| Bally, a pinball giant with
moderate success in arcade games, had been completely side-swiped by the
video game explosion of the First Generation. Unlike most arcade gaming
companies during the late seventies, Bally had not been approached by an
upbeat engineer with an idea for a new form of home entertainment. They
did not even have the opportunity that RCA, Zenith, Teleprompter, and the
like, had to turn down a video game system only to brood about it later.
They were simply left standing at the starting line of a race they had
not even known they were in.
Thus, in 1978 Bally released
their own home system. Dubbed the Bally Professional Arcade, the system
was to be in direct competition with Atari's 2600. Lack of software support
and media coverage decimated the Professional Arcade before its first Christmas
competition with the 2600.
After straining for three
years to keep the system alive, Bally finally sold the rights to it in
1981. It was promptly re-released by an unknown company called Astrovision
as the "Bally Computer System." Then, in a move that must have been an
attempt to start over without the Professional Arcade's failure looming
overhead, in 1982 it was renamed simply as "Astrocade."
Perhaps the most significant
contribution this system had to the industry, was that its programming
abilities would inspire many of the current generation of video game producers. |
