, but those were pretty much it for department stores. That's one mystery that's been drink me f-in bananas solved. Now there this green & white portable phonograph/AM radio that I was even more sure came from RS (Realistic brand). I looked through 10 years of those catalogs, but nothing that even looks close. Believe me I've googled the hell out of that one too.
Oh, it wasn't a plug and play joystick, it was a console and had cartridges (I believe) that were plugged into it. I just meant no keyboard or monitor. It wasn't a computer, we had a commodore 64 a couple years later, but he'd still dig this out sometimes I don't remember anything about branding, my Dad says it was a RadioShack Console. He didn't remember the type though. If it's between my memory as a child under 5 remembering Sesame Street and my Dad remembering it being a RadioShack Console (definitely not an Atari) I'd say it's my memory of Sesame Street that's wrong
I had both the Tandyvision and the Tandy handheld baseball game, and I loved them both as a kid. The Tandyvision was indeed a rebranded Intellivision. Instead of gold side decals, it had wood grain, other than that the controllers and everything else were the same. As far as I know Tandy did not make their own games for the console. They were having a hard enough time doing in-house games for the Tandy CoCo. The handheld baseball game (you can google it , or look up handheldmuseum.com) was different from any other handhelf game I have seen before or seince, in that there was a unique two player option. The "pitcher" section detatched with a cable from the rest of the game. IIRC you could then throw curve balls, fast balls, and maybe change-ups. But the other player couldn't cheat and see what you were pitching. It had a single player version too. Sears may have also had their own version of the game.
I remember Rat Shack had the Flavoradios. They were small AM radios that came in a bunch of colors. I never had one, but I did buy their "Weather cube" weather radio and modified it with a trimmer cap across the IF stage to get it to tune to the ham radio 2 meter band. I would use it to listen in local conversations on a band my own Novice license did not allow me to use. I made a morse code oscillator from the parts bin too, to learn morse code. I used to love Radio Shack back then.
Panasonic also had those colored "ball" radios and the ones that could be twisted from a loop to an "S" shape. RS was a smorgasbord of bits & pieces back then. But of course, most electronics had replaceable parts then too.
There's the business TRS-80, and then the Tandy Color Computer. I am showing my age, but I only had one of the former, and probably five of the latter (so far). The CoCo had external joysticks, and an RF adaptor to plug into the TV. The CoCo as its name implied did handle colors, and even had some extra commands in its version of MS Basic, like CIRCLE to draw circles if you were doing your own programming. I once made used that to make a small program of a sombrero rotating while the old "hat dance" tune played with a system of beeps. That took SO long to save on my sister's stolen Melissa Manchester tape (hey, cassettes were expensive). The Mk1 business TRS80 was monochrome and had a small monitor I am pretty sure was just a repurposed radio shack B&W TV. Very weirdly, it used a stereo 1/4 plug from computer to monitor. I had one briefly but it did not run well, was boring and I think I used the monitor for target practice one day. It was a long time ago. I regret much. I digress. The CoCo external joysticks were bad. Like horrifically bad. Worst joysticks ever made. So bad they made the "can't remove them, if they break, you're screwed" Intellvision/Tandyvision pads feel great by comparison.
That animated sombrero is begging to be resurrected as a gif The first computer I learned to use was the original TRS-80, without disc drives. They only had tape drives for the ones in my HS. The next year it was Apple IIc's, or maybe Franklins.
Oh Lordy that was my life growing up in the mid 80s early 90s I collected Tandy catalogs just to look at all the cool stuff, and buy some of it when I could because by that time I had my own money and could support a hobby. Those were the days.
It's kind of funny how two different leather goods companies made so many good electronic games in the 80's: Tandy: all things Radioshack TRS-80 computers TRS-80 color computers TRS-80 handheld computers TRS-80 color computers (edit.. totally forgot the 1000 series computers, which were great, too, but not really game systems per se) Coleco (Connecticut Leather company) Colecovision Adam Gemini